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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at|http : //books . google . com/| HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY Marion Harland's Autobiography THE STORY OF A LONG LIFE HARPER &• BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMX A l~3 (L0.7, ''. ^- COLLEG K Copyright, 1910, by Harpu & Brotmbss Ail ligAts ruervtd PablUhed April, 1910 PHnttd in the UnUtd Statu 0/Amerkm WITH REVERENT TENDERNESS THIS SIMPLE STORY OF MY LONG LIFE IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER CONTENTS OBAP. PAOB I. FOBEBBABS AND PaTBON SaINT 1 II. Lafayette; Revolutionaby Tales; Pabentb' Mab- BIAOE 16 in A CouNTBY Exile; Death of the Fibst-Bobn; Change OF Home; A Fibeside Tbaoedy; ''Ck>oiTO, Eboo Sum" 27 IV. A Bebsebkeb Rage; A Fbight; The Webtebn Feveb; Montbose; a Motheb Regained 37 V. OuB Powhatan Home; A CJountby Funebal; "Old Mbs. O'Haba" 62 VL Old-Fashioned Husband's Love-Letteb; An Almost Homicide; A "Slauohtbbed Monsteb"; A Wes- leyan Sghoolmistbess 61 VII. My Fibst Tutob; The Reign of Tebbob .... 70 VIII. Calm Aftbb Stobm; Oub Handsome Yankee Govebn- ess; The Nascent Authob 84 IX. A College Neighbobhood; The Wobld Widens; A Beloved Tutob; Colonization Dbeams and Dis- appointment; Majob Mobton 90 X. Family Lettebs; Commencement at Hampden-Sidney; Then and Now 104 XI. Back in Powhatan; Old Vibginia Housewifeby; A Singing-Class in the Fobties; The Simple Life? 110 XII. Election Day and a Dbmocbatic Babbecue . . . 117 Xm. A Whig Rally and Musteb Day 129 XrV. RuMOBs OF Changes; A Cobn-Shucking; A Negbo Topical Song 143 XV. The Countby Gibls at a City School; Velvet Hats AND Clay's Defeat 149 V OBAP. XVI. xvn. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. xxm. xxrv. XXV. XXVI. xxvn. xxvni. xxrx. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. xxxrv. CONTENTS TAQM Hoins AT Christmas; A Candt-Pull and Hog- Killing 162 A Notable Affair of Honor 171 The Menace of Slave Insurrection 186 Wedding and Bridesmaid; The Routine of a Large Family; Mt First Bereavement 196 OuB True Family Ghost-Stort 203 Two Monumental Friendships 218 The "Old African Church" 227 How "Alone" Came to Be 237 The Dawning of Literart Life ....... 246 Brought Face to Face wtth My Fate 254 Literary Well- Wishers; George D. Prentice; Mrs. Sigourney; Grace Greenwood; H. W. Longfellow; James Redfath; The "Wander- ing Jew" 262 My Northern Kinspeople; "Quelqu'un" and Lifelong Friendship 270 My First Opera; "Peter Parley"; Rachel as "Camille"; Bayard Taylor; T. B. Aldrich; G. P. Morris; Marla. Cummins; Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney 280 Anna Cora (Mowatt) Ritchie; Edward Everett; Governor Wise; A Memorable Dinner-Party 288 A Musical Convention; George Francis Root; When "The Shining Shore" was First Sung; The Hallelujah Chorus; Betrothal; Dempster in His Old Age 297 Wedding Bells; A Bridal Toxtr; A Discovered Rblativb; a Noble Life 304 Parsonage Life; William Wirt Henry; His- toric Soil; John Randolph; The Last of the Randolphs 313 Plantation Preaching; Colored Communicants; A "Mighty Man in Prayer" 325 My Novitiate as a Practical Housewife; My Cook "Gets Her Hand Out"; Inception of "Common Sense in the Household" .... 333 vi XXXV. XXXVI. xxxvn. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. XLIIL XLIV. XLV. XLVI. XLVn. xLvm. CONTENTS rAQM Thb Stibb£d "Nbst Amonq the Oaks "; A Cbucial Cbibis 346 Migration North wabd; Acclibiation; Albert Edward, Princb of Wales, in New York; Political Portents 355 The Panic of '61; A Virginia Vacation; Mutteh- iNos OF Coming Storm 363 The Fourteenth of April, 1861, in Richmond . 370 "The Last Through Train for Four Years" . 382 Domestic Sorrows and National Storm and Stress; Friends, Tried and True .... 389 Fobt Delaware; "Old Glory"; Lincoln's Assas- sination; The Released Prisoner of War. 399 A Christmas Reunion; A Midnight Warning; How A Good Man Came to "The Happiest Day of His Life" 408 Two Bridals; A Birth and a Passing; "My Little Love " ; " Drifting Out " ; A Nonpareil Parish 417 Two Years Overseas; Life in Rome and Geneva 427 Sunnybank; A New England Parish; "My Boys"; Two "Starred" Names 436 Return To Middle States; The Holy Land; My Friends the Missionaries; Two Consuls in Jerusalem 448 Lucerne; Good Samaritans and an Englishman; A Lecture Tour; Ohioan Hospitality; Mr. AND Mrs. McKinley 457 The Clouds Return After the Rain; Abroad Again; Healing and Health; Idyluc Winter in Florence 470 The Going-Out of a Young Life; Present Ao- TrviTiEs; "Lfterary Hearthstones"; Grate- ful Reminiscences 481 Appendix 491 A Fraternal Tribute The Golden Wedding FOREWORD From the time when, as a mere baby, I dreamed my- self to slumber every night by "making up stories," down to the present hour, every human life with which I have been associated, or of which I had any intimate knowl- edge, has been to me a living story. All interest me in some measure. Many enlist my sympathy and fascinate the imagination as no tale that is avowedly fictitious has ever bewitched me. I hold and believe for certain that if I could draw aside the veil of conventional reserve from the daily thinking, feeling, and living of my most commonplace acquaintance, and read these from "Preface" to "Finis," I should rate the wildest dream of the novelist as tame by comparison. My children tell me, laughingly, that I "turn every- thing into a story." In my heart I know that the ro- mances are all ready-made and laid to my hand. In the pages that follow this word of explanation I have essayed no dramatic effects or artistic "situations." "The Story of My Long Life" tells itself as one friend might talk to another as the two sit in the confidential firelight on a winter evening. The idea of reviewing that life upon paper first came to me with the consciousness — which was almost a shock — that, of all the authors still on active professional duty in our country, I am the only one whose memory runs back to the stage of national history that preceded the Civil War by a quarter-century. I, alone, am left to tell, of my own knowledge and experience, iz FOREWORD what the Old South was in deed and in truth. Other and far abler pens than mine have portrayed scenes of those days with skill I cannot emulate. But theirs is hearsay evidence — second-hand testimony as truly as if they wrote of Shakespeare's haps and mishaps in the grammar-school at Stratford-on-Avon, or of Master George Herbert's early love affairs. True, the fathers told it to the generation following, and the generation has been faithful to the traditions com- mitted to it. What I have to say in the aforesaid gossip over the confidential fire is of what I saw and heard and did — and vxls in that hoary Long Ago. Throughout the telling I have kept the personal touch. The story is autobiography — not history. I bc^an it for my children, whose importunities for tales of the olden — and now forever gone — "times" have been taken up by the least grandchild. It was my lot to know the Old South in her prime, and to see her downfall. Mine to witness the throes that racked her during four black and bitter years. Mine to watch the dawn of a new and vigorous life and the full glory of a restored Union. I shall tell of nothing that my eyes did not see, and depict neither tragedy nor comedy in which I was not cast for a part. Mine is a story for the table and arm-chair under the reading-lamp in the living-room, and not for the library shelves. To the family and to those who make and keep the home do I commit it. Marion Habland. New Yobk Cmr, November, 1909. MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY FOREBEARS AND PATRON SAINT My father, Samuel Pierce Hawes, was bom in the town of Dorchester, Massachusetts, July 30, 1799. The homestead, still standing and reckoned among the notable sites of the region, was built in 1640, by Robert Pierce, who emigrated to the New World in 1630, having sailed from Pl)anouth, England, in the Mary and John, in company with others of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On the voyage, he married Ann Greenaway — registered as "Daughter of Goodman Greenaway," a fellow-passenger. The family trace their descent, by old domestic and town records, from the Northumberland Percies. Traditions, cherished by the race, affirm that Godfrey of Bouillon was a remote ancestor. It is unquestionably true that " Robert of Dorchester," as he is put down in the genealogy of the Percies, was a blood relative of Master George Percy, John Smith's friend, and his successor in the presidency of the Jamestown colony. The emigrants had a temporary home in Neponset Village, prospering so far in worldly substance as to justify the erection of the substantial house upon the hill over- 1 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY looking the "village," ten years after the landing. So substantial was it, and so honest were the builders, that it has come down in a direct line from father to son, and been inhabited by ten generations of thrifty folk who have left it stanch and weatherproof to this day. My father's mother, a handsome, wilful girl of seventeen, ran away to be married to one whom her father — "Squire Pierce" — considered a presumptuous adventurer. He was from Maine, a stranger in the neighborhood, and re- puted (justly) to be wild and unsteady. When he asked for the girl's hand he was summarily commanded to hold no further communication with her. He had served as a private in the Revolutionary War; he had winning ways and a good-looking face, and Ann had a liberal spice of her sire's unbending will. She would have him, and no other of the youths who sued for her favor. The family genealogy records that "Squire Pierce," as he was named by his neighbor, received a captam's commission from the parent government at the outbreak of the Rebellion, and on the self-same day one from the Continental Congress appointing him as a colonel in the Massachusetts forces. As "Colonel Pierce," he fought throughout the eight bloody years to which we owe our national life. In his home he was a despot of the true Puritan, patri- archal type. For three years after the elopement the name of his daughter's husband was never uttered in his hearing. Nor did she enter the house, imtil at twenty, her proud spirit bowed but not broken by sorrows she never retailed, she came back to the old roof-tree on the eve of her confine- ment with her first and only child. He was bom there and received the grandfather's name in full. From that hour he was adopted as a son of the house by the stem old Puritan, and brought up at his knees. 2 FOREBEARS AND PATRON SAINT With the shrewd sense and sturdy independence charac- teristic of the true New-Englander, the mother was never foigetful of the fact that her boy was half-orphaned and dependent upon his grandfather's bounty, and began early to equip him for a single-handed fight with the world. Within a decade I have studied an authentic and de- tailed genealogy of the Hawes stock from which my grand- father sprang. It is a fine old English family, and the American branch, in which appear the birth and death of Jesse Hawes, of Maine, numbers many men of distinction in various professions. It is a comfort to a believer in heredity to be assured that the tree was sound at heart, in spite of the warped and severed bough. By the time my father was fourteen, he was at work in a Boston mercantile house, boarding with his employer, Mr. Baker, a personal friend of the Pierces. The growing lad walked out to Dorchester every Saturday night to spend Sunday at home and attend divine service in the '* Dorches- ter Old Meeting-House," the same in which I first saw and heard Edward Everett Hale, over forty years later. The youth arose, in all weathers, before the sun on Monday morning in order to be at his place of business at seven o'clock. When he was sixteen, his employer removed to Richmond, Virginia, and took his favorite clerk with him. From Boston to the capital of the Old Dominion was then a fortnight's journey by the quickest mode of travel. The boy could hardly hope to see his mother even once a year. At twenty-five he was an active member of the First Presbyterian Church in Richmond, established and built up by Rev. John Holt Rice, D.D., who was also the founder of Union Theological Seminary, now situated in Richmond. The young New-Englander was, likewise, a teacher in the Sunday-school — ^the first of its kind in Virginia, conducted under the auspices of Doctor Rice's church — a partner in a flourishing mercantile house, and engaged to be married to 2 3 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Miss Judith Anna Smithy of Olney, a plantation on the Chickahominy, five miles from the city. I have a miniature of my father, painted upon ivory a few years after his marriage. It is that of a handsome man, with deeply set gray eyes, very dark hair, and a well- cut, resolute mouth. The head is nobly shaped, the fore- head full and broad. His face was singularly mobile, and deeply lined, even in youth. In intellect he was far above the average business man. His library, at that early date, was more than respectable. Some of the most valuable early editions of the English classics that enrich my book-shelves have his book-plate upon the fly-leaves. He had, moreover, a number of standard French books, having studied the language with a tutor in the evenings. The range of his reading was wide and of a high order. Histories, biographies, books of travel, and essays had a prominent place in his store of "solid reading." That really good novels were not in- cluded in this condemnation we learn from a brief note to his betrothed, accompanying a copy of Walter Scott's Pirate. He apologizes for the profanity of certain charac- ters in semi-humorous fashion, and signs himself, *'Your friend, Samuel." Doctor Rice, whose wife was my mother's first cousin, appreciated young Hawes's character and ability; the parsonage was thrown open to him at all times, and within the hospitable precincts he first met his future wife. She was a pretty, amiable girl of eighteen, like himself an omnivorous reader, and, like him also, a zealous church- worker. Her father, Capt. William Sterling Smith, was the master of the ancestral estate of Olney, rechristened in the latter part of the eighteenth century by an ardent admirer of William Cowper. I am under the impression that the change of name was the work of my grandmother, his second 4 FOREBEARS AND PATRON SAINT wife, Miss Judith Smith, of Montrose, and a second cousin of "Captain Sterling," as he was familiarly called. Late in the seventeenth century, William Smith, of Devonshire, a lineal descendant of the brother and heir of Capt. John Smith of Pocahontas fame, married Ann SterUng in England, and, emigrating to America, pitched his moving tent, first in Gloucester, then in Henrico County. His cousin, bearing the same name, took up land in Pow- hatan, naming his homestead for the hapless Earl of Montrose. The questionable custom of the intermarriage of cousins prevailed in the clan, as among other old Vir- ginia families. My maternal grandmother was petite, refined in feature, bearing, and speech, and remarkable in her day for in- tellectual vivacity and moral graces. Her chief associates of the other sex were men of profound learning, distin- guished for services done to Church and State. Among them were the founders of the Presbyterian Church in Virginia. The Smiths had seceded from the Established Church of England before Thomas Jefferson rent it from the State. There lies at my elbow a time-worn volume bound in un- polished calf-skin, and lettered on one side, " D. Lacy's Letters " ; on the reverse, " Friendship Perpetuated." It contains one hundred and forty-two letters, copied from the original epistles and engrossed in exquisitely neat and minute characters. They represent one side of a cor- respondence maintained by the scribe with my grand- mother before and after her marriage. The writer and copyist was the Rev. Drury Lacy, D.D., then a professor in Hampden Sidney College, and destined to become the progenitor of a long line of divines and scholars. The Hoges, Lacys, Brookeses, and Waddells were of this lineage. The epistles are Addisonian in purity of moral teaching and in grammatical structure, Johnsonian in 5 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY verbosenesS; and interfused throughout with a pietistic priggishness all their own. We are glad to carry with us through the perusal (in instalments) of the hundred and forty-two, the tales current in that all-so-long-ago of the genial nature and liveliness of conversation that made him a star in social life. One wonders, in hearing of the "perpetuation" of the brotherly - and - sisterly intimacy, begun months before he wedded the "Nancy" of the Montrose group, who, from all I have been able to gather, was a very commonplace personage by comparison with "Judith" — one marvels, I say, that the affection never ripened into a warmer sentiment. They had themselves better in hand evidently than the "aflOuiities" of the twentieth century. Old people I knew, when a child, delighted in relating how, when "Mr. Lacy" held meetings in country churches in Powhatan and Prince Edward, and his sister-in-law was in the congregation, everybody listened for the voices of those two. His was strong, flexible, and sweet, and he read music as he read a printed page. While she, as an old admirer — who up to his eightieth year loved to visit my mother that he might talk of his early love — used to declare, "sang like an angel just down from heaven." She added all womanly accomplishments to musical skill and literary tastes. An embroidered counterpane, of which I am the proud owner, is wrought in thirteen varieties of stitch, and in patterns invented by herself and three sisters, the only brother contributing what may be classed as a "conventional design" of an altar and two turtle-doves perched upon a brace of coupled hearts — symbolical of his passion for the beauty of the county, Judith Mosby, of Fonthill, whom he married. Our Judith held on the peaceful tenor of her way, reading all the books she could lay her shapely hands upon, keeping up her end of correspondences with Lacys, Rices, Speeces, Randolphs, 6 FOREBEARS AND PATRON SAINT and Blaines, and gently rejecting one offer after another, until she married at thirty-three — an advanced stage of spinsterdom, then — honest Capt. Sterling Smith, the widower-father of three children. Her husband was the proprietor of broad acres, a man of birth and fair education, high-minded, honorable, and devoted to his delicate wife. Nevertheless, the dainty ch&tdaine must, sometimes, have missed her erudite ad- mirers, and wished in her heart that the worthy planter were, intellectually, more in tune with herself. My own mother^s recollections of her mother were vivid, and I never wearied of hearing them. My grandmother's wedding night-gown, which I have, helps me to picture her as she moved about the modest homestead, directing and overseeing servants, key-basket on arm, keeping, as she did, a daily record of provisions "^ven out" from store- room and smoke-house, writing down m her hand-book bills-of-fare for the week (my mother treasured them for years), entertaining the friends attracted by her influence, her husband's hospitality, and his two daughters' charms of person and disposition. This gown is of fine cambric, with a falling collar and a short, shirred waist. The buttons are wooden moulds, covered with cambric, and each bears a tiny embroidered sprig. Collar and sleeves are trimmed with ruffles, worked in scallops by her deft fingers. The owner and wearer was below the medium height of women, and sUght to fragility. Her love of the beautiful found expression in her exqui- site needlework, in copjang "commonplace-books" full of poetry and the music she loved passionately, and most healthful of all, in flower-gardening. Within my memory, the white jessamine planted by her still draped the window of "the chamber" on the first floor. Few Virginia house- wives would consent to have their bedrooms up-stairs. "Looking after the servants" was no idle figure of speech 7 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY with them. Eternal vigilance was the price of home comfort. A hardy white-rose-tree, also planted by her, lived almost as long as the jessamine — her favorite flower. In the shade of the bower formed by these, Mrs. Judith Smith sat with her embroidery on summer days, her little name-daughter upon a cricket beside her, reading aloud by the hour. It was rather startUng to me to learn that, at thirteen, the precocious child read thus Pamela, The Children of the Abbey, and Clarissa to the sweet-faced, white -souled matron. Likewise The Rambler, Rassdas, Shakespeare, and The Spectator (unexpurgated). But Young's Night Thoughts, Thomson's Seasons, Paradise Lost, Pope's Essays, and the Book of Books qualified what- ever of evil might have crept into the tender imagination from the strong meat, spiced. Cowper was a Uving presence to mother and girl. My mother could repeat pages of The Tas from memory fifty years after she recited them to her gentle teacher, and his h)anns were the daily food of the twain. The Olney family drove in the heavy coach over heavy roads five miles in all weathers to the First Presbyterian Church of Richmond. My grandfather had helped raise the money for the building, as his letters show, and was one of the elders ordained soon after the church was organized. Thither they had gone on Christmas Sunday, 1811, to be met on the threshold by the news of the burning of the theatre on Saturday night. My mother, although but six years old, never forgot the scenes of that day. Doctor Rice had deviated from the rutted road of the " long prayer" constructed by ecclesiastical surveyors along the lines of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication ("A, C, T, S") — ^to talk as man to man with the Ruler of the universe of the terrible judgment which had befallen the mourning city. He had even alluded to it in his sermon, and it was discussed in awe-stricken tones by lingering 8 FOREBEARS AND PATRON SAINT groups in the aisles when service was over. Then, her little hand locked fast in that of her mother, the child was guided along the valley and up the steep hill to the smoking ruins, siurounded by a silent crowd, many of them in tears. In low, impressive accents the mother told the baby what had happened there last night, and, as the Uttle creature began to sob, led her on up the street. A few squares farther on, my grandfather and a friend who walked with him laughed sUghtly at something they said or saw, and my grandmother said, sorrowfully: "How can you laugh when sixty fellow-creatures lie dead over there — all hurried into Eternity without warn- ing?" I have never passed the now-old Monumental Church without recalling the incident engraved upon my childish mind by my mother's story. In the volume of " D. Lacy's Letters " I found, laid care- fully between the embrowned leaves for safest keeping, several letters from Capt. Sterling Smith to his "dear Judy," and one from her to him, written while she was on a visit to Montrose, her birthplace, with her only son. We have such a pretty, pathetic expression of her love for husband and child, and touches, few but graphic, that outline for us so clearly her personality and environment, that I insert it here: "Montrose, September 5th, 1817. " (Ten o'clock at night.) " My deab Mr. Smith, — I am sitting by my dear Josiah, who continues ill. His fever rises about dark. The chills are less severe, and the fever does not last as long as it did a week ago. Still, he sufifers much, and is very weak. He has taken a great deal of medicine with very little benefit. His gums are sore. The doctor thinks they are touched by the calomel. He was here this morning, and advised some oil and then the bark. "We have been looking for you ever since yesterday. 9 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Poor fellow I He longs to see you — ^and so do I! I was up last night, and I have been to-night very often — indeed, almost constantly — at the door and the window, listening for the sound of your horse's feet. I have written by post, by John Morton, and by Mr. Mosby. I think if you had received either of the notes I should see you to-night, unless something serious is the matter. I am so much afraid that you are ill as to be quite unhappy. "My love to my dear girls and all the family. My dear! my heart is sore! Pray that God may support me. I am too easily depressed — particularly when you are not with me. I long to see you ! I hope I shall before you receive this. God bless you! "Your very affectionate — ^your own Judy. " (Saturday morning.) "We are both better. Josiah's fever is off, but he is very weak." That the wife should begin the love-full epistle, "My dear Mr. Smith," and sign it, "your own Judy," seems the queerer to modem readers when it is considered that her husband was also her cousin, and had married her niece as his first wife. Few wives called their lords by their Christian names a hundred years back, and the custom is not yet fully established in the Southern States. The few letters written by my grandfather that have been preserved until now show him to have been a man of sincere piety, sterling sense, and affectionate disposi- tion. One herewith given betrays what a wealth of ten- derness was poiu-ed out upon his fairy-like wife. It like- wise ojBFers a fair sketch of the life of a well-to-do Virginia planter of that date. His wife was visiting her Montrose relatives. "Olnby, March dOth, 1814. "With inexpressible pleasure I received yours by Mr. Mos- by. I rejoice that the expected event with our dear sister 10 FOREBEARS AND PATRON SAINT has turned out favorably, and that you, my dear, are enjoy- ing better health. "I hope that you will not be uneasy about my lonely situation. Every one must know that it cannot be agreeable, but when I consider that you may be benefited by it, and even that your health may be restored (which we have reason to hope for), what would I not for^o to secure so great a blessing! "I have kept close at home, except when I went to meeting on Sabbath, and to town to-day to hear from you. During the day I have been b\isy, and at night have enjoyed the company of good books until ten or eleven o'clock, then gone to bed and slept tolerably well. I eat at the usual times, and have as good health as usual. Thus situated, I will try to be as comfortable as I can imtil God shall be pleased to bring us together again. "Some of our black people are still sick. Amy is much better, and speaks plainly. Rose is but poorly, yet no worse. Nanny is in appearance no better. Becky has been really sick, but seems comfortable this evening. The doctor has ordered medicine which will, I hope, restore her to health. Oba was a little while in the garden on Monday, but has been closely housed ever since. His cough is very bad, and I suppose him imable to labor. "I wish to come for you as soon as possible, and I would, if I could, rejoin you to-morrow. The election would not keep me, but I have business I wish to attend to this week, and also to attend the meeting of the Bible Society at the Capitol on Tuesday. I hope to see you on Wedn^ay. I wish you to be prepared to come home with me soon after that. With regard to Betsy, I don't expect she will be ready to come home with us, and, if she could, I dread riding an iU-gaited horse thirty miles. Mr. Mosby's carriage is to go to Lynchburg in a few da3rs, and he talks of returning home by way of Prince Edward, and bringing the two Betsies home. The carriage will be empty. I shall persuade him to be in earnest about it. "Now, my dear, I must conclude with conmiitting you to 11 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY the care of our Heavenly Father. May He keep you from every evil! Give my love to the dear family you are with. May you be a comfort to them, and an instrument in the hands of God to do them good! Kiss my little ones for me, and tell them I love them! "Your own affectionate, "Wm. S. Smith." The matter-of-fact manner in which the writer hints at the ride of thirty miles upon the ill-gaited horse he would have to bestride if the women, babies, and maid filled the family chariot, and his intention of making Mr. Mosby "earnest" in the scheme of despatching his empty carriage to Lynchburg — ^a distance of one hundred and forty miles — retmning by way of Prince Edward, eighty miles from Olney — to fetch "the two Betsies" home, was a perfectly natural proceeding in the eyes of him who wrote and of her who read. There was not so much as a stage-coach route between the two towns. Heavy as were the car- riages that swung and creaked through the red mud-holes and corduroy roads that did duty for thoroughfares all over the State, they were on the go continually, except when the mud-holes became bottomless and the red clay as sticky as putty. Then men and women went on horse- back, imless the women were too old for the saddle. The men never were. It was, likewise, an everyday matter with oiu* planter that five of his "black people" should be down "sick" at one time. The race had then, as they have to our day, a penchant for disease. Every plantation had a hospital ward that was never empty. A letter penned three years earlier than that we have just read: "We are going on bravely with our subscription for build- ing a meeting-house. Yesterday was the first of my turning 12 FOREBEARS AND PATRON SAINT out with subBcription-paper. I got 162 dollars subscribed, with a promise of more. We have now about 1800 dollars on our subscription-list, which sum increases at least 100 dollars a day. I hope, with a little help that we have reason to expect from New York, we shall soon be able to begin the work, which may the Lord prosper in our hands!" The "meeting-house," when constructed, was popularly known as the ''Pineapple Chiuxsh," from the conical orna- ment topping the steeple. As Richmond grew westward and climbed up Shockoe Hill, the First Presbyterian Church was swept up with the congregation to another site. The deserted building was bought by the Episco- palians, and christened ''Christ Church." As long as it stood it was known by the "old-timers" as the "Old Pineapple." The daughters of Captain Sterling's first wife were Mary and Elizabeth (the "Betsy" of his letters). She married Rev. Thomas Lumpkin, whom she met on one of her visits to Prince Edward County, where her aunt, Mrs. James Morton, lived in the vicinity of Hampden Sidney Collie. Her hus- band lived but seven months from the wedding-day, and she returned to Olney and the fostering care of her father and the second mother, who was ever her fast and tender friend. There, in the house where she was bom, she laid in her stepmother's arms a baby-girl, bom foiu* months later. The posthumous child became the beloved "Cousin Mary " of these memoirs. She had been the petted darling of the homestead five years when her mother married again, and another clergyman, whom I shall call "Mr. Cams." He was a Connecticut man who had been a tutor in the Olney household before he took orders. For reasons which will appear by -and -by, I prefer to disguise his name. Others in his native New England bear it, although he left no descendants. From my mother I had the particulars of the death-€cene 13 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY in that first-floor ''chamber" in the homestead; when, on a sultry August day (1820), ''the longest, saddest day I have ever known" — said the daughter — ^the dainty, deli- cate creature who was soul and heart to the home passed away from earth. My mother has told me how the scent of white jessamine flowed into the room where grief was hushed to hearken for the failing breath. Dr. Rice's niece leaned over the pillow in which the girl of fourteen smothered her sobs in clinging to the small hand so strangely cold. "She does not breathe!" the weeper heard the friend whisper. And in a moment more, "Her heart does not beat!" I have dwelt at length upon the character and life of my maternal grandmother because of my solemn conviction that I inherit what humble talent is mine from her. I can- not recall the time when everything connected with her did not possess for me a sweet and weird charm ; when the fancy that this petite woman, with a heart and soul too great for her physique, was my guardian angel, did not stay my soul and renew my courage in all good emprises. Her profiled portrait hangs before me as I write. The features are finely chiselled and high-bred ; the expression is sweet. She wears a close cap with a lace border (she was but fifty-three at death!), and a crimped frill stands up about a slender neck. My fantasy may be a figment of the imagination. I cherish it with a tenacity that tells me it is more. That my mother shared it was proved by her legacy to me of all the books and other relics of her mother she possessed at the time of her own decease, and the richer legacy of tales of that mother's life and words, her deeds of mercy and love, which cannot but make me a better woman. The mortal remains of my patron saint lie in the old 14 FOREBEARS AND PATRON SAINT family buryiog-ground. War, in its rudest shape, swept over the ancestral acres for two years. Trees, centuries old, were cut down; ruffian soldiery camped upon and tramped over desolated fields ; outbuildings were destroyed, and ihe cosey home stripped of porches and wings, leaving it a pitiful shelL Captain Sterling had fought at German- town and Monmouth, leading his Henrico troopers in the train of Washington and Gates. And Northern cannon and Southern musketry jarred his bones after their rest of half a century in the country graveyard! Yet — and this I like to think of — ^the periwinkle that opens its blue eyes in the early springtime, and the long- st^nmed narcissus, waving its golden censers above the tangled grasses, spring from the roots her dear hands buried there one hundred years aeo. II LAFAYETTE — REVOLUTIONARY TALES — PARENTS* MARRLA.QE My father's wooing, carried on, now at Dr. Rice's house in town, now at Olney, progressed propitiously. During the engagement, Lafayette visited Richmond. My father was a member of the once -famous volunteer company, the Richmond Blues, and marched with it when it was de- tailed as a body-guard for the illustrious guest of the nation. My mother walked at the head of her class of Sunday-school children in the procession of women and girls mustered here to do him honor, as was done in Trenton and other towns. She kept among her treasured relics the blue-satin badge, with Lafayette's likeness stamped on it in silver, which she wore upon her left shoulder. The Blues were arrayed in Continental uniform, with powdered hair. So completely was my father metamorphosed by the costume that, when, at the close of the parade, he pre- sented himself in Dr. Rice's drawing-room to pay his de- voirs to his fianc6e, she did not recognize him until he spoke. I have heard the particulars of that day's pageant and of Lafayette's behavior at the public reception awarded him by a grateful people, so often that I seem to have been part of the scene in a former incarnation. So vivid were my reminiscences that, when a bride and a guest at Redhill, the former home of Patrick Henry, I exchanged incidents and sayings with the great orator's son, Mr. John Henry, who had been on the Committee of Reception in 16 LAFAYETTE 1824. Id the enthusiasm of his own recollections of the fSte he inquired, naively : "Do you, then, remember Lafayette's visit to America 80 well?" The general burst of merriment that went around the table, and Wirt Henry's respectful, half-distressed — "Why, father! she wasn't bom!" brought both of us back to the actual and present time and place. A large platform erected upon the Capitol Square was filled with distinguished guests and officials. From this Lafayette reviewed the regiments of soldiers, and here he stood when the schools of the city sent up as their repre- sentative a pretty little girl, eight or ten years of age, to "speak a piece" written for the occasion by a local bard. The midget went through the task bravely, but with filling eyes and trembling limbs. Her store of factitious courage exhaled with the last line reeled off from the red lips, and, with a scared, piteous look into the benign face brought upon a level with hers by the table upon which she had been set, like an animated puppet, she cast herself upon the great man's decorated breast and wept sore. He kissed and cuddled and soothed her as he might pet his own grandchild, and not until she could return his smile, and he had dried her tears upon his laced handkerchief, did he transfer her to other arms. llajor James Morton, of "Willington," Prince Edward County, who married my grandmother's sister Mary, of Montrose, had served under Lafayette and came down to Richmond to do honor to his former chief. The Major's wbriquet in the army was "Solid Column," in reference to his "stocky" build. Although he had been on Washing- ton's staff, he did not expect to b0 recognized, after the lapse of thirty years and more, by the renowned French- man, who had passed since their parting through a bloodier revolution than that which won freedom for America. 17 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY General Lafayette was standing at the head of the ball- room (which was, I think, in the Eagle Hotel), where he received tUb crowds of citizens and military flocking to pay their respects, when he espied his whilom comrade on the outskirts of the throng. Instantly stepping out- side of the cordon of aids and attendants, the Marquis held out both hands with : "Vy, old So^eed Coluwme! I am 'appy to see you!" A marvellous memory and a more marvellous facile tongue and quick wit had the distinguished leader of free- dom-lovers! There lived in Richmond, until the latter quarter of the nineteenth century, a stately gentlewoman of the very old school whom we, of two younger generations, r^arded with prideful veneration, and with reason. For Lafayette, who had seen her dance at the aforesaid ball, had pronounced her, audibly, " the handsomest woman he had seen in America." Time had handled her disrespect- fully by the time I heard the tale. But I never questioned the truth of it until I foimd in three other cities as many antique belles upon whom he had set a seal of the self-same pattern. We were generously fed with authentic stories of Revo- lutionary days in my far-oflf childhood. I have sat at Major Morton's feet and learned of the veteran much that nobody else wots of in our rushing times. I recall his em- phatic denial of the assertion made by a Fourth-of-July orator to the effect that so grievous was the weight of public cares upon the Conmiander-in-Chief, he was never seen to smile during those eventful eight years of struggle and suspense. " Not a word of truth in it, sir!" Thus old Solid Column to the man who reported the speech to him. "I was with him at Valley Foige, sir, and nobody there tried harder to keep up the spirits of the men. I recollect, particularly, one bitter cold day, when a dozen or so of the oflScers were 18 REVOLUTIONARY TALES amusing themselves and tr3dng to get warm by jumping up and down, leaping high up in the air and trying to clap their heels together twice before they struck the ground in coming down. General Greene was sure he could do it, but he was fleshy and never light on his feet, besides being naturally sober. He was a Quaker, you know, and was turned out of meeting for joining the army. Well, on this particular day he took his turn with the others in jumping. And a poor hand he was at it ! He couldn't clap his heels together once on the way down, let alone twice. By-and-by he made a tremendous effort and pitched over, head down and heels up — flat on the snow. General Washington was watching them from where he stood in his tent door, and when General Greene went down — ^how the General laughed ! He fairly held his sides ! "'Ah, Greene!' he called out. 'You were. always a lub- berly fellow!' *'I am not saying he wasn't one of the gravest men I ever saw, as a rule, but he often smiled, and he did laugh sometimes." My grandfather's uncle and godfather, Sterling Smith, was one of our family Revolutionary heroes. My mother, who had a fair talent for mimicry, had an anecdote of the old war-horse's defence of Wadiington against the oft- repeated charge of profanity upon the field of Monmouth : "'He did not swear!' the veteran would thunder when irreverent youngsters retailed the slander in his hearing — and with malice prepense. ' I was close behind him — ^and I can tell you, sir, we rode fast — when wliat should we meet, running away, licketty-split, from the field of battle, with the British almost on their heels, but Gen'ral Lee and his men? "'Then, with that, says Gen'ral Washington, speaking out loud and sharp — says he, " Gen'ral Lee ! in God's name, sir, what is the meaning of this ill-timed prudence?" 3 i» MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY " * Now, you see, Gen'ral Lee, he was mighty high-sperrited always, and all of us could hear what was going on. So he speaks up as haughty as the Gcn'ral had done, and says he: " ' " I know of no one who has more of that most damn- able virtue than your Excellency!" " 'So, you see, young man, it was Gen'ral Lee that swore, and not Gen'ral Washington ! Don't you ever let me hear that lie again!'" A Revolutionary reminiscence of my mother's (or mine) is always renewed by the sight of an Old Virginia planta- tion-gate, swinging gratingly on ponderous hinges and kept shut by the fall of a wooden latch, two yards long, into a wooden hook set in the gate-post. This latch is usually nearly half-way down the gate, and a horseman approach- ing it from the outside must dismount to lift the heavy bar, or be practised in the trick of throwing himself well over the top-rail to reach the latch and hold it, while he guides his horse through the narrow opening. My grandfather, *' Captain Sterling," was at the head of a foraging -party near Yorktown when they were chased by British troopers. The Americans scattered in various directions and escaped for the most part, being familiar with the country by-ways and cross-roads. Their captain was closely pursued by three troopers to a high plantation- gate. The Virginian opened it, without leaving the saddle, shot through, shut the gate, and rammed down the latch into the socket hard. The pursuers had to alight to raise the latch, and the delay gave the fugitive time to get away. My parents were married at Olney, in Henrico County, January 25, 1825. The bride — not yet nineteen years of age — wore a soft, sheer India muslin, a veil falling to the hem of the gown, and white brocade slippers embroidered with faint blue 20 PARENTS' MARRIAGE flowers. The bridegroom's suit was of fine blue cloth, with real silver buttons. His feet were clad in white-silk stock- ings and low shoes — ''pumps" as they were called — ^with wrought-silver buckles. Those shoes and buckles were long preserved in the family. I do not know what befell them finally. The ceremony was performed by the brother-in- law whom I have called, for the sake of convenience, the Reverend Mr. Cams. The girl had laughingly threatened that she would not promise to "obey," and that a scene would follow the use of the obnoxious word in the marriage service. The young divine, with this in mind, or in a fit of absent-mindedness or of stage-fright, actually blundered out, "Love, honor — and obey, in all things consistent P' As may be imagined, the interpolation produced a lively sensation in the well-mannered company thronging the homestead, and took rank as a family legend. How many times I have heard my mother quote the saving clause in playful monition to my masterful father! The bride's portion, on leaving home for the house her father had furnished for her in town, was ten thousand dollars in stocks and bonds, and two family servants — a husband and wife. The following summer the wedded pair visited the hus- band's mother in Roxbiuy, Massachusetts. The journey from Richmond to New York was by a packet-ship, and lasted for two weeks. My poor little mother was horribly seasick for a week each way. To her latest day she could not hear of "Point Judith" without a qualm. She said that, for a time, the association "disgusted her with her own name." The mother-in-law, hale and handsome at forty- five, had married, less than a year before. Deacon John Clapp, a well-to-do and excellent citizen of Roxbury, and installed the buxom, "capable" widow, whose father was now dead, as the mother of four children by a fonner 21 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY marriage, and as mistress of a comfortable home. She had not come to him portionless. The sturdy "Squire," mindful of her filial devotion to him in his declining years, had left her an equal share of his estate with her sisters. The brother, Lewis Pierce, had succeeded to the home- stead. Mrs. Clapp appeared in the door of her pretty house, radiant in her best black silk and cap of fine lace (she never wore any other), her husband at her side, the little girls and the boy in the backgroimd, as the stage bringing her son and new daughter from Boston stopped at the gate. At their nearer approach she uttered an exclamation, flung up her hands before her eyes, and ran back into the house for the "good cry" the calmest matron of the day considered obligatory upon her when state family occasions demanded a show of "proper feeling." The worthy Deacon saved the situation from embarrass- ment by the heartiness of his welcome to the pair, neither of whom he had ever met before. The second incident linked in my mind with the im- portant visit is of a more serious complexion. I note it upon Memory's tablets as the solitary exhibition of aught approaching jealousy I ever saw in the wife, who knew that her lover-husband's heart was all her own, then and as long as it beat. I give the story in her own words : "A Miss Topliflfe and her mother were invited to take tea with us one evening. I had gathered from sundry hints — and eloquent sighs — from your grandmother that she had set her heart upon a match between her son and this young lady. She even went to the length of advising me to pay particular attention to my dress on this even- ing. * Miss Topliff e was very dressy ! ' I found this to be true. She was also an airy personage, talkative to your father, and supercilious to me. A few days afterward we were asked to tea at the Topliffes. I had a wretched even- 22 PARENTS' MARRIAGE ing! Miss Topliflfe was rather handsome and very lively, and she was in high feather that night, directing most of her conversation, as before, to my husband. She played upon the piano, and sang love-songs, and altogether made herself the attraction of the occasion. I felt small and in- significant and dull beside her, and I could see that she amused your father so much that he did not see how I was pushed into the background. " I said never a word of all this to him, still less to my mother-in-law, when she told me, next day, that 'every one of his friends had hoped my son would marry Miss Toplifife. The match would have been very agreeable to both families. But it seems that it was not to be. The ways of Providence are past finding out!' "Then she sighed, just as she might have mourned over a bereavement in the family. I have hated that girl ever since!" "But, mother," I essayed, consolingly, "you knew he loved you best all the time!" "Of course, child, but she didn't! There was the rub!" I can respond now. It alwaj^ is the bitter drop at the bottom of the cup held to the lips of the wife who can- not resent her lord's innocent flirtation with "that other woman." She knows, and he is serenely conscious of his unshaken loyalty, but the other woman has her own be- liefs and hugs them. In May, 1826, my brother William Edwin was bom in the cosey home on the slope of Church Hill overlooking the " Pineapple Church." More than^f orty years afterward, in the last drive I had with my mother, she leaned forward in the carriage to point out the neat three-story brick dwelling, now in the heart of the business section of the city: "That was the house in which I spent the first three years of my married life !" 23 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Then, dreamily and softly, she related what was the peaceful tenor of those first years. Her father was alive, and she saw him often; her sister, "Aunt Betsy," and her children kept the old home-nest warm for him ; the young couple had hosts of friends in town and country, and both were as deeply interested, as of yore, in church-work. Edwin was two years old when a single bolt from the blue changed life for her. My father's partner was a personal and trusted friend before they went into business together. They had kept bachelor's hall in partnership up to the marriage of the junior member of the firm. It transpired subsequently that the senior, who was the financial manager of the con- cern, had "cooked" accounts and made up false exhib- its of the status of the house to coax the confiding com- rade to join his fortunes with his. The tale is old and as common to-day as when my father discovered that his own savings and my mother's wedding - portion would be swallowed up in the payment of his partner's debts. It was dark and bitter weather that swept down upon the peaceful home and blighted the ambitions of the rising young merchant. The man who had brought about the reverse of fortune "took to drink." That was likewise as common then as now. My father paid his debts, wound up the business honestly, and braced himself to begin the world anew. In his chagrin at the overthrow of plans and hopes, he somewhat rashly accepted the proposal that the fresh be- ginning should be in the country. Richmond was full of disagreeable associations, and country merchants were making money. Country "storekeeping" was then as honorable as the calling of a city merchant. In fact, many town-houses had rural branches. It was not unusual for a city man to set up his son in one of these, thus controlling the trade of a 24 PARENTS' MARRIAGE laiiger territory than a single house could command. There were no railways in Virginia. Merchandise was carried all over the state in big, covered wagons, known in Penn- sylvania as "Conestogas." Long -bodied, with hooped awnings of sail-cloth lashed over the ark-like interior to keep out dust and rain, and drawn by six powerful draught- horses, the leaders wearing sprays of bells, they were a picturesque feature of country roads. Fortunes were amassed by the owners of wagon-lines, the great arks keep- ing the road winter and summer, and well laden both ways. Planters had their teams and wagons for hauling tobacco and other crops to town, and bringing back stores of grocer- ies and dry-goods at stated periods in the spring and au- tunm; but between times they were glad to avail them- selves of the caravans for transportation of butter, eggs, poultry, potatoes, dried fruits, yam, cotton, and other domestic products to the city, to be sold or bartered for ar- ticles they could not raise. In such a wheels boat the furniture and personal be- longings of our small family were transported from Rich- mond to Dennisville, Amelia County, a journey of two dreary days. Husband, wife, and baby travelled in their own ba- rouche, my father acting as coachman. Sam and Milly, the colored servants, had preceded them by two days, taking passage in the Conestoga. One November after- noon, the carriage drew up at the future home of the three passengers. The dwelling adjoined the store — ^a circum- stance that shocked the city woman. The joint structure was of wood, mean in dimensions and inconvenient in plan. Dead leaves were heaped about the steps. As Baby Edwin was Ufted from the carriage to the ground, he stood knee- deep in the rustling leaves, and began to cry with the cold and the strangeness of it all. Not a carpet was down, and the efforts of the faithful servants to make two rooms home- 25 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY like for "Miss Jud' Anna" increased the forlomness of the situation by reminding her of the habitation and friends she had left behind. It was a comfortless winter and spring. I fancy it was as delightless to the husband as to the wife — ^just turning her twenty-first year, and learning for the first time in her sheltered life the taste of privation. She loved her church, her father and her sister and dear old Olney — unchanged while she dwelt so far apart from them and it and home- comforts; she was fond of society, and in Richmond she had her merry circle close at hand. In Dennisville she had, literally, no neighbors, and without the walls of her house no palliatives of homesickness. The cottage was small ; her servants were trained, diligent, and solicitous to spare her toil and inconvenience; her husband and her distant friends kept her supplied with books, and as the period of her second confinement drew near she yielded more and more to natural lassitude, spent the summer days upon the sofa or in bed, reading, and rarely left the house on foot. In direct consequence, as she ever afterward maintained, of this indolent mode of life, she went down to the gate of death when her first daughter, Ann Almeria (named for two grandmothers), was bom in June. Providentially, an able specialist from another county was visiting a friend upon a neighboring plantation, and the local practitioner, at his wits' end, chanced to think of him. A messenger was sent for him in hot haste, and he saved the life of mother and child. The baby was pimy and delicate, and was a source of anxiety throughout her childhood. Ill A (X)UNTRY EXILE — DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN — CHANGE OF HOME — A FIRESIDE TRAGEDY — "COGITO, ERGO SUM." I, the third child born to my parents, was but a few months old when my little brother was taken by my father to Roxbury and left there with his grandmother. This singular and painful episode in our family history illustrates more clearly than could any mere description, the mode of thought and action prevalent at that date respecting the training and education of children. Our parents Uved in an obscure country village, a mere hamlet, destitute of school and social privileges. The few families who, with them, made up the population of the hamlet were their inferiors in breeding and education; their children were a lawless, ill-mannered set, and the only school near them was what was known as "an old field school" upon the outskirts of a plantation three miles away. Little Edwin, a bright, intelligent laddie, was taught to read and write by his mother before he was five. He loved books; but he was restless for the lack of play- fellows of his own age. His father was bent upon giving him all the learning that could be crammed into one small head, and cast about for opportunities of carrsdng out the design. The grandmother begged to have one of the children for a long visit; schooling of an advanced t3npe was to be had within a stone's-throw of her door, and the boy, if intrusted to her, would have a mother's care. My 27 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY father urged the measure upon his weaker-willed wife. She opposed it less and less strenuously until the boy came in from the street one day with an oath in his mouth he had learned from one of the Dennisville boys. "That night, upon my knees, and with a breaking heart, I consented to let him go North," the mother told me, falteringly. when I was a woman grown. The father hurried him off within the week — I iofiagine lest she might change her mind — ^and remained in Box- bury three weeks with him to accustom him to his new abode. His letters written during this absence are cheer- ful— I am disposed to say, "obstinately optimistic." I detect, too, a touch of diplomacy in the remarks dropped here and there, as to his mortification at finding Edwin so "backward in his education by comparison with other children of his age," and the bright prospects 0[x^ning for his future in the "excellent school of which everybody speaks highly." The day before his father left him, Edwin accompanied him to Boston, and books were lx)ught for his sister, with a pretty gift for his mother. He had grown quite fond of his grandmother, so the father reported when he arrived at home, and the kind-hearted "Deacon was. as good as another boy." liOtters came with gratifying regularity — fortnightly — from Roxbury. The lx)y was going to school and making amends for his "backwanlness" by diligence and pit>- ficioney. I have laid away in our family Bible quaintly wonled "Rewards of Merit" — printed forms upon paper whicli crackles under the fingers that unfold it — testifying to perfect n^itiitions and good behavior. The boy's name and the t(^timonials are fille two miles from the store. The McQuies were prosperous planters, and the intimacy b^vm that winter continued as long as the older mem- bers of the clan lived. We girls learned to call her *' Grand- ma," and never remitted the title and the afifection that prompted it. Our apartments were in the ''OflSce," a detached brick building in the corner of the house-yard — a common ap- pendage to most plantation-homesteads. At some period of the family history a father or son of the house had prac- tised law or medicine, and used the ''office" in that capac- ity. It never lost the name. And here, on a windy wintry evemng, I awoke to the consciousness of my Individuality. I do not know how better to express the earliest memory I have of being — and thinking. It was a living demon- stration of the great truth shallow thinkers never com- prehend— "Cogito, ergo sum." I had fallen asleep, tired with play, and lulled into drowsiness by the falling rain outside. I lay among the pillows of the trundle-bed at the back of the room, and, awakening with a cry of fright at finding myself, as I thought, alone, was answered by my mother's voice. She sat by the fire in a low rocking-chair, and, guided by her reassuring tone, I tumbled out of bed and ran tow- ard her. In the area Ughted by the burning logs, I saw her, as in another sphere. To this hour I recall the im- pression that she was thinking of something besides my- self. Baby as I was, I felt vaguely that she was not "all there," even when she took me upon her lap. When she said, kindly and in her own sweet way, " Did my little girl think her mother had left her alone in the dark?" she did not withdraw her eyes from the ruddy fire. 4 35 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Something warned me not to speak again. I leaned my head against her shoulder, and we studied the fire together. Did liie intensity of her musing stir my dormant soul into life? I cannot say. Only that I date my conscious per- sonal existence from that mystic hour. The picture is before me to-night, as I hear my daughter singing her boy to sleep in the next room, and the lake-wind rattles the vines about my window. The sough of the heated air over the brands and embers ; the slow motion of the rocker as we swayed to and fro ; my mother's thoughtful silence, and my small self, awed into speechlessness by the new thing that had come to me; my pulpy brain interfused with the knowledge that I was a thinking entity, and unable to grapple with the revelation — all this is as dis- tinct as things of yesternight. I have heard but one experience that resembled this supreme moment of my infancy. My best-beloved tutor related to me when I was twelve years old that he ''recol- lected when he began to think." The sensation, he said, was as if he were talking to himself and could not stop. I had that day heard the epigrammatic ''Cogito, ergo sum," and I told of my awakening from a mere animal to spiritual and intellectual life. I do not comprehend the mystery better now than on that never-to-be-forgotten evening. I but know that the miracle vkls/ IV A BEB8ERKER RAGE — A FRIGHT — THE WESTERN FEVER — MONTROSE — A MOTHER REGAINED Up to this point of my story, what I have written is hearsay. With the awakening recorded in the last chapter, my real reminiscences b^in. The next vivid impression upon my plastic memory has its setting in the McQuie yard. My mother had been to Richmond on a visit and brought back, as a present from a woman who was said to be "good," a doll for my sister. Perhaps she considered me too young to be intrusted with the keeping of the rare creation of wax and real hair. Per- haps she did not recollect my existence. In either case, as I promptly settled within myself, she was not the good woman of my mother's painting. Not that I had ever cared for "dead dolls." When I could just put the wish into words, my craving was for a "real, Uve, skin baby that could laugh and talk." But this specimen was so nearly alive that it opened its eyes when one pulled a wire concealed by the satin petticoat, and shut them at another tweak. Moreover, the (alleged) gtxxi woman in the beautiful city I heard as much of as of heaven, had sent my sister the gift, and none to me. Furthermore, and worst of all, my sister paraded the gift before my angry, miserable eyes, and, out of my mother's hearing, taunted me with the evident fact that "nobody cared for a little girl whose hands were dirty and whose hair was never smooth." I was barely three years old. 37 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY My sister was a prodigy of learning in the estimation of our acquaintances, and nearer six than five. I took in the case with extraordinary clearness of judgment and soreness of heart, and meditated revenge. Watching an opportunity when mother, nurse, and sister were out of the way, I stole into the office-cottage, pos- sessed myself of the hated puppet, who had been put into my bed for an afternoon nap — lying there for all the world like ''a sure-enough baby," with her eyes fast shut — and bore her ofiF behind the house. There I stripped ofiF her gay attire; twisted a string about her neck ; contrived — nobody could ever tell how — ^to fasten one end of the cord to the lowest bough of a peach-tree, armed myself with a stout switch, and lashed every grain of sawdust out of the dangling effigy. I recollect that my sister, rushing to the scene of action, dared not approach the fury into which I had been trans- formed, but stood aloof, screaming and wringing her hands. I have no recollection of my mother's interference, or of the chastisement which, I have been told, was infficted with the self-same rod that had mangled the detested doll into a shapeless rag. In my berserker rage I probably did not hear scolding or feel stripes. My father rented the house vacated by the Braggs, find- ing the daily ride to and from the sto'^ too l^in the short winter days. Soon after our return to our old quar- ters, another boy was bom to the bereaved parents — ^my brother Herbert. He was but a few days old when '* Grand- ma" McQuie and her two daughters called to inquire after mother and child, and carried me off with them, I suppose to get me out of the way of nurse and mother. My whole body was a-tingle with excitement when I found myself snugly tucked up in shawls on the back seat of the roomy chariot, beside the dear old lady, and rolling down the road. We had not gone far before she untied and took off my 38 A FRIGHT bonnet, and tied over my curly head a great red bandanna handkerchief "to keep your ears warm." The warm color and the delicious cosiness of the covering put an idea into my head. I had heard the story of Red Riding Hood from my colored nurse, and I had already the trick of "playing ladies/' as I named the story-making that has been my trade ever since. I was Red Riding Hood, and my grand- mother was taking me away from the wolf. The woods we presently entered were full of fairies. They swung from the little branches of shrubs that brushed the carriage- windows, and peeped at me from behind the boles of oak and hickory, and climbed to the top of sweetbrier sprays writhing in the winter wind. One and all, they did obei- sance to me as I drove in my state coach through the forest aisles. I nodded back industriously, and would have kissed my hand to them had not Grandma McQuie told me to keep it under the shawl. My companions in the carriage paid no attention to my smiles and antics. They were busy talking of their own affairs, and probably did not give the silent child a look or thought. A word or a curious glance would have spoiled the glorious fun that lasted until I was lifted in Mr. McQuie's arms at his hospitable door. I never spoke of the "make believe." What child does? The Bragg house was roomy and rambling, and nobody troubled herself to look after me when I would steal away alone to the stairs leading to the room we had occupied while Mrs. Bragg and Lucy were alive, and sit on the steps which still bore the stains of the scorching flames that had licked up poor Lucy's life, and dreaming over the details as I had had them, over and over, from my sister and 'Lizabeth, the colored girl whose life-work was to "look after" us three. Just opposite the door of our old roopi was one that 39 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY was always closed and locked and bolted. It shared in the ghoul-like interest I gave to the scorched stairs, and there was reason for this. The furniture of Mrs. Bragg's chamber was stored here. Through a wide keyhole I could espy the comer of a bureau, and all of a Boston rocker, cushioned and valanced with dark-red calico. This, I assumed in the fancies which were more real than what I beheld with the bodily eyes, had been the favorite seat of the dead woman. One wild March day, when the rain thundered upon the roof over my head, and the staircase and hall echoed with sighs and whistlings, my eye, glued to the awful keyhole, saw the chair begin to rock! Slowly and slightly; but it actually swayed back and forth, and, to the horri^ed fancy of the credulous infant without, there grew into view a shadowy form — a pale lady about whose slight figure flowed a misty robe, and who held a baby in her arms. One long, wild look sufficed to show me this. Then I sped down the stairs like a lapwing, and into the dining- room, where sat 'Lizabeth holding my baby brother. I rushed up to her and babbled my story in panting in- coherence. I had seen a ghost sitting in Mrs. Bragg's rocking-chair, getting a baby to sleep! The exemplary nurse was adequate to the occasion thrust suddenly upon her. Without waiting to draw breath, she gave me the lie direct, and warned me that "Mistis wouldn't stan' no sech dreadful stories, Ef so be you wan' a whippin' sech as you never had befo' in all yer bom days, you jes' better nm into the chamber an' tell her what you done tole me. Miss Firginny!" I did not go. Suppression of the awful truth was pref- erable to the certainty of a chastisement. Our parents were strict in their prohibition of all bugaboo and ghost stories. That may have been the reason we heard so many. It certainly accounts for our reticence on subjects that 40 A FRIGHT crammed our brains with fancies and chilled the marrow in our young bones. The windy finding its way between sashes and under the ill-fitting doors of the old house, no doubt set the chair in motion. My heated imagination did the rest. Five min- utes' talk with my mother or one hearty laugh from my father would have laid the spectre. She loomed up more and more distinctly before my mental vision because I kept the awesome experience locked within my own heav- ing heart. Another thrilling incident, framed in memory as a fade- less fresco upon the wall of a locked temple, is the Bragg burial-lot, in which lay Lucy, her mother and baby- brother, and liiB. Moore, Mrs. Bragg's mother, who had followed her daughter to Lhe grave a few weeks before we returned to the house. A low brick wall enclosed the plot, which was overgrown with n^iected shrubbery and briers. On a certain day I set my small head like a flint upon the execution of no less an enterprise !;han a visit to the for- bidden ground and a peep through the gates at the graves! I had never seen one. I do not know what I expected to bdiold of raw-head-and-bloody-bones horror. But 'Liza- beth's hobgoblin and vampire recitals had enkindled within me a burning curiosity to inspect a charnel-house. Visions of skeletons lying on the bare ground, of hovering spectres and nameless Udolphian marvels, wrought me up to the expedition. The graveyard was a long way off — quite at the bottom of the garden, and the walk thither was breast-high in dead weeds. I buffeted them valiantly, striding ahead of my companions — ^my protesting sister, 'Lizabeth, and the baby borne upon her hip — and was 80 near the goal that a few minutes would show me all there was to see, when I espied Something gliding abng the top of the wall! Something that was white and stealthy; something that moved without sound, 41 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY and that wore projecting ribbon bows upon a snowy head! 'Lizabeth emitted a bloodcurdling shriek: ''Ole Mis' Moore! Sure's you bom! Don' you see her cap on her hade?" We fled, helter-skelter, as for our four lives, and never stopped to look behind us. The apparition did resemble the crown of a mob-cap with knots of black ribbons at the, sides. I saw, almost as plainly as I had beheld her daughter's wraith, the form hidden by the wall, picking her way over the brier-grown enclosure. I do not know how much longer we lived at the Bragg house. Sure am I that I never paid a second call upon the denizens of the half-acre defended by the brick wall. Years afterward, my mother told me the true tale of the old lady's pet cat that would not leave her mistress's grave, having followed in the funeral train down the long alley, and seen the coffin laid in the groimd on the day of the funeral. The dumb beast haunted the burying-ground ever after, living on birds and field-mice, and starved to death in a deep snow that lay long on the frozen ground the second winter of her watch. Why the four-year-old child did not lose what wits were hers by nature, or become a nerveless coward for the rest of her days, under the stress of influences never suspected by her parents, was due, probably, to a strain of physical and mental hardihood inherited from a dauntless father. It must have been shortly after this incident that, com- ing into the dining-room one morning, I heard my mother say to my father: "My dear, Frank has the Western fever!" Frank Wilson, a nice boy, the son of a neighboring planter, was my father's bookkeeper and an inmate of our house. He was very kind to me, and had won a lasting 42 THE WESTERN FEVER place in my regard as the maker of the very best whistles and fifes of chincapin bark of any one I had ever known. They piped more shrilly and held their shape longer than those turned out by my father and by various visitors who paid court to my young lady cousins through me. So I looked anxiously at the alleged sufferer, startled and pained by the announcement of his affliction. He was eating his breakfast composedly, and answered my father's "Good- morning — and is that true, my boy?" with a pleasant laugh. There was not a sign of the invalid in look, action, or tone. "I can't deny it, sir!" I slipped into my chair beside him, receiving a caressing pat on the hand 1 laid on his arm, and hearkened with greedy ears for further particulars of the case, never asking a question. Children of that generation were trained to make their ears and eyes do duty for the tongue. I com- prehended but a tithe of the ensuing conversation. I made out that the mysterious fever did not affect Frank's appetite and general health, but that it involved the neces- sity of his leaving us for a long time. He might never come back. His proviso in this direction was, ''If I do as well as I hope to do out there." When he had excused himself and left the table, my father startled me yet more by his answer to my mother's remark: "We shall miss him. He is a nice boy!" Her husband stirred his coffee meditatively for a moment before saying, without looking up: "I am not sure that I have not a touch of that same fever myself." \^th the inconsequence of infancy, I did not connect the speech with our breaking up the Lunenburg home the next autumn and setting out for what was explained to us girls as a round of visits to friends in Richmond and Powhatan. 43 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY We call ours a restless age, and the modern American man a predatory animal, with ^an abnormal craving for adventure. Change and Progress are the genii who claim his allegiance and sway his destiny. In sighing for the peace and rest of the "former times" we think were "better than these," we forget (if we ever knew) that our sires were possessed by, and yielded to, unrest as intense and dreams as golden as those that animate the explorer and inventor of the twentieth century. My father was in no sense a dreamer of day dreams of the dazzling impossible. He was making a fair living in the heart of what was, even then, "Old Virginia." He had recouped his shattered fort- unes by judicious business enterprise, and the neat share of her father's estate that had fallen to my mother at his demise in 1829, placed her and her children beyond the reach of poverty. The merchant was respected here as he had been in Amelia, for his intelligence, probity, courtesy, and energy. His place in society and in church was as- sured. Yet he had caught the Western fever. And — a mightier marvel — "Uncle Cams," the clerical Connecticut Yankee, the soul of conservatism, who had settled in the downiest of nests as the incumbent of Mount Carmel, a Presbyterian church built upon the outskirts of the Mon- trose plantation, and virtually maintained by that family — sober, ease-loving Uncle Cams — had joined hands with his wife's brother-in-law in the purchase of Western lands and the scheme of emigration. The two men had travelled hundreds of miles on horse- back during the last year in que^st of a location for the new home. My father's letters — worn by many readings, and showing all over the odd and unaccountable brown thumb- marks of time — bear dates of wayside post-offices as well as of towns — Lynchburg, Staunton, and Charlottesville. Finally they crossed the Ohio line, and after due delibera- tion, bought a farm in partnership. The letters are inter- 44 THE WESTERN FEVER esting reading, but too many and too long to be copied in full. Every detail of business and each variation of plans were conununicated as freely as if the wife were associated with him in conunercial as in domestic life. Once, when he is doubtful what step to take next, he writes, plajrfully: "Some men need a propelling power. It might be well for you to exert a httle of the 'govern- ment' with which some of our friends accredit you, and move me in the right direction." When, the long journey accomplished and the purchase of the farm completed, he returned home, he encountered no opposition from his wife, but much from neighbors and friends. A letter written to her from Lunenburg, whither he had returned to close up his affairs, leaving her with her brother at Olney, describes the numerous tokens of r^ret and esteem of which he is the recipient. The climax of the list comes in the humorous tale of how an old- fashioned neighbor, Mrs. L , "says it troubled her so much on New Year's night that she could not sleep. She actually got up after trying vainly to court slumber, lighted her pipe, and smoked and thought the matter over. She was not reconciled, after all. . . . When I take my de- parture it will be with feelings of profound regret, and full confidence in the friendship of those I leave behind." The land bought in Ohio by the two victims of the "Western fever" is now covered by the city of Cleveland. K the two New-Englanders could have forecast the future, their heirs would be multi-millionaires. Behold us, then, a family of two adults and three babies — ^the eldest not yet seven years old — en route from Rich- mond to Montrose, travelling in a big barouche, with a trunk strapped on the rack behind, in lumbering progress over thirty-seven miles of execrable roads, just now at their worst after a week of autumnal rains. 45 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY The damp discomfort of the jomney is present with me now. The sun did not shine all day long; the raw air pierced to the bones ; the baby was cross ; my mother was not well, and my sister and myself were cramped by long sitting upon the back seat. Our horses were strong, but mud-holes were deep, the red clay was adhesive, and the corduroy causeways jarred us to soreness. It was late in the day when we turned from the highway toward the gate of the Montrose plantation. We were seen from the house, and a colored lad of fifteen or thereabouts ran fleetly down the avenue to open the great outer gate. He flung* it wide with a hospitable intent that knocked poor Selim — the oflF- horse — flat into the mud. Once down, he did not offer to arise from the ruddy ooze that embedded one side. He had snapped the harness in falling, but that made no difference to the fagged-out beast. The accident was visible from the porch of the house, an eighth of a mile away, and four men hastened to the rescue. The foremost was, I thought, the handsomest man I had ever seen. He was tall, young, as dark as a French- man (having Huguenot blood in his veins), and with a marvellously sweet smile. Coming up to my pale mother, as she stood on the miry roadside, he kissed her, picked up the baby, and bade *' Cousin Anna" lean upon his other arm. My father insisted upon relieving him of the child; but the picture of my delicate mother, supported in the walk up the drive by the gallant youth — her favorite cousin of all the clan — ^Josiah Smith, of Montrose — will never leave the gallery of pictures that multiplied fast from this date. I did him loving honor to the best of my poor ability as the "Uncle Archie" of "Judith." I cannot pass him by without this brief tribute. A second and younger cousin, who seemed uninterest- ing beside my new hero, took charge of my sister and my- 46 MONTROSE self, and we trudged stiflBy on to the ancient homestead. An avalanche of femmine cousins descended upon us as we entered the front gate, and swept us along through porch and hall and one room after another, to the ''cham- ber," where a beautiful old lady lay in bed. . Her hair was dark as midnight; so were her eyes; her cap, pillows, gown, and the bed-coverings were snowy white. Her face was that of a saint. This was ''Aunt Smith," the widowed mistress of Montrose. She was of the Huguenot Michaux stock, the American founders of a colony on James River. During a widowhood of twenty years she had, by wise management, relieved the estate from em- barrassment, brought up and educated six children, and established for herself a reputation for intelligence, refine- ment, and piety that is yet fragrant in the minds of those who recollect Montrose as it was in its palmy days. She was often ailing, as I saw her now. Accustomed as I am to the improved physical condition of American women, I wonder what was amiss with the gentlewomen of that generation; how they lived through the pro- tracted seasons of ''feeling poorly," and their frequent con- finement to bed and bed-chambers. The observation of that winter fixed in my imagination the belief that genteel invalidism was the normal state of what the colored ser- vants classified as "real ladies." To be healthy was to approximate vulgarity. Aunt Smith was as much in her bed as out of it — or, so it seemed to me. Her eldest child, a daughter and the most brilliant of the family, had not had a day of perfect health since she had an unhappy love- affair at twenty. She was now nearly forty, still vivacious, and the oracle of the homestead. My dearest "Cousin Mary," resident for the winter at Montrose with her mother, was fragile as a wind-flower, and my own mother fell ill a few days after our arrival at her mother's birthplace, and did not lift her head from the pillow for three months. 47 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY I have no data by which to fix the relative times of any happenings of that long, long, dreary winter. It dragged by like an interminable dream. My father was absent in Ohio for some weeks of the first month. He had set out on a second .journey to his Promised Land when his wife fell ill. He hurried back as soon as the news overtook him. But it took a long time for the letter of recall to find him, and as long for him to retrace his steps — or his horse's. I have but a hazy recollection of his telling me one day that I was five years old. I had had other birthdasrs, of course, but this was the first I remember. It was equally, of course, the 21st of December. There was no cele- bration of the imimportant event. If anybody was glad I was upon the earth, I had no intimation of the fact. I should not mark the anniversary as of any note, now, had not it been fixed in my brain by a present from my father of The New York Reader, a hideous little volume, with stiff covers of straw pasteboard pasted over with blue paper. My father took me upon his knee, and talked to me, seriously and sorrowfully, of my crass ignorance and disinclination to '* learn." I was five years old, and — ^this low and mournfully, as one might state a fact di^raceful to the family connection — I "did not even know my letters!" The dear mother, who lay sick up-stairs, had tried, over and over, to teach me what every big girl of my age ought to know. He did not believe that his little daughter was a dunce. He hoped that I loved my mother and himself well enough to try to learn how to read out of this nice, new book. Cousin Paulina Cams — a girl of sixteen, at home from school on sick-leave, indefinitely extended — had .offered to teach me. He had told her he was sure I would do better than I had done up to this time. He was mortifieil when people asked him what books I had read, and he had to tell the truth. He did not believe there was 48 A MOTHER REGAINED another "nice" child in the county, five years old, who did not know her a, b, c's. I was wetting his frilled shirt-front with penitential tears long before the sermon was finished. He wiped them with a big silk handkerchief— red, with white spots scattered over the expanse — kissed me, and set me down very gently. "My little girl will not forget what father has been say- ing. Think how pleased mother will be when she gets well to find that you can read a chapter in the Bible to her!" The story went for fact in the family that I set myjelf zealously about the appointed task of learning the alphabet in consequence of this lecture. I heard it told, times without number, and never contradicted it. It sounded well, and I had a passion for hcroinism, on never 80 small a scale. And grown people should know what they were talking of in asserting that ** Virginia made up her mind, the day she was five years old, that she would turn over a new leaf, and be no longer a dunce at her books." It may be, too, as I now see, that the solemn parental homily (I always dreaded the lecture succeeding a whip- ping more than the stripes) — it may be, I grant, that some- thing was stirred in my fallow intellect akin to the germina- tion of the *'bare grain" under spring showers. If this were true, it was a clear case of what theologians term ''unconscious conversion." Were I to trust to my own judgment, based upon personal reminiscence, I should say that I went to bed one night not — as the phrase goes — ''knowing B from a bull's foot," and awoke reading. Per- haps Dogberry was nearer right than we think in averring that "reading and writing come by nature." And that my time was ripe for receiving them. I had outgrown my dislike of The New York Reader, wearing most of the blue paper off the straw, and loosen- 49 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ing not a few of the tiny fibres beneath; I could read, without spelling aloud, the stories that were ihe jelly to the pill of conning the alphabet and the combinations thereof; the spring had really come at last on the tardy heels of that black winter. The grass was lush and wann under my feet; the sweetbrier and multiflora roses over the Montrose porches were in bloom, and the locust-trees were white with flowers and resonant with the hum of bees, when, one day, as I played in the yard, I heard a weak, sweet voice calling my name. Looking up, I saw my mother in a white gown, a scariet shawl wrapped about her shoulders, leaning from her bed- room window and smiling down upon me. I screamed with ecstasy, jumping up and down, clap- ping my hands, and crying to my dusky playfellows, Rose and Judy: "Look! Oh, look! I have a mother again — ^as well as anybody!" Close upon the blessed apparition came her champion- ship of her neglected "middle child," against the imposi- tions of " Mea," Anne Cams, and a bigger niece of Aimt Smith who was much at the homestead. On a happy forenoon the mother I had received back from the edge of the grave called me to her bedside, for, although con- valescent, she did not rise until noon. Pointing to a covered basket that stood by her bed, she bade me lift the lid. Within, upon white paper, lay a great handful of dried cherries, a sheet of "peach leather," and four round ginger -cakes, the pattern and taste of which I knew well as the chef d^ceuvre of the "sweeties" manufactured by Mam' Peggy, the Montrose cook. "I heard that the bigger children had a tea-party last night after you had gone to bed," she said, smilingly ten- der. " It isn't fair that my little daughter should not have 60 A MOTHER REGAINED her share. So I sent Jane" — her maid — "down for these, and saved them for you." No other "goodies" were ever so delicious, but their finest flavor was drawn from the mental repetition of the exultant: "I have a mother again— as well as anybody!" 5 oub powhatan home — a cx)untry funeral — "old bibs. o'hara." My mother's illness of nearly four months deflected the cmrent of our lives. My father, convinced probably of the peril to her life of a Western journey, and wrought upon by the persuasions of her relatives, bought the "good- will and fixtures" of a store at Powhatan Court House, a village seven miles nearer Richmond than Montrose, and thither we removed as soon as the convalescent was strong enough. Her husband wrote to her from Richmond en route for "the North," where he was to purchase a stock of the "goods" upon which the territory environing his new home was dependent for most of the necessaries and all of the luxuries of life. "I am very solicitous as to your early restoration to health. Be careful not to rise too early, and keep a strict watch over your appetite. It is not safe to indulge it, yet there is danger in the opposite course. . . . "I attended a prayer-meeting at Mr. Hutchinson's on Thursday evening, and had the pleasiue of hearing a lecture from Mr. Nettleton. It was a pleasant meeting. I wish you had been with me I To-day (Sunday) I heard Mr. Plumer and Mr. Brown, both of whom were interesting. Mr. Plumer's subject was the young ruler running to Oiu* Saviour and kneel- ing down with the inquiry, 'What must I do to be saved?' . . . "Your brother was at church yesterday. His wife has a fine boy a month old. You have probably heard of the event, 52 OUR POWHATAN HOME although I did not until my arrival here. I am told he says it is Hbe prettiest thing that was ever seen/ and feels quite proud of this, their first exhibition. "There is great difficulty in getting to New York this spring. The Delaware was closed by ice for two months, and up to the middle of March this was eighteen inches thick. Merchants have been detained in Baltimore from two to seven da3rs, waiting for stages to go on. The number of travellers was so large that they could not be accommodated sooner. The steamboat runs from Richmond to Baltimore but bnce a week, and leaves on Sunday morning. Several of my ac- quaintances went on to-day. They were urgent that I should go with them, but my determination is not to travel on the Sabbath. I shall, therefore, take the land route to Balto. . . . '^Qoods are reported to be very scarce and high in all the Northern cities. They are high in this place, and advancing every day. Groceries are dearer than I have seen them since 1815, and it is thought they will be yet dearer. "'That will do!' I hear you say, 'as I am not a merchant.' Well, no more of it I I must charge you again to be very, very careful of yourself. Kiss our little children for father. I shall hurry through my business here as soon as possible and hasten my return to my home. "May the Lord. bestow on you His choicest blessings and grant a speedy return of health I Remember me in your prayers. Adieu, my Love I "Your own 8." The sere and yellow sheet is marked on the outside, in the upper left-hand comer, *' Single,'' in the lower, **Mail," and in the upper right-hand, "12 cents." This was in the dark ages when there was but one steamer per week to Baltimore, and there were not stages Plough to carry the passengers from the Monument City to New York; when the railway to Fredericksburg was a dream in the minds of a few Northern visionaries, and the magnetic tel^raph was not even dreamed of. My mother has told me that, in reading the newspaper aloud to her 53 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY father in 1824, she happened upon an account of an in- vention of one George Stephenson for running carriages by steam. Captain Sterling laughed derisively. ''What nonsense these papers print! You and I won't live to see that, Uttle girl!" I heard the anecdote upon an express train from Rich- mond to New York, his "little girl" being the narrator. In those same dark ages, strong men, whom acquaint- ances never accused of cant, or suspected of sentimentality, went to evening prayer-meetings, and accounted it a de- light to hear two sermons on Sunday ; laid pulpit teach- ings to heart; practised self-examination, and wrote love- letters to their own wives. If this were not the "Simple Life" latter-day philosophists exploit as a branch of the New Thought Movement, it will never be lived on this low earth. Our first home in the little shire-town (then " Scottville '0 was at "Bellevue," a red brick house on a hill overlooking the hamlet. Separated from Bellevue by two fields and the public highway, was "Erin Hill," built by one of the same family, which had, it is needless to observe, both Irish and French blood in it. Erin Hill was for rent just when Uncle Cams decided to bring his family from Montrose — where they had lived for ten years — to the village. This is the fittest time and place in which to sketch the pastor of Mount Carmel Church. Martin Chuzzlewii was not written until a score of years later. When it was read aloud in our family circle, there was not a dissenting voice when my mother uttered, in a voice smothered by inward mirth, "Mr. Cams!" as Mr. Pecksniff appeared u[X)n the stage. The portrait was absurdly striking. The Yankee Peck- sniff was good-looking after his kind, which was the dark- eyed, well-featured, serenely-sanctimonious type. He wore 64 OUR POWHATAN HOME his hair longer than most lasonen cut theirs, and it curled naturally. His voice was low and even, with the pulpitine cadences hit off, and at, cleverly by Doctor Holmes as "a tone supposed by the speaker to be peculiarly pleasing to ihe Almighty." His smile was sweet, his gait was felinely dignified, and a pervasive aroma of meekness tempered his daily walk and conversation. His wife, *'Aunt Betsy," was the saint- liest soul that ever rated herself as the least important of God's creatures, and cared with motherly tenderness for everything else her Creator brought within her modest sphere of action. In all the years of our intimate associa- tion I never saw her out of temper or heard a harsh word from the lips in which nestled and abode the law of kind- ness. She brought him a tidy little slice of her father's estate, which he husbanded wisely. He was economical to parsimony, and contrived to imbue wife and children with a lively sense of the need of saving in every conceiv- able way "against a rainy day." At ten years of age I asked my mother, point-blank, what salary the church paid Uncle Cams. She answered as directly: "Three hundred dollars a year. But he has property of his own." Whereupon, without the slightest idea of being pert, I remarked, "If we were to get a really good preacher, I suppose he would have to be paid more." And my mother responded as simply: "No doubt. But your Uncle Cams is a very faithful pastor." I put no questions, but I pondered in my heart the pur- port of a dialogue I got in snatches while reading on the back porch one afternoon, when a good-hearted neighbor and my mother were talking of the school to be opened in the village imder the tuition of Cousin Paulina, the eldest daughter of Aunt Betsy and her second husband. 55 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY She was now in ber eighteenth year, a graduate of a somewhat noted "female" seminary, decidedly pretty, with a quick temper and a talent for teaching. "It is a pity," said ihe friendly visitor, "to tie her down to a school-room when she is just at the age when girls like to see company and go roimd with other young people. It isn't as if they were obliged to put her to work." My mother replied discreetly, yet I detected a sym- pathetic tone in her speech. The talk came into my mind many a time after the sessions of the school began, and I saw, through the window^ young men and girls walking, riding, and driving past, the girls in their prettiest attire, the young men gallantly attentive, and all enjoying the gala-time of life that comes but once to any of us. If the dark-eyed, serious, eighteen-year-old teacher felt the deprivation, she never murmured. I think her mother had taught her, with her first word and trial-step, to believe that her "father knew best." The school — the first I ever attended — was in the second story of an untenanted house on a side-street, rented from a villager. It was kept for ten months of the year. A vacation of a month in May, and another in Sep- tember, divided two terms of five months each. I climbed the carpetless stairs to the big upper room six or eight times daily for five days a week, for forty weeks, and never without a quailing of nerve and sinking of heart as I strode past a locked door at the left of the entrance* Inside of that door I had had my first view of Deatli. I could not have been six years old, for it was summer, or early autumn, and I was walking my doll to sleep up and^down the main alley of the garden, happy and bare- headed, and unconsciously "feeling my life in every limb," when my mother called to me from the window to "come and be dressed." 66 A COUNTRY FUNERAL ^'I am gping to take you and your sister to a funeral/' she continued, as a maid buttoned me up in a clean white frocky put on my Sunday shoes, and brushed the rebellious mop of hair that was never smooth for ten minutes in the day. "Blay I take my doll?" asked I, "sh-sh-ing" her in a cuddling ann. I was trying very hard to love Ufeless dolls. ''Shame on you, Miss Firginny !" put in the maid, for all the world as if I had spoken in church. "Did anybody ever see sech another chile fur sa}dn' things f^ she added to my mother. Mea looked properly shocked; my mother, ever light of heart, and inclined to let unimportant mistakes pass, smiled. ''We don't take dolls to funerals, my daughter. It would not be right." I did not push inquiries as to the nature of the enter- tainment to which we were bound, albeit the word, already familiar to me by reason of two or three repetitions, was not in my vocabulary an hour ago. C!ontent and pleased in the knowledge that an outing was on foot, I put my doll to bed in a closet under the stairs used by Mea and myself as a "baby-house," shut the door to keep Argus and Rigo — sprightly puppies with inquisitive noses — from tearing her limb from limb, as they had rent her imme- diate predecessor, and sallied forth. The roadside was thick with sheep-mint and wild hoarhound and tansy. I bruised them in dancing along in front of my mother and my sober sister. The bitter-sweet smell arose to my nostrils to be blent forever in imagination with the event of the day. A dozen or more carriages were in the road before the shabby frame house I had heard spoken of as "old Mrs. CyHara's," but which I had never entered. Eight or ten 57 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY horses were tethered to the fence, and a group of men loitered about the door. As we went up the steps I saw that the parlor was full of villagers. Some were sitting; more were standing in a kind of expectant way; all were so grave that my spirits fell to church-temperature. Some- thing solemn was going on. Just inside of the parlor door the mother of my most intimate girl-friend sat in a rocking- chair. She had on a black silk dress and her best bonnet. Every woman present wore black. I saw Mrs. D. beckon up Major Goode, an elderly beau who was a notable figure in the neighborhood, and whisper audibly to him, "If you want more chairs, you may send over to our house for them." It was evidently a great function, for Mrs. D. was a notable housekeeper, and her furniture the finest in the place. Her drawing-room chairs were heavy mahogany, and upholstered with black horsehair. Her house, alto- gether the best within a radius of several miles, was not a hundred yards from the O'Hara cottage; but that she should make the neighborly offer thrilled me into narne^ less awe. My mother moved forward slowly, holding my hand fast in hers, and I was led, without warning, up to a long, black, open box, set upon two chairs, one at each end. In the long, black box lay a woman I had never seen be- fore. She was awfully white; her eyes were shut; she looked peaceful, even happy; but she was not asleep. No sleeping creature was ever so moveless and marble-pale. Her terrible stillness impressed me most painfully by its very unlikeness to the heaving, palpitating crowd about her. A mob-cap with a closely fluted border framed the face; she was dressed in a long cambric gown of a pattern entirely new to me. It lay in moveless plaits as stiff as paper from her chin to her feet, which it hid ; it was pinked in tiny points at the bottom of the skirt and the cuffs; 58 ''OLD MRS. O'HARA'' the hands, crossed at the wrists as no living hands are ever laid, were bound at the crossing with white satin ribbon. Under the moveless figure was a cambric sheet, also pinked at the edges, that fell straight to the floor over the sides of the cofBu. I must have pinched my mother's hand with my tighten- ing fingers, for she eyed me in grave surprise, not unmixed with reproof, in taking a seat and drawing me to her side. There was no place for children to sit down. I am sure that she had not an inkling of the imspeakable fright that possessed my ignorant mind. From that day to this I have never gone to a fimeral when I could possibly keep away from it upon any decent pretext. When constrained by circumstance to be one of the party collected about a coflSn, I invariably have a re- turn, in some measure, of the choking horrors of that awful day. For dajrs, sometimes for weeks afterward, the dread is an obsession I cannot dispel by any effort of will. Argue and struggle as I may, I am haunted night and day by the memory of the woman whom I never saw while she lived. As if the brooding hush, so deadly to my childish senses ; the fimeral sermon, delivered in Uncle Carus's most se- pulchral chest tones, and the wild, wailing measures of " Why should we mourn departing friends?" sung to immemorial '* China" — were not enough to rivet the scene forever upon my soul, a final and dramatic touch was superadded. Two men brought forward a long, black top, which they were about to fix in place upon the dreadful box, when a young woman in black rushed from a comer, flung herself upon her knees beside the coflSn, and screamed: "Mother, mother! You sha'n't take her away!" making as if she would push back the men. ** Harriet! Harriet!" remonstrated a deep voice, and 59 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Major Goode, the tears rolling down his cheeks, stooped and lifted the daughter by main force. ''This won't do, child!" Fifteen years later, sitting in the calm moonlight upon the porch-steps at ''Homestead," the dwelling of my chimi, Effie D., I heard from Mrs. D.'s lips the story of Mrs. O'Hara. Her cottage, subsequently our school- house, had been pulled down long ago as an eyesore to the fastidious mistress of Homestead. At least I got that section of the old lady's life that had to do with the gray- haired Major Goodc, a veteran of the War of 1812. Both the actors in the closing scene seemed, in the review of my childish impressions of the funeral, to have been too old to figure in the tale. "You can understand why nobody in the village could visit her," concluded the placid narrator to whom I am indebted for numberless traditions and real life-romances. "The funeral was another matter. Death puts us all upon a level." There was the nkelcton of a chronique scandaleuse in the bit of exhumed gossip. VI OLD-FASHIONED HUSBAND'S LOVE-LETTER — AN ALMOST HOMICIDE — ' * SLAUGHTERED MONSTER " — A WESLEYAN SCHOOLMISTRESS. "RoxBURY, July 2&h, 1838. "My DEAR Wife, — Your esteemed letter of the 20th is at hand, and it has relieved my mind to hear that you are all doing so well. I suppose you expect a history of my move- ments here. Well, on Saturday morning went to Boston; in the evening took mother and called on all my Dorchester friends — stayed with some five minutes, with others fifteen, etc. Sunday, went to church; very dry sermon in morning; even- ing attended Mr. Abbot's church; was much pleased with the preaching — text — *And there came one running and kneeling to Him, and said,' etc. At night attended at same place what they call a 'Conference Meeting' — quite an interest- ing time. Monday, went to Brookline — visited sisters. Tea at Mr. Davis's; music of the best kind in abundance. Tuesday to Boston in morning, evening at home to receive company. Quite a pleasant afternoon; a good many Dorchester friends calling. Wednesday morning as usual in the city; evening held a grand levee: the street filled with chaises and carriages; some twenty or more to tea. Really, my visit has created quite a sensation among our good friends; some met yesterday afternoon who have not seen each other for ten or more years. Don't you think I had better come here oftener to keep up the family acquaintance? for it seems to require some extraor- dinary event to set these good folks to using their powers of locomotion. By-the-by, you must not be jealous, but I had a lady kiss me yesterday, for the first time it was ever done here, and who do you think it was ? My cousin Mary, of whom 61 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY you have heard me speak. I have so much love given in charge for you, my own dear wife, that it will be necessary to send a part of it in this letter for fear that I should not be able to travel with it all. I am especially directed to bear from a lady two kisses to you from her, and they shall be faithfully delivered when we are permitted to meet. You don't know how many inquiries have been made after you, and regrets expressed that you did not come on with me. Mother sa3r8, 'Tell Anna I should like for Samuel to stay longer, but know that he is wanting at home, so will not say a word at his leaving.' She sends much love to her daughter Anna. Father keeps coming in, and from his movements I judge he is waiting for me to finish. You know he is clock-work, so adieu once more. Give my love to the girls, and all at the parsonage. Kiss the children for father. I must now close my letter by conunending you to the care and protection of Him who preserves, guides, and directs us in all things. May His choicest blessing rest on you, my dear wife, and on the children of our love I Adieu, my dear wife. "Your husband, "Samuel." Thus cheerily runs the old-fashioned family epistle. The writer, who never demitted the habit of going to chiuxjh twice every Sunday, and sometimes thrice, does not comment upon the coincidence that he hears again a sermon from the text used and "improved" by a Virginia divine, two years ago. His mind was full of other things just now. This one of his annual visits to his mother was a glad holiday. The world was going smoothly with him, and the hearty congratulations of townspeople and kindred were a-bubble. His mother was happy in her second mar- riage. The good deacon was "father" to her son and his wife, and filled the r61e well. My father's namesake son, Samuel Horace, was bom earlier in the summer. Although the month was June, the weather must have ($2 AN ALMOST HOMICIDE been cold or damp, for a low wood fire burned upon the hearth one afternoon as I crept into the ''chamber" to get a peep at the three-days-old baby, and perchance to have a taJk with my mother. The nurse, before leaving the room on an errand, had laid the infant upon a pillow in a rocking-chair (I have it now!) There was no cradle in the house, and one had been ordered from Richmond. My mother was asleep, and, I supposed, had the baby bcsdde her. Stealing noiselessly across the floor, I backed up to the Boston rocker, in childish fashion, put my hands upon the arms of the chair, and raised myself on tiptoe, ^en the child (aroused, I fancy, by his guardian angel, prescient of the good he would accomplish in the world he had just entered, and compassionate of the remorseful wight whose life would be blighted by the impending deed) stretched out his arms and yawned. I saw the movement under my lifted arm, and dropped flat upon the rug. I must have crouched there for half an hour, a prey to hor- rible imaginings of what might have been. My mother did not awaken, and the baby went to sleep again. The shock would have been terrific to any child. To a dreamer like myself, the visions that flitted between me and the red embers were as varied as they were fearful. Lucy Bragg's tragic death had killed her mother and the baby- boy. If I had crushed our new baby, my own sweet mother would have died with him. I saw myself at their f unentl, beside the coffin holding them both, and my father shrinking in abhorrence from the murderess. Forecasting long years to come, I pictured a stricken and solitary wom- an, shunned by innocent people who had never broken the sixth commandment, and cowering beside a brier-grown grave, crying as I had read somewhere, ** Would to God I had died when I was bom!'' I do not think I shed a tear. Tears were dried up by the voiceless misery. I know I could not sleep that night 03 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY for hours and hours. I know, too, that I never told the shameful thmg — the almost murder — ^to a living creature until it was ten years old. I appreciate, most clearly of all, that my baby-brother became from that hour, in some sort, my especial properly. The peculiar tenderness that has characterized our feeling for each other, the steadfast affection and perfect confi- dence in our mutual love that have known no variableness or shadow of turning, for all our united lives, may not have been rooted in the vigil of unutterable horror and unspeakable thankfulness. I look back upon it as a chrism. Later in the year, another incident that might have been a tragedy, stirred the even flow of domestic life. We had finished prayers and breakfast, and my father was half- way down the avenue on his way to the village when we saw him stop suddenly, retrace his steps hurriedly, enter the yard, and shout to the colored butler who was at the dining-room window. The man ran out and came back shortly, dragging Argus and Rigo into the hall with him, shutting the front door. My father was taking down his gun from the hooks on the wall of the hall, and, without a word, began to load it. One of the earliest of our nursery lessons was, "Never ask questions of busy people!" My mother set the exam- ple of olx»dience to this precept now by silence while her husband, with set lips and resolute eyes, rammed down a charge of buckshot into the barrel, and, saying, "Keep the children in the house!" ran down the steps and down the avenue at the top of his speed toward the big gate opening upon the village street a hundred yards away. From the frc^nt windows we now saw a crowd of men and boys, tramping down the middle of the highway, firing con- fusedly and flinging stones at a great yellow dog trotting ahead of them, and snapping right and left as he ran. 64 ''SLAUGHTERED MONSTER" Brfore my father reached the gate, the dog had turned sharply to the right down a cross-street skirting our lower grounds. A low fence and a ditch divided the meadow from the thoroughfare. My father kept on our side of the fence, raising his gun to cover the brute, which, as we could now see, was slavering and growling hoarsely. A cry arose from the crowd, and my mother groaned, as the dog, esp}dng the man across the ditch, rushed down one side of it and up the other, to attack the new foe. My father held his hand until the dog was within a few feet of him, then fired with steady aim. The brute rolled over to the bottom of the ditch— dead. That evening we were allowed to walk down the field to see the slaughtered monster. That was what I named him to myself, and forthwith began a story in several chapters, with my father as the hero, and an astonishing nimiber of beasts of prey as dramatis persand, that lasted me for many a night thereafter. Tlie title I had chosen was none too large for the dog as he lay, stark and still, his big head straight with his back, his teeth showing savagely in the open jaws. A trickle of water was dammed into a pool by his huge bulk. I held my father's hand and laid my cheek to it in reverence I had not words to express, when my mother said: "You ran a terrible risk, love! What if your gun had missed fire, or you had not hit him?" "I had settled all that in my mind. I should have stood my ground and tried to brain him with the butt." "As your forefathers did to the British at Bunker Hill!" exulted I, inwardly. Be sure the sentence was not uttered. The recollection of the inner life, in which I was wont to think out such sayings, has made me more tolerant with so-called priggish childr^i than most of their elders are prone to be. 65 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY One paragraph of our next letter has a distinctly modern flavor. By substituting millions for thousands in the esti- mate of the defalcation, we might date it in this year of our Lord. "Richmond, April llth, 1839. "(Saturday night.) "My dear Wife, — The general subject, and, in fact, the only one which at present occupies the minds of the citizens here, is the late discovery of defalcations of my old friend D., first teller of the Bank of Virginia, for the sum, as reports say, of nearly, or quite half a million. He has absconded, but some individuals here have had part of the cash; among the number is the great speculator, W. D. G., who has ruined and also severely injured many persons in this place by borrowing, or getting them to endorse for him. I never have before witness- ed so general an excitement here. Mr. G. has been arrested to-day, and taken before the mayor. It is now nine o'clock, and the court is still in session. It is probable he will be sent to the higher court for trial, etc. I expect a good many of our plain country folks will be afraid of Bank of Virginia notes when they hear of the loss. I hope it will make some of them shell out and pay me all that they owe. I should like to find a few thousands waiting for me on my return home. I expect to-morrow to attend the Sabbath]- school at the Second Church, conducted by Mr. Reeve. It is said to be the best school in the city. Tell Herbert I have bought a book called Cobtoebs to Catch FlieSy and I hope it will be the means of catching from him many good lessons. He must learn fast, as I have bought for him Sanford and Merton, with plates, and when he can read he shall have it for his own. May I not hope for a letter from you on Tuesday? — for it seems a long time since we parted." Mrs. Bass, the meek widow of a Methodist cleigyman, succeeded the eighteen-year-old girl in the conduct of the neighborhood school. It is doubtful if we learned any- thing worth relating from her. I am sure we learned noth- ing evil. She was very kind, very gentle, very devout; she 66 A WESLEYAN SCHOOLMISTRESS wore a widow's cap and a bombazine gown, and she was the only woman I ever heard pray until I was over fourteen years of age. There were a dozen girls in the class, which met in a one-roomed building in a lot adjoining her garden. We had no public schools at that date in Vii^ginia. We were all paid pupils, and carefully selected from families in our own class. Those from Presbyterian families out- numbered the rest, but no objection was made by our parents to the "methods" of the Wesleyan relict. The tenets of the two churches were the same in the main. Discrepancies in the matter of free agency, predestination, and falling from grace were adjudged of minor importance in the present case. Mrs. Bass was not likely to trench upon them in the tuition of pupils of tender age. I more than suspect that there would have been a strong ob- jection made to intrusting us to a Baptist, who would not lose an opportunity of inculcating the heresy that "bap- tize" meant, always and everywhere in the Bible, im- mersion. And every school was opened daily by Bible- reading. To this our black-robed, sweet-faced instructress joined audible petitions, and in our reading and the les- sons that followed she let slip no chance of working in moral and religious precepts. Let one example suffice: One of our recitations was spelling, with the definitions, from Walker's Dictionary. Betty Mosby, a pretty girl with a worldly father and a compliant mother, had learned to dance, and had actually attended a kind of "Hunt Ball," given in the vicinity by her father's sister. She had descanted volubly upon the festivities to us in "play- times," describing her dress and the number of dances in which she figured with "grown-up gentlemen," and the hearts of her listeners burned within us as we listened and longed. On this day the word "heaven" fell to me to spell and 6 67 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY define. This done, the "improvement" came in Mre. Bass's best class-meeting tone: "Heaven! I hope and pray you may get there, Virginia! You ought not to fail of the abundant entrance, for your parents are devout Christians and set you a good example, but from him to whom much is given shall much be required. Next ! ' Heavenly !' " Near the foot of the column stood "Hell." Anne Cams rendered it with modest confidence, spelling and defining in a subdued tone befitting the direful mono- syllable. That she was a minister's daughter was felt by us all to lend her a purchase in handling the theme. Mrs. Bass was not to be cheated of her "application ": "Hell!" she iterated in accents that conveyed the idea of recoiling from an abyss. "Ah — ^h — h! I wonder which of my little scholars will lie down in everlasting burnings?" "Mercy! I hope I won't!" cried Betty Mosby, with a shiver of well-acted terror. She was a bom sensationalist, and quick to voice sensa- tion. The teacher's groan was that of the trained exhorter: "I can't answer for that, Betty, if you vrill dance and go to balls!" That was her "Firstly." There were at least six heads and two applications in the lecture "in season" trailing at its heels. We took it all as a matter of course. Each teacher had wajrs of his, and her own. Those of our relict were inno- cent, and our parents did not intermeddle. We were very happy imder her tutelage. On Saturdays she had a class in "theorem painting." That was what she called it, and we thought it a high-sounding title. Decorators know it as one style of frescoing. Pinks, roses, dahlias, tulips, and other flowers with well-defined petals, also birds and but- 68 A WESLEYAN SCHOOLMISTRESS terflies, were cut out of oiled paper. Through the open- ings left by removing the outlined pattern, paint was nibbed upon card-board laid underneath the oiled paper. I have somewhere still a brick-red pink thus transferred to bristol-board — ^a fearful production. I knew no bet- ter than to accept it thankfully when Mrs. Bass had written on the back, "To my dear pupil, M. V. H., from her affectionate Teacher,'' and gave it to me with a kiss on the last day of the term. She gave up the school and left the county at the close of that term, going to live with a brother in another part of the State. I heard, several years later, that she had ''professed sanctification " at a Lynchburg camp-meeting. Nowadays, they would say she "had entered upon the Higher Life." She must have found, long ago, the abundant entrance into that Highest Life where creeds and threatenings are abolished. Her benign administration was to me a sum- mer calm that held no presage of the morrow's storm. VII MY FIRST TUTOR— THE REIGN OP TERROR Late in the October vacation the tranquil routine of our household was stirred by news of import to us children. We were to have a tutor of our own, and a school-room under our roof in true Old Virginia style — a fashion trans- planted from the mother-country, eight generations before. Our father "did not believe in boarding-schools," hold- ing that parents shirked a sacred duty in putting the moral and mental training of their ofifspring into the hands of hirelings, and sendmg them away from home at the formative age, just when girls and boys are most in need of the mother's love and watchful care of their health and principles. Yet he fully appreciated the deficiencies of the small private schools we had attended, and would not hearken for a moment to the suggestion that we should be entered as day-scholars in the "Old-Field School," which prefigured the Co-educational Institute of to-day. " Nice " girls and well-bom boys attended a school of this kind, and lads were prepared for college there. The master was himself a college graduate. And the school was within easy distance of Scottville. "Too much of an omnium gatherum to suit my taste!" I had overheard my father say to a friend who urged the advantages of this place, adding that B. L. was " a good teacher and fair classical scholar." "He may be proficient in the classics, but he spells the name of one dead language, 'Latten.' I saw it in his own handwriting. 70 MY FIRST TUTOR I doubt not that he can parse in that tongue. / believe him capable of talking of the 'three R's.' My children may never become accomplished, but they shall be able to write and speak — and «peB— liieir mother-tongue cor- rectly!'' Besides Mea and myself there were to be in the home- class ten other pupils, the daughters of personal friends of like mind with the independent thinker, and my brother Herbert, lately inducted into the integuments distinctive of his sex, was to have his trial taste of schooling. Our mother had taught us all to read and to write before com- mitting our scholastic education to other hands. I fancy we may attribute to her training in the rudiments of learn- ing the gratifying circumstance that one and all of her children have spelled — as did both parents — ^with absolute correctness. The big dining-room in the left wing of the rambling house to which we had removed from Bellevue when the owner desired to take possession of it, was to be divided by a partition into school-room and hall ; a room opening from the former would be the tutor's chamber, and an apartment in another wing was to be the dining-room. Among other charming changes in house and family, Dorinda Moody, a ward of my father's of whom I was par- ticularly fond, was to live with us and attend *'our school." I trod upon air all day long, and dismissed the fairy and wonder tales, with which I was wont to dream myself to sleep nightly, for visions of the real and present. " Our Tutor" — a title I rolled as a sweet morsel under my rest- less tongue — ^was a divinity student from Union Theological Seminary, in Prince Edward County. The widow of the founder of this school of the prophets, and the former pastor of my parents, lived in the immediate neighborhood of the seminary, and was the intermediary in the trans- action. Throi^ her my father was put into communi- 71 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY cation with the faculty — scholare and gentlemen all of them!! — ^who agreed in recommending the student whom I have dubbed "Mr. Tayloe" in my OldnFidd SchaoUhrl. (The significance of the twin exclamation-points will be manifest in the next few pages.) The sun had shivered out of sight below the fabrizon on a raw November day when I returned home after a tramp over soaked and sere fields, attended by my young maid and her elder sister — ''bright" mulattoes — and was met in the end-porch by their mother, my mother's personal attendant and the supervisor of muBery-tenants. She was the prettiest mulatto I have ever seen, owing her r^ular features and long hair, as she was proud of telling, to an Indian ancestor. He had entailed upon her the additional bequest of a peppery temper, and it was on deck now. She was full of bustle and tartly consequential. "Lordy, Miss Virginny! whar have you been traipsin' so late with jus' these chillun to look after you? It's pretty nigh plum dark, an' you, a young lady, cavortin' roun' the country like a tom-boy!" She hauled me into the house while she talked, and pulled ofiF my shawl and hood, scolding vehemently at the sight of my muddy shoes, and promising Molly and Paulina a whipping apiece for not bringing me back sooner. I cared not one whit for her scolding after I heard the news with which she was laden. Mr. Tayloe had come I My dream-castle had settled into stability upon rock bottom. Ten minutes afterward the school-room door was pushed open timidly, and a childish figure appeared upon the threshold. I was rather tall for my years, and as lean and lithe as a greyhound. My touzled hair had been wet and sleeked by Mary Anne's vigorous fingers. I wore a brown "Circassian" frock and a spandy clean white apron. The room was comfortably furnished with desks and 72 MY FIRST TUTOR chairs, now pushed to the wall, the carpeted area about the hearth being intended as a sitting-room for the tutor. There were a table, a desk, and four or five chairs. The room was bright with lamp and firelight. In front of the red hearth sat my father and a much smaller man. His diminutive stature was the first of a series of shocks I was destined to receive. I had expected him to be tall and stately. Village wags — with none of whom he was popular — spread the story that he intermitted his studies for a year in the hope that in the interim he might grow tall enough to see over the front of a pulpit. My father looked over his shoulder and held out his hand. *'Come in, my daughter," in kindly, hearty accents. And, as I obeyed, "Mr. Tayloe, this is my second daughter —Miss Mary Virginia." The hero of my dreams did not rise. There was naught amiss or unusual in the manner of the introduction. I was "Miss Viiiginia" to men of my father's age, as to youths and boys. I was used to see them get up from their seats to speak to me, as to a woman of treble my years. I looked, then, almost aghast at the man who let me walk up to him and offer my hand before he made any motion in recognition of the unimportant fact of my presence. His legs were crossed; his hands, the palms laid lightly together, were tucked between his legs. He pulled one out to meet mine, touched my fingers coldly, and tucked both hands back as before. "How do you do, Mr. Tayloe?" quoth I, primly respect- ful, as I had been trained to comport myself with strangers. He grunted something syllabic in response, and, chilled to the backbone of my being, I retreated to the shadow of my father's broad shoulder. He passed his arm about me and stroked what he used to call my "Shetland pony mane/' He seldom praised any one of us openly, but he 73 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY was a fond father, and he and the ''tom-boy'' were close comrades. "I hope you will not find this young lady stupid, Mr. Tayloe," he went on, the strong, tender hand still smooth- ing the rebellious locks. ''She is a bit flighty sometimes, but she has packed away a good deal of miscellaneous in- formation in this curly pate. I hope she may become a steady student under your care. What she needs is ap- plication." Receiving no answer beyond a variation of the grunt, the tutor staring all the time into the heart of the fire, the dear man went on to tell of books that had been read aloud in the family, as a supplementary course to what we had learned in school, referring to me now and then when he did not recall title or subject. I fancy, now, that he did this to rid us both of the embarrassment of the first inter- view, and to draw out the taciturn stranger who was to guide my mind in future. Loyal as was my worshipful admiration of my father, I could not but feel, althou^ I could not have formulated the thought, that the trend of talk was not tactful. Nevertheless, I glowed inwardly with indignation that the third person present never once took his eyes from the roaring fire, and that his face, round, fair, and ahnost boyish in contour, wore a slight smile, rather supercilious than amused, his brows knitting above the smile in a fashion I was to know more of in the next ten months. I have drawn Mr. Tayloe's portrait at full length in An Old-Field Schod'^rly and I need not waste time and ner- vous tissue in repetition of the unlovely picture. He was the Evil Genius of my childhood, and the term of his tute- lage may be called the dark underside of an otherwise happy school-Ufe. Looking back from the unclouded heights of mature age, I see that my childish valuation of him was correct. He was, in his association with all with- 74 MY FIRST TUTOR out the walls of the school-room — always excepting the servants, who took his measure amazingly soon — ^a gentle- man in bearing and speech. He was, I have heard, well- bom. He had gained rank as a student in the university of which he was a graduate. At heart and in grain he was a coarse, cruel tyrant, beloved by none of his pupils, hated by my brother Her- bert and myself with an intensity hardly conceivable in children of our tender years. I owe him one evil debt I can never forget. Up to now I had had my little gusts of temper and fleeting grudges against those who angered me. Save for the episode of the doll-whipping recorded in an earUer chapter, I had never cherished — if I had felt — an emotion of vindictiveness or a desire for revenge. This man-this embryo minister of the gospel of love and peace — aroused in me passions that had slumbered un- suspected by all — ^most of all, by myself. Prom the beginning he disliked me. Perhaps because he chose to assume, from the manner of my introduction to him, that I was a spoiled, conceited child who ought to be ''taken down." Perhaps because, while I flushed up hotly under rebuke and sarcasms that entered lavishly into the process of "taking down," I never broke down abjectly under these, after the manner of other pupils. Our father had the true masculine dislike for womanish tears. He had drilled us from babyhood to restrain the impulse to cry. Many a time I was sent from the table OT room when my eyes filled, with the stem injunction, "Go to jrour room and stay there until you can control yourself!" I thought it harsh treatment, then. I have thanked and blessed him for the discipline a thousand times since. Our tutor, I verily believed then, and I do not doubt now, gloated in the sight of the sufferings wrou^t by his brutality. I can give it no milder name. I have seen him smile — a tigerish gleam — when he had 75 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Bcolded the ten outsiders — ^the '^extemes,** as the French caU them — ^into convulsive weeping. Mea and I felt the lash of his tongue quite as keenly as the rest, but our home- drill stood us in good stead. He rarely found fault with hen She was a comely giil, nearly fourteen, and womanly for that age, exemplary in deportment, and an excellent student. It could never be said of her that she 'backed application.'' If one thing were more hateful to me than his surliness and sneers to me, it was his cubbish gallantry to my pretty sister. He pronounced her openly the most promising of his scholars, and volunteered to give her private lessons in botany. Such tokens of preference may have been the proof of a nascent attachment on his part, or but another of his honorable ways of amusing himself. It was a genuine comfort to me to see that she met his gallantries with quiet self - possession and cool indifference remarkable in a country girl who knew nothing of "society" and flirta- tion. I was the black sheep of the flock, as he took pains to say twice or a dozen times a week, in the hearing of the school. To me he imparted privately the agreeable in- formation that I ''would never be anything but a disgrace to my parents; that, in spite of what my father might say to the contrary, I was stupid by nature and incor- rigibly lazy." He rang the changes upon that first unfor- tunate interview until I was goaded to dumb frenzy. The persecution, begun with the opening day of the term, was never abated. He would overhear from his chamber win- dow snatches of talk between my mates and myself, as we played or sat in the garden below — merry, flippant noth- ings, as harmless as the twitter of the birds in the trees over our heads. When we were reassembled in the school- room he would make my part in the prattle the text of a lecture ten minutes long, holding the astonished, quiver- 76 MY FIRST TUTOR • ing chad up to ridicule, or stinging her to the quick with invectives. When he lost his temper — which happened often — ^he spared nobody. He went out of his way to attack me. Lest this should read like the exaggeration of fancied slights to the self-willed, pert youngling he be- lieved me to be, let me cull one or two sprigs of rue from the lush growth that embittered ten months of my exist- ence: I cut my finger to the bone one morning (I carry the scar still). My mother bound it up in haste, for the school- beU was ringing. I got into my seat just m time for the opening exercises. A chapter was read — verse by verse — in turn by the pupils, after which the prospective divine "ofiFered" a prayer. He stood with his eyes shut and his forehead knitted into a frown. We knelt with our backs to him before our chairs around the room. It seems but natural to me, in reflecting upon that perfunctory "exer- cise," that our reading '4n course" should never, during Mr. Tayloe's reign, have gone beyond the Old Testament. We read that exactly as it came — ^word for word. There was nothing of the New Testament in his walk or con- versation. On this day we had a chapter in Kings — First or Second — ^in which occurred a verse my father would have skipped quietly at our family worship. Sarah L. was the big- gest girl in the class — in her sixteenth year, and quite grown up. She dexterously slipped past the bit of Bible history, taking the next verse, as if by accident. "Go back and read your verse!" thundered the young theologue. "I will have no false modesty in my school." My cheeks flamed as redly with anger as Sarah's had with maiden shame, as I followed suit with the next pas- sage. I resented the coarse insult to a decent girl, and the manner thereof. I was faint with the pain of the wounded finger, and altogether so unnerved that niy voice 77 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY shook and fell below the pitch at which we were taught to read aloud. Out barked the bulldog again over the top of the open Bible he held : "What ails Miss High-and-Mighty to-day? In one of your tantrums, I see. Read that verse again, and loud enough to be heard by somebody besides your charming selfr* Where — ^will be asked by the twentieth-centmy reader — was parental affection all this while? How could a fear- less gentleman like your father submit for an hour to the maltreatment of his young daughter and the daughters of friends who confided in his choice of a tutor? My answer is direct. We never reported the worst of our wrongs to our parents. To "tell tales out of school" in that generation was an offence the enormity of which I cannot make the modem student comprehend. It was a flagrant misdemeanor, condemned by tradition, by parental admonition, and by a code of honor accepts by us all. I have known pupils to be expelled for daring to report at home the secrets of what was a prison-house for three- fourths of every working-day. And — strangest of all — their mates thenceforward shunned the tale-tellers as sin- ners against scholastic and social laws. "If you get a flogging at school, you will get another at home!" was a stock threat that set the seal of silence upon the culprit's lips. To carry home the tale of unjust punish- ment meted out to a school-fellow would be a gross breach of honorable usage. The whole system smacked of inquisitorial methods, and gave the reactionary impetus to the pendulum in the mat- ter of family discipline and school jurisdiction which helped on the coming of the Children's Age in which we now live. The despotism of that direful period, full of portents 78 THE REIGN OF TERROR and pain, may have taught me fortitude. It awoke me to the possibilities of evil hitherto undreamed of in my sunny life. I have lam awake late into the night, again and again, smarting in the review of the day's injuries, and dreading what the morrow might bring of malicious injustice and overt insult, and cudgelling my hot brain to devise some method of revenge upon my tormentor. Childish schemes, all of them, but the noxious seed was one with that which ripens into murder in the first degree. One absurd device that haunted and tempted me for weeks was that I should steal into the tutor's room some day, when he had gone to ride or walk, and strew chopped horsehair between the sheets. The one obstacle to the successful prosecution of the scheme was that we had no white horses. Ours were dark bay and " blooded chestnut." No matter how finely I might chop the hairs, which would prick like pins and bite like fleas, the color would make them visible when the sheets were turned down. It was a crime! — this initiation of a mere infant into the mysteries of the innate possibilities of evil in human nature. I had learned to hate with all my heart and soul. In all my childish quarrels I had never felt the temptation to lift my hand against a playmate. I understood now that I could smite this tyrant to the earth if I had the power and the opportunity. This lesson I can never forget, or foiigive him who taught it to me. It was a new and a soiled page in the book of experience. Despite the continual discouragement that attended the efiFort to keep my promise to study diligently, I worked hard in school, partly from love of learning, partly to please my parents — chiefly, it must be confessed, because I shrank, as from the cut of a cowhide, from the pitiless ridicule and abuse that followed upon the least lapse from absolute perfection in recitation. Mathematics was never my strong point, and the tutor 79 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY quickly detected this one of many weak joints in my armor. There was meaning in the grin with which he in- formed me one day, not long after Christmas, that he had set a testHBum for each of the second class in arithmetic. "If you can do that sum without, any, help, from, any- body," slowly, the grin widening at each comma, "you may go on with the next chapter in arithmetic. If not, you will be turned back to Simple Division. Of course, you will do yours, if nobody else can work out the answer f' Sneer and taunt stung and burned, as he meant tbey should. I took the slate from his hand, and carried it to my desk before glancing at it. It was a horrible sum I I knew it would be, and I forthwith made up my mind not to try to do it. He might turn me back to Additio|i| for all I cared. The worm had turned and stiffened in stub- bom protest. At recess I discovered that not another girl of the six in our class had an imposition half so severe as my enemy had set for me. The effect was totally unlike what he had anticipated. My spirit leaped to arms. I would do that sum and keep up with my class — or die! I bore the slate off to my room as soon as school was out that afternoon, and wrought mightily upon the task until the supper-bell rang. My work covered both sides of the slate, and after supper I waylaid my sister in the hall and begged her to look at what I had done. She was the crack arithmetician of the school, and I could trust her decision. She sat down upon the stairs — I standing, wretched and suspenseful, beside her — ^and went patiently over it aU. Then she said, gently and regretfully: "No, it is not right. I can't, of course, tell you what is wrong, but you have made a mistake." With a hot lump in my throat I would not let break into tears, I rushed off up-stairs, rubbed out every figure of my making, and fell to work anew upon the original ex- SO THE REIGN OF TERROR ample. Except when I obeyed the summons to prayers, I appeared no more below that night. My sister found me bent over the slate when she came up to bed, and said not a word to distract my attention. By ten o'clock the room was so cold that I got an old Scotch plaid of my father's from the closet, and wrapped myself in it. Still, my limbs were numb and my teeth chattered when, at one o'clock in the morning, I laid the slate by, in the joyous conviction that I had conquered in the fight. I had invented a proof- method of my own — truly ingenious in a child with no turn for mathematics — but this I did not suspect. I hon- estly believed, instead, that it was an inspiration from Him to whom I had been praying through all the hours of ag- onised endeavor. I thanked the Author before I slept. When the class was called upon to show their sums next morning, it appeared, to my unspeakable amazement and rapture, that my example and one other — that done by Sarah L., who was backward in figures, although ad- vanced in years — ^were right, and all the others wrong. The gentle shepherd of our fold took up my slate again when the examination was over, and eyed it sourly, his head on one side, his fingers plucking at his lower lip, a trick which I knew prefaced something particularly spite- ful. Surely I had nothing to fear now? Having wrung from him the reluctant admission that my work was cor- rect, I might rest upon my laurels. I had imderrated his capacity for evil-doing. When he glared at me over the upper frame of the big slate, the too-familiar heart-nausea got hold upon me. **You'* — ^he seldom deigned to address me by my proper name — "pretend to tell me that nobody helped you with this sum?" '^ Nobody P* I uttered, made bold by innocence. "Ha-ara-aP' malevolence triumphant in the drawl wax- ing into a snarl. "As I happened to see you and your 81 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY sister last night in the hall, and heard you ask her to show you how to do it, that tale won't go down, my lady/' "She didn't help me — " I began, eagerly. " Silence P' thumping the slate upon the table, and scowl- ing ferociously. "How dare you lie to me?" I glanced at Mea in an agony. She arose in her placei pale to the lips, albeit she had never felt his wrath, but her voice was firm: "I only told her the sum was not ri^t. I did not tell her what part of it was wrong." The blending of snarl and smile was something to be recollected for all time. The smile was for her, the snarl for me. "It is natural that your sister should try to defend you. But will you please tell me, Miss Pert, what more help you could have wanted than to be told by somebody who knew — as your sister did — ^that your sum was wrong? Of course, you could rub out and b^in again. But for her you would not have tried a second time. Bring that sponge here I" I obeyed. "Take that slater He made as if he would not contaminate his hand by passing it to me, laying it on the table and pointing a dis- dainful finger at it. Again I obeyed. " Now, Miss Deceitful, wipe every figure ofif that slate, and never try any such cock-and-bull story upon me again as long as you live! I am too old a binl to be cau^t with ymir chaiff!" He laughed aloud in savage glee, dismissed the class with a wave of his hand, and called up the next. I w*as turned back to Short Division, with the added stigma of intentional deception and cheating shadowing me. 82 THE REIGN OF TERROR Nearly fifteen years after our first tutor withdrew his baleful presence from our home, my husband was urging upon my brother Herbert the claims of the ministry of reconciliation as the profession to which the younger man was evidently called by nature and by Providence. Her- bert looked up with the frank smile those who knew him wiU never foiget. It was like the clear shining of the sweetest and purest soul ever committed to mortal keeping. "'Plato! tiiou reasonest well!' There is but one aigu- ment you have not bowled over. I registered an oath — as bitter as that Hamilcar exacted of Hannibal — ^when I was a boy, that I would thrash that cur Tayloe within an inch of his life as soon as I should be big enough to do it. And it wouldn't be quite the thing to flog a brother cleigyman. If anything could keep me out of the pulpit, it would be the fact that he is in it. That fellow's cruelties scarred my memory for life, although I was not seven years old when I knew him." In dismissing the disagreeable theme, I offer this bit of testimony to the truth of my story of the reign of terror neither of us ever foigave. 7 VIII CALM AFTER STORM— OUR HANDSOME YANKEE GOVERNESS — THE NASCENT AUTHOR Among the treasured relies of my youth is a steel en- graving in a style fashionable sixty years agone. It appeared in Godey^s Lady^s Book, then in the heyday of well-merited popularity. My mother was one of the earliest subscribers. Every number was read aloud in the family circle gathered on cool evenings about my mother's worknstand. We had no ready-made furniture. This piece was made to order, of solid mahogany, and is, in the seventy- fifth year of a blameless life, in active use in my eldest daughter's household. Cousin Mary, living on Erin Hill, in her stepfather's house, took Graham's Magazine — Godey's only rival. She likewise subscribed for the Saturday Evening Courier, and exchanged it regularly with my mother for the Satur- day Evening Post — all published in Philadelphia. The New York Mirror, edited by N. P. Willis, George P. Morris, and Theodore S. Fay, was another welcome guest in both families. For Sunday reading we had the New York Observer, The Watchman and Observer, The Presbyterian — religious weeklies that circulated in the neighborhood for a fortnight, and were then filed for future reference. We children had Parley's Magazine sent to us, as long ago as I can recollect, by our grandmother. After the death of her second husband, the good old deacon, and her removal to Virginia, which events were coeval with the Tayioe dynasty, our father subscribed for Parley^ s. S4 CALM AFTER STORM We had all the new books that he adjudged to be worth buying and reading, watching eagerly for any- thing from Dickens^ Marryat, and Cooper, and devouring with avidity not excited by any novel, Stephens's Travels in Arabia Petrea and in Central America, Bruce's Travels in Abyssinia, and the no less enchanting tales Mungo Park was telling the world of his adventures in the Dark Con- tinent. "The chamber" was a big room on the first floor, and adjoined the dining-room — so big that the wide high- poster, curtained and ceiled with gayly figured chintz, in a far comer, left three-fourths of the floor-space unoccu- pied. My mother's bureau (another heirloom) looked small beside the bed; a lounge was between the front windows; rocking-chairs stood here and there; thick cur- tains, matching the bed-hangings, shut out wintry gusts, and a great wood fire leaped and laughed upon the pipe- clayed hearth from the first of November to the middle of March. A blaze of dry sticks was kindled there every morning and evening up to July 4th. The younger children were dressed and imdressed there on cool days. Our mother held, in advance of her contemporaries, that an open fire was a germ-killer. Why do I single out that particular engraving for a place in these reminiscences? It graced the first page of the November number of Oodey's Lady^s Book. The evening was wild with wind and blustering rain, the fire roaring defiance as the loosely fitting sashes rattled and the showers lashed the panes. There were five of us girls, and each had some bit of handi- work. To sit idle while the reading went on was ahnost a misdemeanor. Dorinda Moody, Virginia Lee Patterson, Musidora Owen, Mea, and myself were classmates and cronies. My mother was reader that evening, and as she opened the mag- 85 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY azine at the frontispiece, Viiginia Patterson and I called out: "Why, that is a picture of Miss Wilson!" We all leaned over the stand to look at the engraving, which my mother held up to general view. "It 18 like herl" she assented. The young lady across the table blushed brightly in uttering a laughmg disclaimer, and my mother proceeded to explain the extreme improbability of our hypothesis. Then she read the story, which, to the other girls, settled the matter. It was called "Our Keziah," and b^an by teUing that the title of the portrait was a misnomer. It was no "fancy sketch," but a likeness of "Our Keziah." Silenced but not convinced, I restrained the impulse to tell my mates that stories might be made out of nothing. I knew it, and so did my only confidante, the handsome governess from Massachusetts, who had been installed in our school-room since June. Mr. Tayloe had gone back to the theological factory to prosecute the studies that were to fit him to proclaim the gospel of love and peace. On the last day of the session he had preached us a short sermon, seated in his chair at the head of the room, twirling the seal dangling from his watch-chain; his legs crossed, the left hand tucked be- tween them; his brows drawn together in the ugly horse- shoe we knew well and dreaded much. He must have descanted darkly upon the transitoriness of earthly joys and the hard road to heaven, for every girl in school was in tears except Mea and myself. As for my wicked self, as I privately confessed subse- quently to my father's young partner, "Thad" Ivey — "I could think of nothing but Franklin's grace over the whole barrel." In the ten months of his incumbency of the tutorship, the incipient divine had never so much as hinted to one of us that she had a soul. 86 OUR HANDSOME YANKEE GOVERNESS tt I suppose I ought to say that it is like returning thanks over the empty barrel," I subjoined, encouraged by my interlocutor's keen relish of the irreverent and impertinent oonunent upon the scene of the afternoon. '^Thad" and I were great friends, and I had an idea that our views upon this subject did not differ widely. Via. Willis D., our nearest neighbor, was with my mother, and when the tear-bedraggled procession from the school-room filed into the porch where the two friends were sitting with three other of the villagers, and Virginia Win- free threw herself into her aunt's arms with a strangled sob of: "Oh, Aunt Betty, he did preach so hard!" — ^the dry-eyed composure of the Hawes girls was regarded with disfavor. "Your daughters have so much fortitude!" remarked one, mopping her girl's eyes with a compassionate handker- chief. Another, "They show wonderful self-control for their age." Even our sensible mother was slightly scandalized by what she " hoped," deprecatingly, "was not want of feeling." Tears were fashionable, and came easily in those early times, and weeping in church was such a godly exercise that conversation or exhortation upon what was, in tech- nical phrase, "the subject of religion," brought tears as naturally as the wringing of a moist sponge, water. "What did you cry for?" demanded I, scornfully, of Anne Cams, when I got her away from the porch party. "You hate him as much as I do!" "Oh — ^I don't — ^know!" dubiously. "People always cry when anybody makes a farewell speech." So the Beverend-that-was-to-be Tayloe took his shadow from our door and his beak from out my heart. The quo- tation is not a mere figure of speech. 87 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY The handsome Yankee governess opened the door of a new life for me. Some of the parents complained that she ''did not bring the children on as fast as Mr. Tayloe had done.'' Me, she inspired. I comprehended, as by a special revelation, that hard atudy might be a joy, and gain of knowledge rapture. With her I began Vose's Astronomy, Comstock's Natural Philosophy, and Lyell's Elements of Geology, and revelled in them all. Her smile was my present reward, and when she offered to join me in my seemingly aimless rambles in the woods and ''old fields," I felt honored as by a queen's favor. We sat to- gether upon mossy stumps and the banks of the brook I had until then called "a branch" in native Virginian dialect — talking! talking! talking! for hours, of nymphs, hamadryads, satyrs, and ever}rthing else in the world of imagination and nature. She wrote poetry, and she kept a diary; she had trav- elled in ten states of the Union, and lived* in three different cities; and she never tired of answering questions as to what she had seen in her wanderings. Her nature was singularly sweet and sunny, and I never, in all the ten months of our intimacy, saw in language and deportment aught that was not refined and gentle. With her I began to write school "compositions." Hie "big girls" wrote them under the Tayloe regime — ^neat little essays upon "The Rose," "The Lily," "Morning," "Night," and all of the Four Seasons. Never a syllable had I lisped to one of them of the growing hoard of rhymes, tales, and sketches in the shabby, corpulent portfolio I had fashioned with my own fingers and kept in the bottom of a trunk under flannel skirts and last year's outgrown frocks. I brought them out of limbo to show to Miss Wilson, by timid degrees, and new manuscripts as fast as they were written. She praised them, but not without discrimina- 88 THE NASCENT AUTHOR tion. She suggested topics, and how to treat them. I never carried an imperfect lesson to her in class. Intellect and heart throve under her genial influence as frost- hindered buds under May sunshine. "The Fancy Sketch" was so like her it was natural I should refuse to believe the resemblance accidental. It was as plain as day to my apprehension that the unknown artist had seen her somewhere, and, unseen by her, had dogged her footsteps until he fixed her face in his mind's eye, then transferred it to canvas. It was a shock when the probability of his pursuit of her to Viiginia, avowing his passion and being rewarded by the ^ft of her hand, was dissipated by the apparition of a matter-of-fact personage, McPhail by name, who was neither poet nor artist. He had been betrothed to our governess for ever so long. He spent a fortnight at the "Old Tavern/' opposite our house, and claimed all of the waking hours she could spare irom school duties. The finale of the romance was that she went back to the North at the end of her year's engagement with us, and married him, settling, we heard, in what sounded like an outlandish region— Oape Neddick, on the Maine coast. IX A COLLEGE NEIGHBORHOOD — THE WORLD WTOENS — ^A BE- LOVBD TUTOR— COLONIZATION DREAMS AND DISAP- POINTMENT— ^MAJOR MORTON "RicsHiLL, February Zd, 1843. ''Dear Dorinda, — ^I suppose mother has told you of our privileges and pleasant situation. I only want some of my friends to enjoy it with me to make me perfectly happy. Oh, how I wish you were here to go to the debating society with me and to hear the young men preach! I went to coUega last night to hear some speeches delivered by the Senior Class. They have questions given, and one takes one side and one another. The two best speeches were made on the ques- tion 'Is a love of fame more injurioiis than beneficial?' One young man took the affiimative, and one the negative. They made the best speeches. Then the question was whether 'the execution of Charles I. was just or not.' Both of these speakers needed prompting; that is, one of those who had spoken or was to speak took the speaker's speech which he had written off, and, if he forgot, set him right again. The young man who performed this office was very well qualified for it; he spoke in a low. distinct tone, and seemed to find no dif- ficulty in reading the writing. They speak again in about six weeks. But the chief enjoyments I have are the religious privileges. I can go to the prayer-meeting at the Seminary every Wednesday, and can hear three sermons every Sunday. Don'tyou wish you were here, too? Aunt Rice and sister went to the Court House last Simday evening to hear Ifr. Ballan- tine's lecture, and as they did not come back very soon the young men came in to supper. While sister and Aunt Rice were away I wrote an account of Ifr. Hoge's and Mr. Howi- 90 A COLLEGE NEIGHBORHOOD son's sermons. Well^ when Mr. Howison came in^ ' Well^ Miss Viiginia, have you been by yourself all this evening?' *Yes, sir.' 'Did you not feel very lonely?' 'Not at all.' 'Why, what have you been doing?' 'I have been writing.' He paused, laughed, and then said, 'And what have you been writing?' And when I told him, I wish you could have seen him! He looked at me for a while as if he did not understand me, and then laughed heartily. He is very easy to laugh, but his manners are as different from Mr. Tayloe's as can be — but hush! what am I drawing comparisons for? I do not feel in the least restrained where he is, and can talk to him better than to any other gentleman here. Would not you like to have such a teacher? "Feb. 6th. — ^I wonder when father will come up; I have been looking for him every day for more than a week. Mr. Nevius was here the other day. I inquired after you, but he had never seen you when he went to Mr. Miller's. I was quite disappointed, and I wish you would show yourself next time — that is, if you can. "I very often think of the times we ate roasted corn and tumipe in the midst of the corn-field; don't you remember the evening when the supper-bell rang and we hid our corn among the leaves of the com that was growing? I never knew how much I loved you or any of my friends until I was separated from them. Mr. Nevius brought a letter for sister from Anne Cams. She still writes in that desponding style you know she was so remarkable for in school, but I am glad to see from her letter that she has come to the conclusion to be contented with her lot. " I hope you do not indulge in such feelings, and, indeed, you have no reason to do so, for you are only six miles from your mother and friends, and you are with your brother, and I think you will find a valuable friend in Malvina. How do you like your new teacher and situation? If you are ever home-sick, study hard and forget it ''I have made many pleasant acquaintances here, and among them Mr. Tayloe's Same I I do not think they are en- gaged, but he goes there very frequently, and the students 91 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY plague him half to death about her, and he never denies it. He boards here. She has a fair skin, blue eyes, and almost red hair, but she is very pretty 'for all that.' She is about seventeen. There is a little girl about my own age here, who takes your place in my affections while here; she is a grand- daughter of Professor Wilson, and lives in his house. Her name is Louisa Caruthers. I will speak to Lou about you, for you must be acquainted. But a truce to this nonsense! Do not show this letter to any one of Mr. Miller's family, for I feel restrained if I think that my letters are to be shown to any except my particular friends. I will not show yours. Show this to mother, your mother, E. D., and V.Winfree. Give my respects to all Mr. M.'s family, take some of my best love for younself , and divide the rest among my friends. "Now farewell, do not forget me, and I will ever be "Your sincerely attached friend, "M. V. H." The foregoing priggish and stilted epistle begins the next chapter of my Ufe-story. After Miss Wilson's departure, and divers unsuccessful attempts to obtain a successor to his liking, my father determined upon a bold departure from the beaten path of traditional and conventional usage in the matter of girls' education. The widow of Reverend Doctor Rice lived in the iumae- diate neighborhood of Union Theological Seminary, founded by her husband, and of which he was the first president. The cluster of dwellings that had grown up around the two institutions of learning — Hampden-Sidney College and the School of Divinity — made, with the venerable "College Church/' an educational centre for a community noted for generations past for intelligence and refinement. Prince Edward, Charlotte, and Halifax were closely adjacent counties pcopkxl by what nolxxly then ridiculed as some of the "first families" of the state. Venables, Carring- tons, ReadeSi Bouldins, Watkinses, Randolphs, CabeUs, 92 A COLLEGE NEIGHBORHOOD Mortons, Lacys — ^had borne a conspicuous part in state, church, and social history. The region was aristocratic — and Presbyterian. There was much wealth, for tobacco was the most profitable crop of Central and Southern Vir- ginia, and the plantations bordering the Appomattox River were a mine of riches to the owners. Stately mansions — most of them antedating the Revolutionary War — crowned gently rolling hills rising beyond the river, each, with its little village of domestic offices, great stables, tobacco- bams, and ''quarters,'' making up an establishment that was feudal in character and in power. Every planter was college-bred and a politician. The local atmosphere of "College HiU" was not unlike that of an Old World university town. The professors of the sister institutions of learning occupied houses in the vicinity of seminary and college, and the quaint church, the bricks mellowed to red-brown by time, stood equi- distant from both. One feature of the church impressed my youthful imagi- nation. "Cousin Ben," of Montrose — ^afterward the senior professor in the seminary, and as Rev. B. M. Smith, D.D., known throughout the Southern and Northern Presby- terian Church as a leader in learning and in doctrine — ^had, when a student of Hampden-Sidney, brought from Western Virginia a sprig of Scotch broom in his pocket. "The Valley" — ^now a part of West Virginia — was mainly settled by Scotch-Irish emigrants, and the broom was imported with their household stuff. The boy set the withered slip in the earth just inside of the gate of the church- yajd. In twenty years it encompassed the walls with a setting of greenery, overran the enclosure, escaped under the fence, and raced rampant down the hill, growing tall and lush wherever it could get a foothold. In blossom- time the mantle of gold was visible a mile away. The smell of broom always brings back to me a vision of that ugly 93 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY (but dear) red-brown church and the goodly throng, pour- ing from doors and gate at the conclusion of the morning service, filling yard and road — well-dressed, well-bom county folk, prosperous and hospitable, and so happily content with their lot and residence as to beUeve that no other people was so blessed of the Lord they served diligently and with godly fear. Without the church- yard were drawn up cumbrous family coaches, which conveyed dignified dames and dainty daughters to and from the sanctuary. Beyond these was a long line of saddle-horses waiting for their masters — blooded hunters for the young men, substantial cobs for their seniors. None except invalided men deigned to accept seats in carriages. As may be gathered from the formally familiar and ir- resistibly funny epistle, indited when I had been four months an insignificant actor in the scene I have sketched, "religious privileges" was no idle term then and there. Our social outings were what I have indicated. There were no concerts save the "Monthly Concert of Prayer for For- eign Missions" (held simultaneously in every church in the state and Union) ; not a theatre in Virginia, excepting one in Richmond, banned for the religious public by the awful memories of the burning of the playhouse in 1811. "Din- ing-days," which their descendants name "dinner-parties," were numerous, and there was much junketing from one plantation to another, a ceaseless drifting back and forth of young people, overflowing, now this house, now that, al- ways certain of a glad welcome, and contriving, without the adventitious aid of cards or dancing, to lead joyous, full lives. Once a week the community turned out, en masses for church-going. They were a devout folk — ^those F. F. V.'s, at which we mock now — and considered it a public duty not to forsake the assembling of themselves together for 94 THE WORLD WIDENS worship, prayerB, and sermons. These latter were mtel- lectual, no less than spiritual pabulum. Oratory had not gone out of fashion in these United States, and in Virginia it was indigenous to the soil. Pulpit eloquence was in its glory, and speech-making at barbecues, anniversaries, and political gatherings, in court-rooms and upon "stumps," was an art learned by boys in roundabouts and practised as long as veterans could stand upon their shrunken calves. People flocked to church to attend reverently upon di- vine service, and, when the benediction was pronounced, greeted friends and neighbors, cheerily chatting in the aisles and exchanging greetings between the benches they had occupied during the services — men and women sitting apart, as in the Quaker meeting-house — ^as freely as we now salute and stroll with acquaintances in the foyer of the opera-house. Such were some of the advantages and enjoyments in- cluded in the elastic phrase "religious privileges," vaunted by the epistolary twelve-year-old. "Rice Hill" was a commodious dwelling, one mile from the seminary, and not quite so far from the college. Doctor Rice had literally spent and been spent in the work which had crowned his ministry — the foundation and endowment of a Southern School of Divinity. At his death, friends and admirers. North and South, agreed that a suitable monu- ment to him would be a home for the childless widow. She had a full corps of family servants, who had followed her to her various residences, and she eked out her income by supplying table-board to students from college and semi- nary. Thus much in explanation of the references to the coming in of "the gentlemen" in the "evening" — rural ^^iginian for afternoon. A kindly Providence had appointed unto us these pleas- ant paths at the impressionable period of our Uves. The goodliest f eatiu^ in that appointment was that Robert Reid 95 I MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Howison, subsequently "LL.D.," and the author of a History of Virginia, and The Student^ s History of the United States, became the tutor of my sister and myself. He came to us at twelve o'clock each day, and we dined at half-past two. Hence, all our studying was done out of school-hours. The arrangement was eccentric in the ex- treme in the eyes of my father's acquaintances and critics. Other girls were in the class-room from nine until twelve, and after recess had a session of two hours more. That this, the most oiUr6 of "Mr. Hawes's experiments," would be a ludicrous failure was a foregone conclusion. Whereas, the cool brain had reckoned confidently upon the fidelity of the tutor and the conscientiousness of pupils accustomed to the discipline of a home where implicit obedience was the law. Never had learners a happier period of pupilage, and the cordial relations between teacher and students testified to the mutual desire to meet, each, the requirements of the other party to the compact. To the impetus given our minds by association with the genial scholar who directed our studies, was added the stim- ulus of the table-talk that went on in our hearing daily. It was the informal, suggestive chat of men eager for knowledge, comparing notes and opinions, and discussing questions of deep import — historical, biological, and theo- logical. In the main, they were a bright set of fellows; in the main, likewise, gentlemen at heart and in bearing. It goes without saying that the exception in my mind to the latter clause was our late and hated tutor. I might write to Dorinda, in constrained goody-goodyishness, of the im- propriety of "drawing comparisons" between him and Mr. Howison, whose "easy" laugh and winning personality wrought powerfully upon my childish fancy. At heart I loved the one and consistently detested the other. To this hour I recall the gratified thrill of conscious 96 A BELOVED TUTOR curity and triumph that coursed through my minute being when, Mr. Tayloe having taken it upon himself to reprove me for something I said — pert, perhaps, but not otherwise oflFensive — Mr. Howison remarked, with no show of tem- per, but firmly: "Mr. Tayloe, you will please recollect that this young lady is now under my care!" He laughed the next moment, as if to pass the matter oflf pleasantly, but all three of us comprehended what was implied. We began French with our new tutor, and geometry! I crossed the Pons Asinorum in January, and went on with Euclid passably well, if not creditably. Mathematics was never my strong point. The patience and perfect temper of the preceptor never failed him, no matter how far I came short of what he would have had me accomplish in that direction. " Educate them as if they were boys and preparing for college," my father had said, and he was obeyed. Beyond and above the benefit derived from the study of text-books was the education of daily contact with a mind so richly stored with classic and modem literature, so keenly alive to all that was worthy in the natural, mental, and spiritual world as that of Robert Howison. He had been graduated at the University of Virginia, and for a year or more had practised law in Richmond, resign- ing the profession to begin studies that would prepare him for what he rated as a higher calling. My debt to him is great, and inadequately acknowledged in these halting lines. Were I required to tell what period of my nonage had most to do with shaping character and coloring my life, I should reply, without hesitation, "The nine months passed at Rice Hill." A new, boundless realm of thought and feeling was opened to the little provincial from a narrow, neutral- tinted neighborhood. I was a dreamer by nature and by 97 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY habit; and my dreams took on a new complexion; a bom story-maker, and a wealth of material was laid to my hand. We were a family of mad book-lovers, and the libraries of seminary and college were to my eyes twin Golcondas of illimitable possibilities. Up to now, novel- reading had been a questionable delight in which I hardly dared indulge freely. I was taught to abhor deceit and clandestine practices, and my father had grave scruples as to the wisdom of allowing young people to devour fic- tion. We might read magazines, as we might have con- fectionery, in limited suppUes. A bound novel would be like a dinner of mince-pie and sweetmeats, breeding mental and moral indigestion. So, when Mr. Howison not only permitted, but advised the perusal of Scott's novels and poems, I fell upon them with joyful surprise that kindled into rapture as I became familiar with the Wizard and his work. We lived in the books we read then, discussing them at home and abroad, as we talk now of living issues and current topics. The Heart of Midlothiany Marmion, The Lay of the Last Minstrel^ Peveril of the Peak, and Waverley were read that winter on stormy afternoons and during the long evenings that suc- ceeded the early supper. Sometimes Mr. Howison Ungered when his comrades had gone back to their dormitories, and took his part in the fascinating entertainment. Usual- ly the group was composed of Aunt Rice, her sister (Mrs. Wharey, lately widowed, who was making arrangements to settle upon an adjoining plantation), Mrs. Wharey's daughter, another "Cousin Mary," my sister, and myseU. Aunt Rice was a "character" in her way and day; shrewd, kindly sjnnpathetic, active in church and home, and with a marvellous repertoire of tale and anecdote that made her a most entertaining companion. "The Semi- nary" was her foster-child; the students had from her maternal interest and affection. Like other gentlewomen 98 COLONIZATION DREAMS of her time and latitude, she was well versed in the English classics and in translations from the Latin and Greek. Pope, Swift, and Addison were household favorites, and this winter she was reading with delight the just-published History of the ReformaHon, by Merle d'Aubign^. She al- ways wore black — merino in the momiog, black silk or satin in the afternoon — ^and a regulation old lady's cap with ribbon string9 tied under a double chin, and I think of her as always knitting lamb's-wool stockings. Hers was a pronounced individuality in every capacity she assumed to fill — ^mistress, housewife, neighbor, and general well- wisher. She never scolded, yet she managed the dozen or more servants that had come down to her by ordinary generation — seven of them men and boys — ^judiciously and well. Even then she was meditating a scheme she after- ward put into successful execution — ^namely, Uberating all her slaves and sending them to Liberia. To this end she had taught them to read and write, and each boy was trained in some manual trade. She superintended their religious education as faithfully. Every Sunday night all the n^roes who were beyond infancy assembled in the dining-room for Scripture readings expounded by her own pleasant voice, and for recitations in the Shorter Catechism and Village Hymn-book. They were what was called in the neighborhood vernacular, "a likely lot." The boys and men were clever workers in their several Hnes of labor. The women were skilled in the use of loom, spinning-wheel, and needle, and excellent cooks. One and all, they were made to understand from babyhood what destiny awaited them so soon as they were equipped for the enterprise. I wish I could add that the result met her fond expecta- tions. While the design was inchoate, her example served as a stock and animating illustration of the wisdom of those who urged upon Virginia slaveholders the duty of return- ing the blacks to the land from which their fathers were 8 99 MARION HARLAND^S AUTOBIOGRAPHY stolen. Colonization was boldly advocated in public and in private, and the old lady was a fervent convert. In the fulness of time she sent out five families, strong and healthy, as well-educated as the average Northern farmer and mechanic. She sold Bice Hill and well-nigh impov- erished herself in her old age to fit out the colony with clothes and household goods, and went to spend the few remaining years of her life in the home of her sister. The great labor of her dreams and hope accomplished, she chanted a happy "Nunc Dimittis" to sympathizer and to doubter. She had solved the Dark Problem that baflSed the world's most astute statesmen. If all who hearkened unto her would do likewise, the muttering of the hell that was already moving from its depth under the feet of the nation, would be silenced forever. The competent colonists had hardly had time to send back to their emancipated mistress news of their safe ar- rival in the Promised Land, when they found themselves in grievous straits. These, duly reported to Aunt Bice, were African fevers that exhausted their strength and con- sumed their stock of ready money; the diflSculty of earn- ing a livelihood while they were ignorant of the language and customs of the natives; lack of suitable clothing; scarcity of provisions, and a waiting-list of etceteras that rent the tender heart of the benefactress with imavailing pity. She was importuned for money, for clothes, for groceries — even that she would, for the love of Heaven and the sake of old times, send them a barrel of rice — which, infidels to her faith in colonization did not fail to remind her, was to be had in Liberia for the raising. The stout-hearted liberator never owned in word her disappointment at the outcome of long years of patient preparation and personal privation, or gave any sign of appreciation of the truth that her grand solution of the Dark Problem was the song of the drunkard and a by-word 100 MAJOR MORTON and a hissing in the mouth of the unbeliever. But she ceased long before her death, in 1858, to tax her listeners' patience by setting forth the beauties of colonization as the practical abolition of negro slavery in America. If her ancestors had sinned in bringing the race into bond- age, and her teeth were thereby set on edge, she hid her hurt. This significant silence was the only token by which her best friends divined her consciousness of the humiliating revelation which had fallen into the evening of a well-spent life. She had exchanged for the five famiUes bom and reared in her home, dependence, comfort, and happiness, for freedom, pauperism, and discontent. The cherished bud had been passing sweet. The fruit was as bitter as gall. At the time of which I am writing, the dream-bubble was at the brightest and biggest. She was in active corre- spondence with the officers of the Colonization Society; sub- scribed to and read colonization publications, and dealt out excerpts from the same to all who would listen ; was busy, sanguine, and bright, beholding herself, in imagination, the leader in a crusade that would wipe the stain of slavery from her beloved state. One event of that wonderful winter was a visit paid to Aunt Rice by her aged father, Major James Morton, of High HiU, Cumberland County, the "Old Solid Column" of Revolutionary story. The anecdote of Lafayette's recog- nition of his former brother-in-arms was related in an earlier chapter. It was treasured in the family as a bit of choice silver would be prized. I had heard it once and again, and had constructed my own portrait of the stout- hearted and stout-bodied warrior. Surprise approxunated dismay when I behold a withered, tremulous old man, en- feebled in mind almost to childishness, his voice breaking shrilly as he talked — a pitiable, crumbling wreck of the stately column. 101 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY He had definite ideas upon certain subjects stiU, and was doughty in their defence. For example, during this visit to his daughter, he sat one evening in the chinmey- comer, apparently dozing, while a party of young people were discussing the increasing facilities of travel by steam, and contrasting them with the slow methods of their fathers. The Major drowsed on, head sunken into his military stock, eyes closed, and jaw drooping — the imper- sonation of senile decay — ^when somebody spoke of a trip up the Hudson to West Point the preceding summer. The veteran raised himself as if he had been shaken by the shoulder. "That is not true!" he said, doggedly. "But, Major," returned the surprised narrator, "I did gp! There is a regular line of steamers up the river." The old war-horse reared his head and beat the floor with an angry heel. "I say it is not true! It could not be true! General Washington had a big chain stretched across the river after Arnold tried to sell West Point, so that no vessel could get up to the fort. And, sir!" bringing his cane down upon the hearth with a resounding thump, his voice clear and resonant, "there is not that man upon earth who would dare take down that chain. Why, sir. General Washington put it therer A fragment of the mighty chain, forged in the moun- tains of New Jersey, lies upon the parade-ground at West Point. Forty years thereafter I laid a caressing hand upon a huge link of the displaced boom, and told the anecdote to my twelve-year-old boy, adding, as if the stubborn loyalist had said it in my ear, "And there it stands until this day. To witness if I lie." 102 MAJOR MORTON We read Ivanhoe in the open air when the spring wore into summer. The afternoons were long^ and when study- hours were over we were wont to repair to the roomy back-porch, shaded by vines, and looking across a Uttle valley, at the bottom of which were a bubbling spring, a twisting brook, and a tiny pool as round as a moon, to the hill crowned by '' Morton,'' a plain but spacious house occupied by the Wharey family. Not infrequently a seminary student, attracted by Mary Wharey's brunette comeliness and happy temper, would join our group and lend a voice in the reading. Moses Drury Hoge, a cousin of my mother and of Aunt Rice, was with us at least twice a week, basking in the summer heat like a true son of the tropics. He was a tutor in Hampden- Sidney while a divinity student, and, as was proved by his subsequent career, was the superior of his fellows in ora- torical gifts and other endowments that mark the youth for success from the beginning of the race. I think he was bom sophisticated. Already his professors yielded him something that, while it was not homage in any sense of the word, yet singled him out as one whose marked individu- ality and brilliant talents gave him the right to speak with authority. At twenty-three, without other wealth than his astute brain and ready wits, his future was sure. He won in after years the title of "the Patrick Henry of the Southern Pulpit." Of him I shall have occasion to speak further as my story progresses. X FAMILY LETTERS — COMMENCEMENT AT HAMPDEN-SIDNEY — THEN AND NOW "Richmond, June 10th, 1843. "My DEAR Wipe, — ^After a fatiguing day it is with great pleasure I sit down to have a little chat with you, and to inform you of our progress. Were I disposed to give credit to lucky and unlucky days, a little incident occurred on our way down which would have disturbed me very much. We were going on at a reasonable rate when, to our surprise, the front of the 'splendid line of coach' assumed a strange position, and for a moment I thought we should be wrecked, but it was only minus a wheel — one of the front ones having taken leave of us and journeying, 'singly and alone,' on the other side of the turnpike. We were soon 'all right,' and arrived here in good health but much fatigued. Mother has hardly got rested yet, but thinks another quiet day will be sufficient, and that she will be ready to start on Monday morning and be able to hold out to go through without again stopping. We have passed over the most fatiguing part of our journey. We shall leave on Monday morning by the railroad, and, imless some accident should happen on the way, oicpect to be in Boston on Wednesday about 9 o'clock a.m. It is my in- tention to keep on, unless mother should require rest, more than can be had on the line of travel. . . . Well, love, are you not tired of this overparticularity about business? I will not weary you any longer with it. I have never left home with a stronger feeling of regret than at the present time, and it appears that the older I get, the greater the trial to stay away. Now you will say that it is because you become more and more interesting. Well, it must be so, for I cannot dis- 104 FAMILY LETTERS C50ver any other cause. Do not let it be long before you write. "The heat, wind, and dust of the city to-day have put me entirely out of trim for writing, and my talent is but small even imder the most favorable circumstances. By-the-bye, called on Mrs. D. last evening to deliver a message from Mr. D. Quite a pleasant ten minutes' affair, and was excused. Herbert must save some of those nice plants for that box to be placed on a pole, and tell him if he is a good boy we will try and have a nice ^air for the little birds. My man must have a hand in the work, if it be only to look on, and Alice can do the talking part. Don't let Virginia take to her cham- ber. Keep her circulating about the house in all dry weather; the wind will not injure her, unless it be quite damp, at least so I think. "Sunday, 11th, — Attended Doctor Plumer's church this morning, and heard a young man, the son of one of the pro- fessors at Princeton, preach. The sermon was good, but should have preferred the Doctor. Morning rainy and no one in from Olney. "Evening. — Attended Mr. Magoon's church. He preached from the words, 'Be not deceived, God is not mocked,' etc. A good, practical sermon; he alluded to ministers and church members away from home, and showed them in many cases to be mockers of God, and instanced inconsistencies, all of which he termed 'mockery.' Expect "to-night to hear Doctor Plumer. Now, love, you have a full history up to the time of our departure. Write to me soon, and, after telling about yourself, the children, and servants, give me an account of store, farming, and gardening operations. Those large sheets will hold a great deal, if written very close. Kiss Alice and the baby for father. Tell Herbert and Horace that father wishes them to be good boys and learn fast. And now, dear Anna, I must bid you adieu, commending you and our dear ones to the care of Him whose mercies have been so largely bestowed on us in days past. May He pre- serve you from all evil and cause you to dwell in perfect peace." 105 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY The forgoing extracts from a letter written by my father during the (to us) "wonderful summer" of our sojourn in Prince Edward had to do with the periodical visit paid by my grandmother ta her Massachusetts home. I am deeply impressed in the perusal of these confidential epistles with the absolute dependence of the strong man — whom mere acquaintances rated as reserved to sternness, and singularly undemonstrative, even to his friends — upon the gentle woman who was, I truly believe^ the one and only love of his lifetime. He talked to her by tongue and by pen of every detail of business; she was the confidante of every plan, however immature; she^ and she alone, fathomed the depths of a soul over which Puritan blood and training impelled him to cast a veil. In all this he had not a secret from her. Portions of the letter which I have omitted go into particulars of transactions that would interest few women. No matter how weary he was after a day of travel or work, he had always time to "talk it out'' with his alter ego. The term has solemn force, thus applied. In the injunction to write of domestic, gardening, and farming affairs, he brings in "the store," now of goodly propor- tions and "departments," and into which she did not set foot once a week, and then as any other customer might. "Those large sheets will hold a great deal if written very close," he says, archly. They had evidently been pro- vided for this express purpose before he left home. One paragraph in the exscinded section of the letter be- longs to a day and system that have lapsed almost from the memory of the living. An infant of Mary Anne, my mother's maid, was ill with whooping-cough when the master took his journey north- ward. "I am quite anxious to hear how Edgar is," he writes. " I fear the case may prove fatal, and am inclined to blame 106 FAMILY LETTERS myself for leaving home before it was decided. Yet I know he is in good hands, and that you have done and will do everything necessary for his comfort. Also that, in the event of his death, all that is proper will be attended to. When I get home the funeral shall be preached, of which you will please inform his par- ents." No word of written or spoken comfort would do more to soothe the hearts of the bereaved parents than the assurance that the six-months-old baby should have his funeral ser- mon in good and regular order. The discourse was seldom preached at the time of interment. Weeks, and sometimes months, intervened before the friends and relatives could be convened with sufficient pomp and circumstance to satisfy the mourners. I have attended services embody- ing a long sermon, eulogistic of the deceased and admoni- tory of the living, when the poor mortal house of clay had mouldered in the grave for half a year. I actually knew of one funeral of a wife that was postponed by untoward circumstances until, when a s}mipathizing community was convoked to listen to the sermon, the ex-widower sat in the front seat as chief mourner with a second wife and her baby beside him. And the wife wore a black gown with black ribbon on her bonnet, out of respect to her predecessor! They were whites, and church members in good and r^ular standing. Little Edgar died the day after my father took the train from Richmond for the fast run through to Boston — in two da3rs and two nights! When the master got home after a month's absence, the funeral sermon was preached in old Petersville Church, three miles from the Court House, on a Sunday afternoon, and the parents and elder children were conveyed thither in the family carriage, driven by Spots- wood, who would now be the "coachman." Then he was 107 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY the "carriage-driver." They took time for everything then-a-dajrs, and plenty of it. In September, Mea and I had the cuhnination of our experiences and "privileges" upon College Hill in the Hampden-Sidney Commencement. I had never attended one before. I have seen none since that were so grand, and none that thrilled me to the remotest fibre of my being as the exercises of that gloriously cloudless day. I hesitate to except even the supreme occasion when, from a box above the audience-floor packed with two thousand students and blazing with electric lights, I saw my tall son march with his class to receive his diploma from the president of a great university, and greeted him jo3rfully when, the ceremonial over, he brought it up to lay in my lap. There were but four graduates in that far-off little coun- try college with the hyphenated name and the honored history. It may be that their grandchildren will read the roll here: Robert Campbell Anderson, Thomas Brown Venable, Paul Carrington, and Mr. Rice, whose initials I think were "T. C." There were, I reiterate, but four graduates, but they took three honors. Robert Anderson was valedictorian; Mr. Rice of the uncertain initials had the philosophical oration; Tom Brown Venable had the Latin salutatory; and Paul Carrington, the one honorless man, made the most brilliant speech of them all. It was a way he had. The madcap of the college — who just "got through," as it were, by the skin of his teeth, by cramming night and day for two months to make up for an indefinite series of wretched recitations and numberless escapades out of class — he easily eclipsed his mates on that day of days. The boys used to say that he was "Saul," until he got up to declaim, or make an original address. Then he was "Paul." He was Pauline, par Eminence, to-day. I could recite verbatim his lament over Byron's wasted 108 COMMENCEMENT AT HAMPDEN-SIDNEY powers, and I see, as if it were but yesterday that it thrilled me, the pose and passion of the outburst, arms tossed to heaven in the declamation: it 01 had his harp been timed to Zion's songs I" Music was "rendered" by an admirably trained choir. The hour of the brass-band had not come yet to Hampden- Sidney. And the choir rendered sacred music — such grand old anthems as, "Awake! awake! put on thy strength, O Zion! Put on thy beautiful garments'*; and. "How beautiful upon the mountains Are the feet of him that publisheth salvation; That saith unto Zion, 'Thy God reigneth!'" Doctor Maxwell was the president then, and was por- tentous in my eyes in his don's gown. Dear old Hampden-Sidney ! she has arisen, renewed in youth and vigor, from the cinders of semi-desolation, has cast aside the sackcloth and ashes of her grass-widowhood, and stepped into the ranks of modem progress. I like best to recall her when she maintained the prestige of her traditional honors and refused to accept decadence as a fixed fact. XI BACK IN POWHATAN — OLD VIKGINIA HOUSEWIFERY — ^A SING- ING-CLASS IN THE FORTIES — THE SIMPLE LIFE? My father's " wajrs" were so well known by his neighbors it was taken for granted that the education of his daugh- ters would not be conducted along conventional lines after we returned home. Mr. Howison had completed his theo- logical course in the seminary, and there were other plans on foot, known as yet to my parents alone, which made the engagement of another tutor inexpedient. It did not seem odd to us then, but I wonder now over the routine laid down by our father, and followed steadily by us during the next winter and summer. A room in the second story was fitted up as a "study" for the two girls. Each had her desk and her comer. Thither we repaired at 9 o'clock A.M. for five da}rs of the week, and sat us down to work. When problem, French exercise, history, and rhetoric lessons were prepared, we gravely and duti- fully recited them to each other; wrote French exercises as carefully as if Mr. Howison's eye were to scan them; and each corrected that of her fellow to the best of her abiUty. We read history and essa3rs upon divers topics aloud, and discussed them freely. The course of study was marked out for us by our beloved ex-tutor, who wrote to us from time to time, in the midst of other and engross- ing cares, in proof of continued remembrance and interest m his whilom pupils. We girls wrought faithfully and happily until one o'clock 110 BACK IN POWHATAN at our lessons. The rest of the day was our own, except afternoon hours which were passed with our mother, and in occupations directed by her. She had inherited from her mother taste and talent for dainty needlework, and, as all sewing was done by hand, her hands were always full, although her own maid was an expert seamstress. The Virginian matron of antebellum days never wielded broom or duster. She did not make beds or stand at wash-tub or ironing-table. Yet she was as busy in her line of housewifely duty as her "Yankee" sister. Provisions were bought by the large quantity, and kept in the spacious store-room, which was an important section of the dwelling. Every morning the cook was summoned as soon as breakfast was fairly over, appearing with a big wooden tray under her elbow, sundry empty "buckets" slung upon her arm, and often a pail on her head, car- ried there because every other available portion of her person was occupied. The two went together to the store- room, and materials for the daily food of white and black households were measured into the various vessels. The notable housewife knew to a fraction how much of the raw products went to the composition of each dish she or- dered. So much flour was required for a loaf of rolls, and so much for a dozen beaten biscuits; a stated quantity of butter was for cake or pudding; sugar was measured for the kitchen-table and for that at which the mistress would sit with her guests. Molasses was poured into one bucket, lard measured by the great spoonful into another; "bacon- middling" was cut off by the chunk for cooking with vege- tables and for the servants' eating; hams and shoulders were laid aside from the supply in the smoke-house, to which the pair presently repaired. Dried fruits in the winter, spices, vinegar — the scores of minor condiments and flavoring that were brought into daily use in the lavish provision for appetites accustomed to the fat of the land — 111 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY were "given out" as scrupulously as staples. If wine or brandy were to be used in sauces^ the mistress would supply them later. It was not right, according to her code, to put temptation of that sort in the way of her de- pendants. It was certainly unsafe. Few colored women drank. I do not noW recall a solitary instance of that kind in all my experience with, and observation of negro servants, before or after the war. I wish I could say the same for Scotch, Irish, and German cooks whom I have employed during a half-century of active housewifery. Negro men were notoriously weak in that direction. The most honest could not resist the sight and smell of liquor. The failing would seem to be racial. It is an es- tablished fact that when the solid reconstructed South "went dry" in certain elections, it was in the hope of keeping ardent spirits out of the way of the negroes. To return to our housekeeper of the mid-nineteenth cen- tury: The second stage in the daily round appointed to her by custom and necessity was to superintend the wash- ing of breakfast china, glass, and silver. In seven cases out of ten she did the work herself, or deputed it to her daughters. One of my earliest recollections is of standing by my mother as she washed the breakfast "things," and allowed me to polish the teaspoons with a tiny towel just the right size for my baby hands. Her own hands were very beautiful, as were her feet. To preserve her taper fingers from the hot water in which silver and glass were washed, she wore gloves, cutting off the tips of the fingers. The proper handling of "fragiles" was a fine art, and few colored servants arose to the right practice of it. I have in my memory the picture of one stately gentlewoman, serene of face and dignified of speech, who retained her seat at the table when the rest of us had finished breakfast. To her, then, in dramatic parlance, the butler, arrayed in long, white apron, sleeves rolled to 112 OLD VIRGINIA HOUSEWIFERY the elbow, bearing a pail of cedar-wood with bright brass hoops, three-quarters full of hot water. This he set down upon a small table brought into the room for the purpose, and proceeded to wash plates, cups, glass, silver, etc., col- lected from the board at which madam still presided, a bit of fancy knitting or crocheting in hand, which did not with- draw her eyes from vigilant attention to his movements. Like surveillance was exercised over each branch of housework. Every part of the establishment was visited by the mistress before she sat down to the sewing, which was her own especial task. Her daughters were instructed in the intricacies of backstitch, fell-seams, overcasting, hemstitching, herringbone, button-holes, rolled and flat hems, by the time they let down their frocks and put up their hair. The girl who had not made a set of chemises for herself before she reached her fourteenth birthday was accounted slow to learn what became a gentlewoman who expected to have a home of her own to manage some day. Until I was ten years old I knit my own stockings of fine, white cotton, soft as wool. Gentlemen of the old school refused to wear socks and stockings bought over a counter. In winter they had woollen, in summer cotton foot-gear, home-knit by wives or aunts or daughters. We embroidered our chemise bands and the rufiles of skirts, the undersleeves that came in with *' Oriental sleeves," and the broad collars that accompanied them. Reading aloud more often went with the sewing-circle foimd in every home, than gossip. My father set his fine, strong face like a flint against neighborhood scandal and tittle-tattle. " 'They say' is next door to a lie," was one of the sententious sayings that silenced anecdotes dealing with village characters and doings. A more effectual quietus was: ''Who says that? Never repeat a tale without giv- ing the author's name. That is the only honorable thing to do." 113 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY I do not know that the exclusion of chit-chat of our friends drove us to books for entertainment, when miles of seams and gussets and overcasting lay between us and springtime with its outdoor amusements and occupations. I do say that we did not pine for evening *' functions," for luncheons and mating, when we had plenty of books to read aloud and congenial companions with whom to dis- cuss what we read. Once a week we had a singing-class, which met around our dining-table. My father led this, giving the key with his tuning-fork, and now and then accompanying with his flute a hymn in which his tenor was not needed. Have I ever spoken of the singular fact that he had ''no ear for music," yet sang tunefully and with absolute ac- curacy, with the notes before him? He could not carry the simplest air without the music-book. It was a clear case of a lack of co-ordination between ear and brain. He was passionately fond of music, and sang well in spite of it, playing the flute correctly and with taste — ^always by note. Take away the printed or written page, and he was all at sea. Those songful evenings were the one dissipation of the week. A singing-master, the leader of a Richmond choir, had had a school at the Coiul; House the winter before, and The Boston Academy was in every house in the village. I could run glibly over the names of the regular attendants on the Tuesday evenings devoted to our mudcale. George Moody, my father's good-looking ward, now seventeen, and already in love up to his ears with Effie D., my es- pecial crony, who was a month my junior; Thaddeus Ivey, a big blond of the true Saxon type, my father's partner, and engaged to be married to a pretty Lynchburg girl ; James Ivey, a clerk in the employ of Hawes & Ivey — nice and quiet and gentlemanly, and in love with nobody that we knew of — ^these were the bassos. Once in a while, 114 A SINGING -CLASS IN THE FORTIES U CSousin Joe," who was busily engaged in a seven years' courtship of a fair villager, Effie's sister, joined us and bore our souls and voices aloft with the sonorous " brum I brum 1" of a voice at once rich and well-trained. There were five sopranos— we called it "the treble" then — and two women sang "the second treble." One weak -voiced neighbor helped my father out with the tenor. Until a year or two before the singing-master invaded the country, women sang tenor, and the alto was known as "counter." The twentieth century has not quite repudiated the tunes we delighted in on those winter nights, when "The fire, with hickory logs supplied, ^ Went roaring up the chimney wide," and we lined both sides of the long table, lighted by tall sperm-oil lamps, and bent seriously happy faces over The Boston Academy, singing with the spirit and, to the best of our ability, with the understanding — "Lanesboro' " and "Cambridge" and "Hebron" and "Boyleston" and "Zion," and learning, with puckered brows and steadfast eyes glued to the notes, such new tunes as "Yarmouth," "Anvem," and "Zerah." "Sing at it!" my father would command in heartsome tones, from his stand at the top of the double line. " You will never learn it if you do not make the first trial." I arose to my feet the other day with the rest of the con- gregation of a fashionable church for a hymn which "every- body" was enjoined from the pulpit to "sing." When the choir burst forth with "Triumphant Zion! Lift thy head!" I dropped my head upon my hands and sobbed. Were the words ever sung to any other tune than "Anvem," I wonder? 0 115 MARION HABXiANP'8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY In the interval of dngiiig we chatted, laughed, and were happy. How proud all of us girls were, on one stormy ni^t when the gathering was smaller than usual, and good- looking Qeoige— ooloring to his ears, but resolute— pang the baas sob in the fourth line of "Cambridge": "Resound their Maker's praise!" The rest cau^t the words from hie tongue and earned the tune to a conclusion. We sang until ten o'clock; then apples, nuts, and eakes were brou^t in, and sometimes sweet cider. An boqr later we had the house to ourselves, and knelt for evening praye*B about the fire before going to bed. It was an easy-going existence, that of the well-to-do Virginia countryman of that date. If there were already elements at woric below the surface that were to heave the fair level into smoking ruin, the rank and file of the men who nuule, and who obeyed the laws, did not suspect it. Grumblers there were, and political debates that ran high and hot, but the Commonwealth that had supplied the United States with statesmen and leaders since the Constitution was framed, had no fear of a dissolution of what was, to the apprehension of those now at the helm, the natuml order of thin^. tiLEttlO^ DAT AND A DtalOCRAttd fiA^BlBCttB 1^ ijin^ df the singitig of bihis and the. dej^iU-ture of wUitei' tame suddenly that year. Hyacinths were i^loW in my mother's front yahl early in February^ ahd 1^ cmshaAls Wei^ aflame with 'Hhe fieiy bloe^ms of the peaiik^* The earth awoke from sleep with a bounds and htitnad cteatures thrilled, as at the pred^ of great eV^htii* tt Wte the year of the pl^dential election and a cam-" paign of extraordinary importance. My father talked to m^ of Whiit iilvested it with this importance as We walked together down the street one molliing when the smell of open flbWers and budding foliage was sweet in our nostrils. A Democratic barbecue was to be held in a field on die outskirts of the village just beyond "Jordan's Creek." Hie stttem took its name from the man whose plantation bounded it on the west. The widening and deepening into a pool lit the foot of his garden made it memorable in the Baptist Church. I do not believe there was a negro commimidant in toy other denomination thmtighout the length of the county. And theil- favorite baptizing-place was "Jotrian's CtBek.'* I never kneW why, until my mother's maid — a bright mulatto, With It smart cross of Indian blood in her veins — "gpt thh>ugh/' aftet mighty strivings on hei" paM;, iind on the part df the ftiithful of her own class and eomplejdon, and confided to me her complacency in the thought that sb^ was now safe fot time and etemity< 117 I MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ''For, you see, John the Babtis', he babtized in the River Jerdan, and Brother Watkins, he babtized me in the Creek Jerdan. I s'poee they must be some kin to one another?" My father laughed and then sighed over the story, when I told it as we set out on our walk. The religious beliefs and superstitions of the colored servants were respected by their owners to a degree those who know little of the system as it prevailed at that time, find it hard to believe. From babyhood we were taught never to speak disrespect- fully of the Baptists, or of the vagaries that passed With the negroes for revealed trutlu They had a right to their creeds as truly as we had to ours. This younger generation is also incredulous with respect to another fact connected with our domestic relations. Children were trained in respectful speech to elderly ser- vants— ^indeed, to all who were grown men and women. My mother made me apologize once to this same maid — Mary Anne by name — ^for telling her to " Hush her mouth !" the old Virginian form of "Hold your tongue 1" The bless^ woman explained the cause of her reproof when the maid was out of hearing: ''The expression is imladylike and coarse; Then, again, it is mean — despicably mean ! — ^to be saucy to one who has no right to answer in the same way. If you must be sharp in your talk, quarrel with your equals, not with servants, who cannot meet you on your own ground." The admonition has stuck fast in my mind to this day. By the time we turned the comer in the direction of Jordan's Creek, my father and I were deep in politics. He was the stanchest of Whigs, and the ancient and hon- orable party had for leader, in this year's fight, one whom my instructor held to be the wisest statesman and purest patriot in the land. The ticket, ** Clay and Frelinghuysen," was a beloved household word with us; talk of the tariff, protection and the national debt, which Henry Clay's 118 ELECTION DAY poKcy would wipe out, and forever, if opportunity were granted to him, ran as glibly from our childish tongues as dissertations upon the Catholic bill and parliamentary action thereupon dropped from the lips of the Bronte boy and girls. There was not a shadow of doubt in our minds as to the result of the November fight. "It seems a pity " — I observed, as we looked across the creek down into the distant meadow, where men and boys were moving to and fro, and smoke was rising from fires that had been kindled overnight — "that the Democrats should go to so much expense and trouble only to be de- feated at last.'' "They may not be so sure as you are that they are work- ing for nothing," answered my father, smiling good-humor- edly. "They have had some victories to boast of in the past." "Yes!" I assented, reluctantly. "As, for instance, when Colonel Hopkins was sent to the Legislature! Father, I wish you had agreed to go when they bagged you to let them elect you!" The smile was now a laugh. "To nominate me, you mean. A very di£ferent matter from election, my daughter. Not that I cared for either. If I may be instrumental in the hands of Providence in helping to put the right man into the right place, my political ambitions will be satisfied." "I do hope that Powhatan will go for Clay!" ejaculated I, fervently. "And I think it an outrage that the Rich- mond voters cannot come up to the help of the right, at the presidential election." "The law holds that the real strength of the several states would not be properly represented if this were al- lowed," was the reply. I saw the justice of the law later in life. Then it was oppressive, to my imagination. 119 MARION HARLAND^S AUTOBIOGRAPHY That most doubtful blesstng of eoUghtiened fraeniea^^ uniy3i6al suffrage — ^had not as yet been thrust upon the voters of the United States. In Virginia, the man who held the franchise ipust not only be ^'free, white, and twenty-one/' but he must be a land-owner to the ampunt of at least twenty-rfive dollare. Any free white of the masculine gender owniqg twentyrfive do}lars^ worth of re^ estate in any county had a vote there. If he owned lands of like value in ten counties, he might deposit a vote in each of them, if he could reach them all between sunrise and sunset on Election Day. It was esteemed a duty by the Richmond voter — the city being overwhelmingly Whig •^to distribute his influenpe among doubtful counties in which he was a property-holder. He held and believed for certain that he had a ri|^t to piotect his interests wherever they might lie. Powhatan was a doubtful factor in the addition of election returns. Witness the election to the Legislature at different periods of such Pemocrats as Major Jacob Michaux — from a James River plantation held by his grandr father by a royal grant since the Huguenots sought refuge in Virginia from French persecutors — ^and of the Colonel Hopkins whom I had named. This last was personally popular, a man of pleasing address and fair oratorical poweiB, i^d represented an influential neighborhood in the centre of the county. A most worthy gentleman, as I now know. Then I classed him with Jesuits and tyrants. I had overheard a sanguine Democrat declare in the heat of political ai^ument that '^ Henry L. Hopkins would be President of the United States some day." To which my father retorted, ''When that day comes I shall cross the ocean and swear allegiance to Quepn Victoria.'' When I repeated the direful threat to my mother, she laughed and bade me give myself no unei^iness on the subject, as nothing was more unlikely than that Oolonel 120 ELECTION DAY Hdpkiiid woilld ^Vei' go to the White House. Nevetthe- lem, I idways aeeociated that amiable and courtly gentle- mftti with out probable expatriation. Electioti Day was ever an event of moment with Ud chil- di«tl< From the time wheh I was tall enough to peep over the vihe-draped garden-fence— until I was t^koued too big to stand and stare in so public a place, and was allowed to join the senior^ who watched the street from behind the blinds and between the sprays of the climbitig roses shading the front windows — it was my delight to inspect and pronoimce upon the groups that filled the highway all day long. Children are violent partisans, and we sepa- rated the sheep from the goats — id est, the Whigs from the Democrats — ^as soon as the horsemen became visible through the floating yellow dust of the roads ninnitig from each etld of the street back into the country^ One neigh- boiliood in the lower end of the coimty, bordering upon Chestei^eld^ was familiarly known as the " Yellow Jacket tegJioiL" It took its name> according to popular belief, from the butternut and nankeen stuffs that werd worn by men and women. The term had a sinister meaning to us, although it was sufficiently explained by the costume of tiie voters, who seldom appeared at the Court House in force except upon Election Day. They arrived early in the forenoon^-a straggling procession of sad-faced diti^ns^ or so we fanded — saying little to one another, and looking neither to the left nor the right as their sorrel nags paced up the middle of the wide, irregularly built street. I did not undel'Stand then, nor do I now, their preference for sorrel horses. Certain it is that there Were four of that depressing hue to one black, bay, or gray. So badly groomed were the poor beasts, and so haggy were the nankeen trousers of the men who bestrode them, that a second look Was needed to determine where the rider ended and the steed b^n. We noted, with disdainful glee, that MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY the Yellow Jacket folk turned the comer of the crossway flanking our garden, and so around the back of the pubUc square enclosing Court House, clerk's office, and jail. There they tethered the sorry beasts to the fence, shook down a peck or so of oats from bags they had fastened behind their saddles, and shambled into the square to be lost in the gathering crowd. As they rode through the village, ill - mannered boys chanted: "Democrats — They eat ratsl But Whigs Eat pigs!" Bacon being a product for which the state was famed, the distinction was invidious to the last degree. My mother never let us take up the scandalous doggerel. She said it was vulgar, untrue, and unkind. It was not her fault that each of us had the private beUef that there was a spice of truth in it. When we saw a smart tilbury, drawn by a pair of glossy horses, stop before the "Bell Tavern" opposite our house, the occupants spring to the groimd and leave the equipage to the hostlers — who rushed from the stables at soimd of the clanging bell pulled by the landlord as soon as he caught sight of the carriage — we said in unison: "They are Whigs!" We were as positive as to the politics of the men who rode blooded hunters and wore broadcloth and tall, shining hats. The Yellow Jacket head-gear was drab in color, imcertain in shape. It seemed monstrous to oiu* intolerant youth that "poor white folksy" men should have an equal right with gentle- men, bom and bred, in deciding who should represent the coimty in the Legislature and the district in Congress. 122 ELECTION DAY The crowning excitement of the occasion was reserved for the afternoon. As early as three o'clock I was used to see my father come out of the door of his counting-room over l^e way, watch in hand, and look down the Richmond road. Presently he would be joined there by one, two, or three others, and they compared timepieces, looking up at the westering sun, their faces graver and gestures more enei^tic as the minutes sped by. The junta of women sympathizers behind the vine-curtains began to speculate as to the possibility of accident to man, beast, or carriage, and we children inquired, anxiously, "What would happen if the Richmond voters did not come, after all?'' "No fear of that!" we were assured, our mother add- ing, with modest pride, "Your father has attended to the matter.'' They always came. Generally the cloud of distant dust, looming high and fast upon the wooded horizon, was the first signal of the reinforcements for the Whig party. Through this we soon made out a train of ten or twelve carriages, and perhaps as many horsemen — ^a triumphal cort^e that rolled and caracoled up the street amid the cheers of expectant fellow- voters and of impartial urchins, glad of any chance to hurrah for anybody. The most im- portant figure to me in the scene was my father, as with feigned composure he walked slowly to the head of the front steps, and lifted his hat in courteous acknowledgment of the hands and hats waved to him from carriage and sad- dle-bow. If I thought of Alexander, Napoleon, and Wash- ington, I am not ashamed to recollect it now. That child has been defrauded who has not had a hero in his own home. I was at no loss to know who mine was, on this bland spring morning, as my father and I leaned on a fence on the hither side of the creek and watched the proceedings of the cooks and managers about the al fresco kitchen. 123 MARION HAJILAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ''Too mwy ooo^s spoi} the dinner I" quoth I, as negroes bustled from fire to fire, and white n^en yelled their orders and coupterHDrders. " Not that it matters much what kind of victuals are served at a Demooratic barbecue, so long as there is plenty to drink." "Easy, easy, daughter I" smiled my auditor. "There are good men and true in the other party. We are in danger of forgetting that." "None as good and great as Mr. Clay, father?" ^e raised his bat slightly and involuntarily. "I do not think he has his equal as man and pure patriot in this, or any other country. God defend the right!" "Vou are not afraid lest Polk'' — drawling the mono- syllable in derision — "will beat him, father?" The smile was a laugh — happily confident. " Sanily I I have more faith in human nature and in the ooRiQ^in-sense of the American people than to think that they will pass over glorious Harry of the West, and foiiget hifi distinguished services to the nation, to set in the presi- dential chair an obscure demagogue who has done nothing. Wouldn't you like to go down there and see half an ox roasted, and a whole sheep?" We crossed the stream upon a shaking plank laid from bank to bank, and strolled down the slope to the scene of operations* An immense kettle was swung over a fire of logs that were so many living coals. The smell of Bruns- wick stew had been wafted to us while we leaned on the feiioe. A young man, who had the reputation of being an epicure, to the bc^t of his knowledge and ability, superin- tended the manufacture of the famous delicacy. "Two dozen chickens went into it!" he assured us. "They wanted to make me think it couldn't be made with- out green corn and fresh tomatoes. I knew a trick worth two of that. I have worked it before with dried tomatoes and dried sweet com soaked overnight." id4 A DEMOCRATIC BAtlfeECUE tie smltdked his lipd and winked fatuously. "I've great confidence in your culinary skill/* Waa thd ^bdd-Mtured rejoitldel-. I recollected tlukt t had heaM my fathef ctay of this vWy youth: "I iliti nevei* hard upoh a fcillow Who is a fool becau^ he can^t help it!" But I wondered at his gentleness when the epicure prattlfed on: "Yes, sir! a stew like this is fit fot* Democi^ts to eat. I Wotlldn^t give a Whig so much as a smell of the pot!" " Yoil ought to have a tighter lid, thed," with the samfe good-hiunored intonation, and we passed on to ste the roasts. Shallow pits, six or seven feet long and foUr f^t wide, were half filled with clear coals of hAtd hickory billets. Iron bars were laid across these, gridiron-like, Iknd half-bullocks and whole sheep were cooking over the scarlet embers. There were six pits, e^lch with its iDftJrt. The spot for the speakers' rosthun and the seats of the audience was well-selected. A deep spring welled up in a . grove of maples. The fallen red blossoms carpeted the ground, and the young leaves supplied grateful shade. The meadows sloped gradually toward the spring; l*ude benches of what We called "puncheon logs" — ^that is, the tillnks of trees hewed in half, and the flat sides laid upper- most— were ranged in the form of an amphitheatre. "You have a fine day for the meeting," observed my father to the master of ceremonies, a plantef from the Qenito neighborhood, who gt*eeted the visitors cordially. "Yes, sir! The Lord is on our side, and no mistake!" returned the other, emphatically. "Don't you see that yourself, Mr. HaWes!" "I should not venture to base my faith upon the weath- er," his eyes twinkling while he aflfeeted gravity, "for We reikd that He sends His rain and sunshine UpoU the evil 125 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY and the good. Good-momingl I hope the affair will be as pleasant as the day." Our father took his family into confidence more freely than any other man I ever knew. We were taught not to prattle to outsiders of what was said and done at home. At ten years of age I was used to hearing affairs of personal and business moment canvassed by my parents and my father's partner, who had been an inmate of our house from his eighteenth year — intensely interested to the ut- most of my comprehension and drawing my own conclu- sions privately, yet understanding all the while that what- ever I heard and thought was not to be spoken of to schoolmate or visitor. It was not unusual for my father to confide to me in our early morning rides — ^for he was my riding-master — some scheme he was considering pertaining to church, school, or purchase, talking of it as to an equal in age and intelligence. I hearkened eagerly, and was flattered and honored by the distinction thus conferred. He never charged me not to divulge what was committed to me. Once or twice he had added, '' I know I am safe in telling you this." After which the thumb-screw could not have extracted a syllable of the communication from me. It was during one of these morning rides that he un- folded a plan suggested, as he told me, by our visit to the Democratic barbecue-groimd some weeks before. We had to rise betimes to secure a ride of tolerable length before the warmth of the spring and summer days made the exercise fatiguing and unpleasant. A glass of milk and a biscuit were brought to me while I was dressing in the gray dawn, and I would join my escort at the front gate, where stood the hostler with both horses, while the east was yet but faintly colored by the unseen sun. We were pacing quietly along a plantation road five miles from the Court House, and I was dreamily enjoying 126 A DEMOCRATIC BARBECUE the fresh taste of the dew-laden air upon my lips, and in- haling the scent of the wild thjrme and sheep-mint, bruised by the horses' hoofs, when my companion, who, I had seen, bad been in a brown study for the last mile, began with: "I have been thinking — " The sure prelude to some- thing worth hearing, or so I believed then. A Whig rally was meditated. He had consulted with three of his friends as to the scheme bom of his brain, and there would be a meeting of perhaps a dozen leading men of the party in his coimting-room that afternoon. The afifair was not to be spoken of until date and details were settled. My heart swelled with pride in him, and in my- self as his chosen confidante, as he went on. The recol- lection of the scenes succeeding the barbecue was fresh in our minds, and the memory sharpened the contrast be- tween the methods of the rival parties. I was brimful of excitement when I got home, and the various novelties of the impending event in the history of county politics and village life were the staple of neigh- borhood talk for the weeks dividing that morning ride from the mid-May day of the "rally." That was what they called it, for it was not to be a bar- becue, although a collation would be served in the grounds surrounding the Grove Hotel, situated in the centre of the hamlet, and separated from the public square by one street. The meeting and the speaking would be in the grove at the rear of the Court House. Seats were to be arranged among the trees. It was at my father's instance and his expense that the benches would be covered with white cotton cloth — "muslin," in Northern parlance. This was in special compliment to the "ladies who, it was hoped, would compose a great part of the audience." This was the chiefest innovation of all that set tongues to wagging in three coimties. The wives and mothers and daughters of voters were cordially invited by placards 127 MARION UA»l^AND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY strewed brp^cast throug)i the length and breadth of Powhiktan. The like }iad never been heard of within the memory of the oldest mhabitapt. It w^ universally felt that the step practieally guaranteed the county for Clay and Frelingbuysen. XIII A WHIG RALLY AND MUSTER DAT The day dawned heavenly fair, and waxed gloriously bright by the time the preparations for the reception of the guests were completed. The dust had been laid by an all-day fain forty-eight hours befol^« Every blade of grass and the leaves^ which rustled joyously overhead, shone as if newly varnished. At ten o'clock all the sitting- space was occupied, three-fourths of the assembly being of the fairer sex. Half an hour later there Wai^ not standing- room within the soimd of the orators' voices. A better- dressed, better-mannered crowd never graced a poUtical "occasion." All were in summer gala attire, and all Were seated without confusion. My fatheif, ba chairman of the committee of arrangements, had provided for every stage of the proceeding. It was by a motion, made by Wm and carried by acclamation, that Captain Miller, "a citizen of credit and renown," was called to preside. As if it had happened last Week, I can, in fancy, see each feature of this, tiie most stupendous function that had ever entered my young lifCi I suppose there may have been five hundred people present. 1 would have said, un- hesitatingly, "five thousand," if asked to make the com- putation. 1 wore, for the first time, a sheer lawn frock — the longest I had ever had, but) as my mother explained to the village dressmaker — Miss Judy Cardoso — "Virginia is growing so fast, we would better have it rather long to b^in With." I secretly rejoiced in the sWeep of the full 129 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY skirt down to my heels, as giving me a young-ladylike appearance. "Thad" Ivey, always kind to me, and not less jolly because he was soon to be a married man, meet- ing me on the way up the street, declared that I had "really a ball-room air." My hair was "done" in two braids and tied with white ribbon figured with pale-purple and green flowers. Sprigs of the same color decorated the white groimd of my lawn. I carried a white fan, and I sat, with great deUght, between my mother and Cousin Mary. "'And bright The sun shone o'er fair women and brave men,' " murmured a gallant Whig to the row of women behind us. "Isn't that strange!" whispered I to Cousin Mary; "those lines have been running in my mind ever since we came." Not strange, as I now know. Everybody read and quoted "Childe Harold" at that period, and I may add, took Uberties with the text of favorite poems to suit them to the occasion. When the round of applause that greeted the appear- ance of Captain Miller upon the platform subsided, every- thing grew suddenly so still that I heard the leaves rustling over our heads. His was not an imposing presence, but he had a stainless reputation as a legislator and a Whig, and was highly respected as a man. He began in exactly these words: " Ladies and gentlemen — fellow-citizens, all I — ^it behooves us, always and everywhere, before entering upon the prose- cution of any important enterprise, to invoke the presence and blessing of Almighty God. We will, therefore, be now led in prayer by the Reverend Mr. Carus." My imcle-in-law "offered" a tedious petition, too long- winded to please the average politician perhaps, but it was generally felt that a younger man and newer resident 130 A WHIG RALLY could not have been called upon without incivility veil- ing upon disrespect to a venerable citizen. The invocation over, the presiding oflScer annoimced that "the Whigs, in obedience to the spirit of fair play to all, and injustice to none, that had ever characterized the party, would to- day grant to their honored opponents, the Democrats, the opportunity of replying publicly to the arguments ad- vanced in the addresses of those representing the principles in the interest of which the present assembly had been convened. The first speaker of the day would be the Hon. Holden Rhodes, of Richmond. The second would be one almost as well known to the citizens of county and state — the Hon. John Winston Jones, of Chesterfield. The Whigs reserved to themselves the last and closing address of the day by the Hon. Watkins Leigh, of Richmond." Nothing could be fairer and more courteous, it seemed to me. In the hum of approval that rippled tiirough the assembly it was apparent that others held the like senti- ment. Likewise, that the "Honorable Chairman" had scored another point for the magnanimous Whigs. But then — as I whispered to my indulgent neighbor on the left — they could afford to surrender an advantage or two to the party they were going to whip out of existence. Holden Rhodes was an eminent lawyer, and his speech was a trifle too professional in sustained and unoratorical argimient for my taste and mental reach. I recall it chiefly because of a comical interruption that enlivened the hour-long exposition of party creeds. I have drawn in my book, Judiih, a full-length portrait of one of the men of marked individuality who made Powhatan celebrated in the history of a state remarkable in every period for strongly defined pubUc characters. In JudUh I named this man "Captain Macon." In real life he was Capt. John Cocke, a scion of a good old family, a planter of abundant means, and the father of sons who 10 131 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY werd already beginnitlg to take th^ place in the public eye he had held for fifty years. He was tall and gaunt, his olice lofty head sUghtly bowed by years and — it was hinted — by high Uving. He had been handsome, and his glahce was still piercing, his bearing distinguished. I ever cherished, as I might value a rare antique, the incident of his introduction to that stalwart dame, my New England grandtnother, who had now been a member of our fam- ily for three years. We were on our way home after service at Fine Creek, atid the carriage had stopped at a wayside spring to water the horses. Captain Cocke stood by the spring, his bridle rein thrown over his arm while his horse stooped to the "brtmch" flowing across the highway. Expecting to see my mother in the carriage, he took off his hat and ap- proached the window. "This is my mother. Captain," said my father, raising hid voice slightly, as he then named the new-comer to her deaf eats. The old cavalier bowed low, his hand upon his heart: "Madam, I am the friend of your son. I can say nothing more to a mother!'* The fine courtesy, the graceful deference to age, the in- stant adaptation of manner and words to the circum- stances, have set the episode aside in my heart as a gem of its kind. He wore on that Sunday, and he wore on every other day the year around, a scarlet hunting-coat. I wonder if there were more eccentrics in Virginia in that generation than are to be met with there — or anywhere else — nowa- days? Certain it is that nobody thought of inquiring why Captain Cocke, whose ancestors had served under Wash- ington and I^fayotte in the war for freedom, chose to sport the British livery. We had ceased to remark upon it by the time I write of. When strangers expressed wonder- 132 A WmG RALLY ment at tl^e queer g^rb, we h^4 a resentful impFession of c^cioi|8ne68. Mr. Rhodps, with the rest of Jiis party, was thoroughly <}js8^l48fied with the policy (or want of policy) of Jolm Tyler, who hftd been called to the presidential chair by the UQtifnely death of Gen. W. H. Harrison. In the progress qf 1^ review of national affairs, he came tq this name when he had spoken half an hour or so. Whereupon uprose the majestic figure clad in scarlet, from his seat a few feet away from the platform. The Captain straightened his bent shoulders and lifted lean arms and quivering fingers toward heaven. The red tan of his weather-beaten cheeks was a dus)^y crinison. "The Lord have mercy upon the nation!" he cried, hi^ voice solemn with wrath, and sonorous with the potency of the mint-jnleps for which "The Bell" was noted. "Fel- lowHsitisens I I always cry to IJigh Heaven for mercy upon this country when John Tyler's name is mentioned! Amen and amen!'' He had a hearty round of applause mingled with echoes of his "amens" and much good-humored laughter. They all knew and loved the Captain. I felt the blood rush to my face, and I saw others glance around reprovingly when a city girl who sat behind me, and carried on a whis- pered flirtation with a fopling at her side during Mr. {Ihodes's speech, drawled: "What voice from the tombs is that?" Mrs. James Saunders, n6e Mary Cocke, was my mother's right-hand neighbor. With perfect temper and an agree- able smile, she looked over her shoulder into the babyish face of the cockney guest — "That is my Uncle John," she uttered, courteously. Whereat all within hearing smiled, and the young wom- an had the grace to blush. Mir Rhodes was speaking again, and the audience was 133 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY respectfully attentive. The orator made clever use of the Captfidn's interruption. The manner of it ofifended nobody. John Tyler was, perhaps, the most unpopular man in the Union at that particular time. The Democrats had no use for hun, and he had disappomted his own party. When the smoke and dust of political skirmishing cleared away, Virginians did something like justice to his motives and his talents. Twenty years thereafter, my early pre- possessions, engendered by the vituperative eloquence of the Clay campaign, were corrected by a quiet remark made by my father to a man who spoke slightingly of the ex- President : ''The man who chose the cabinet that served during Tyler's administration was neither fool nor traitor." John Winston Jones demolished the fair, fabric Mr. Rhodes had spent so much time and labor in constructing that I began to yawn before the lively Democrat woke me up. I recollect that he was pungent and funny, and that I was interested, despite his sacrilegious treatment of what I regarded as sacred themes. It was a telling point when he drew deliberately a wicked- looking jack-knife from his breeches pocket, opened it as deliberately, and, turning toward Mr. Rhodes, who sat at his left, said: " If I were to plunge this into the bosom of my friend and respected opponent (and I b^ to assure him that I shall not hurt a hair of his head, now or ever!), would I be re- garded as his benefactor? Yet that is what General Jack- son did to the system of bank monopolies," etc. I did not follow him further. For a startled second I had really thought we were to have a "scene." I had heard that Democrats were bloodthirsty by nature, and that sanguinary outbreaks attended political demonstra- tions and cataracts of bad whiskey. It goes without saying that the Hon. Watkins Leigh — 134 A WHIG RALLY a distiDguished member of the Richmond bar, famous for l^gal acumen and forensic oratory — made quick and thorough work in the destruction of Mr. Jones's building, and sent the Whigs home with what I heard my mother describe as ''a good taste in their mouths/' The orations were interspersed with "patriotic songs." A quartette of young men, picked out by the committee of arrangements, for their fine voices and stanch Whiggery, stood on the platform and sang the body of the ballack. The choruses were shouted, with more force and good-will than tunefulness, by masculine voters of all ages and qualities of tone. Doctor Henning, an able phsrsician, and as eccentric in his way as Captain Cocke in his, stood near my father, his back against a tree, his mouth wide, and all the volume of sound he could pump from his lungs pouring skyward m the refrain of "Get out of the way, you're all unlucky; Clear the track for Old Kentuckyl"— when his eye fell upon a young man, who, having no more ear or voice than the worthy Galen himself, contented him- self with listening. As the quartette began the next verse, the Doctor collared "Abe" Cardozo (whom, by the way, he had assisted to bring into the world), and actually shook him in the energy of his patriotism — "Abraham James! why don't you sing?" "Me, Doctor?" stammered the young fellow, who prob- ably had not heard his middle name in ten years before — "I never sang a note in my life!" "Then begin now!" commanded the Doctor, setting the example as the chorus began anew. How my father laughed! backing out of sight of the pair, and doubling himself up in the enjoyment of the scene, real bright tears rolling down his cheeks. I heard 135 MARION HAHLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY him rehefttse the incident twetity timed in after-years, and dWays With keeii delight. For the Doctor was a scholar and Ik dfeamer, fts Well as a skilful practitioner, renowned fbi* his hdrticUltm^ and ornithological successes, and so taciturn and absent-minded that he seldom took part in general conversation. That he should have been drawn out of his shell to the extent of roaring out ungrammatical doggerel ih a public assembly of his fellow-citisens, was a powerful proof of the tremendous foh^e of party enthusiasm. iTie incongruity of the whole affair appealed to my father's ever-active sense of humor. He would wind up the story by asserting that "it would have made Jeremiah chuckle if he had known both of the actors in the by-play." One specimen of the ballads that flooded the land in the fiiteful 1844 will give some idea of the tenor of all: Tune: "0\e Dan Tucker" "The moon was shining silver bright, the stars with glory crowned the night. High on a limb that 'same old Coon' was singing to him- self this tune: Chorus "Get out of the way, you're all unlucky; clear the track for Ole Kentucky! "Now in a sad predicament the Ix)kie8 are for President; They have six horses in the pasture, and don't know which can run the faster. "The Wagon-Horse from Pennsylvany, the Dutchmen think he*s the best of any; But he must drag in heavy stages his Federal notions and low wages. "They proudly bring upon the course an old and broken- down war-horse; They shout and sing: *OhI rumpeey dumsey. Colonel John- son killed Tecumsey!' 136 A WHIG RALI.Y "And here is Oass, though not a dunc^, wiU ^^l both sides of the track at once; To win the race will all things copy, be sometiipfis pig and sometimes puppy. "The fiery Southern horse, Calhoun, who hates a Fox and fears a Coon, To toe the scratch will not be able, for Matty keeps him iq the stable. "And here is Matty, never idle, a tricky horse that slips his bridle; In forty-four we'll show him soon the little Fox can't fool the Coon. "The balky horse they call John Tyler, we'll bead him soon or bm^t his boiler; His cursed 'grippe' has seized us all, which Doctor Clay will cure next fall. "The people's fav'rite, Henry Clay, is now the 'fashion' of the day; And let the track be dry or mucky, we'll stake our pile on Ole Kentucky. "Get out of the way, he's swift and lucky; clear the track for Ole Kentucky!" (The chorus of each preceding verse is, ''Get out of the way, you're all unlucky," etc. The "Fox" is Martin Vfin Pureu, or "Matty." The "Coon" is Clay. The "Wagon- ^o^pe from Pennsylvany" is James Buchanan.) Another ballfKli sung that day under the trees at the bfu)k of the Court House, began after this wise: "What has caused this great conmiotion Our ranks betray? It is the ball a-rolling on To clear the way For Harry Clay. 137 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY And with him we'll beat your Polk! Polk! Polk I And his motley crew of folk. O! with him we'll beat your Polk." To my excited imagination it was simple fact, not a flight of fancy, that Powhatan should be alluded to that day as "your historic county — a mere wave in the vast Union — "That ever shall be Divided as billows, yet one as the sea.'' "A wave, fellow-citizens, that has caught the irresistible impulse of wind and tide bearing us on to the most glori- ous victory America has ever seen." Ah's me! That was how both parties talked and felt with regard to the Union seventeen years before the very name became odious to those who had been ready to die in defence of it. I cannot dismiss the subject of public functions in the "historic county" without devoting a few pages to the annual Muster Day. It was preceded by five dajrs of "officers' training." The manoeuvres of the latter body were carried on in the public square, and, as one end of our house overlooked this, no lessons were studied or recited between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on those days. The sophisticated twentieth-century youngling will smile contemptuously at hearing that, up to this time, I had never heard a brass-band. But I knew all about martial music. Already there was laid away in the fat portfolio nobody except myself ever opened, a story in ten parts, in which the hero's voice was compared to "the thrilling strains of martial music." I boiled the tale down four years thereafter, and it was printed. It had a career. But "that is another story." I used to sit with my "white work," or a bit of knitting, 138 MUSTER DAY in hand, at that end window, looking across the side-street down upon the square, watching the backing and filling, the prancing and the halting of the eight ''officers" drilled in inilitary tactics by Colonel Hopkins, the strains of the drum and fife in my ears, and dream out war-stories by the dozen. The thumping and the squealing of drum and fife set my pulses to dancing as the finest orchestra has never made them leap since that day when fancy was more real and earnest than what the bodily senses took in. By Satimlay the officers had learned their lesson well enough to take their respective stands before (and aft, as we shall see) the laiger body of free and independent Ameri- can citizens who were not "muster free," hence who must study the noble art of war. They came from every quarter of the county. The Fine Creek and Genito neighborhoods gave up their quota, and Deep Creek, Red Lane, and Yellow Jacket country kept not back. It was a motley and most democratic line that stretched from the main street to that flanking the public square. Butternut and broadcloth rubbed elbows; planter and overseer were shoulder to shoulder. "Free, white, and twenty-one" had the additional qualification of "under forty-five." Past that, the citizen of these free and enlightened United States lajrs down the burden of peaceable military muster. Besides those worn by the officers, there was not a uni- form on duty that Saturday. Here and there one might descry the glitter of a gun-barrel. Walking-canes and, with the Yellow Jacket contingent, corn-stalks, simulated muskets in the exercises dictated by Colonel Hopkins, who was to-day at his best. I employ the word "dictated" with intention. He had to tell the recruits (surely the rawest ever drawn up in line) exactly what each order meant. To prevent the swaying array from leaning back 139 MARION HARtAND^S AUTOBIOGRAPHY figainst th^ fetice, thl^ tiffldem were detniled to skirmish behind the long h)W and shdve delinquents into place. The Oolonel instrtlcted thetii how to hold their "artns/* patiently; in the Bimpledt colloquial phtasC; infohned thetn What each waa to do wheli ordered to "shouldel* artns/' "right dress," "mark time," and the rest of the techni- calities confusing to ears unleaiHed, aud Which, heard by the Vetemu but once in a twdve^month^ could not be familiar even after ten or fifteen years of "service;" Both the windows commanding the parade-groUnd WeUe filled ott Muster Day. My mother iind our grown-up cousins enjoyed the humors of the situation almost as much as we gh*ls, who let nothing escape our eager eyeS; Especially do I recall the shout of laughter we drew away from our outlook to stifle, wh^n the suave commanding officer, mindful of the dull comprehension and crass igno- rance of a large proportion of his corps, directed them in a clear voice — whose courteous intonations never varied under provocations that would have thrown some men into paroxysms of mirth, and moved many to profanity — ^to "look straight forward, hold the chin level, and let the hands hang down, keeping thumbs Upon the seam of the pantaloons." More technical terms Would have been thrown away. Twenty warriors (prospective) brought both hands forward and laid their thumbs, side by side. Upon the central seams of their pantaloons ! Merriment, that threatened to be like the "inejrttnguishable laughter" of Olympian deities, followed the grave anxieties of the officials in rear and front of the mixed multitude to hinder those at the extreme ends of the line from bending for- ward to Watch the manceuvres of comrades who occu- pied the centre of the field. In spite of hurryings to and fro and up and down the ranks, it Chanced, half a dosen times an hour, that what should have been a straight line became a curve. Thett the gallant, indomitable Colonel Would 140 MUSTER DAY walk majeBtioally from end to end, and with the 0at of his ntiked sword repair the damage done to disoipUne — '^Just like a boy rattling a stick along the palingsl*' gasped CSousin Maiy, choking with mirth. The 8imi}e was apt. Skme staid citisens; tenacious of dignity and susceptible to ridicule^ seldom appeared upon the parade-grpundi pre- ferring to pay the fine exacted for the omission. Othe^ — and not a few — contended that some familiarity with mili- tary mancBuvies was essential to the mental outQt of eyery man who would be willing to serve his country in the field if necessary. This sentiment moved sundry of the younger men to the formation, that same year (if I mistake not), of the "Powhatan Troop." One incident connected with the birth of an organisa- tion that still exists, in name, fixed it in my mind. Cousin Joe — the hero of my childish days — was mainly instru- mental m getting up the company, and brought the written form of constitution and by-laws to my father's house, where he dined on the Court Day which marked the first parade. Oiu" kinsman, Moses Drury Hoge, came with him* He prided himself, among a great many other things, upon being phenomenally far-sighted. To test this he asked Cousin Joe to hold the paper against the wall on the op- posite side of the room, and read it aloud slowly and cor- FBctly from his seat, twenty feet away. The scene came back to me as it was photographed on my mind that day, when I read, ten years ago, in a Rich- mond paper, of the prospective celebration of the forma- tion of the " Powhatan Troop." I was more than four him- dred miles away, and fifty-odd years separated me from the "historic county" and the Court House where the banquet was to be given. I let the^paper drop and closed my eyes. I was back in the big, square room on the firat floor of the long, low, rambling house on the village street. My 141 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY favorite cousin, tall and handsomei held the paper above his head, smiling in indulgent amusement at tiie young kinsman of whom he was ever fond and proud. My father stood in the doorway, watching the progress of the test. My mother had let her sewing fall to her lap while she looked on. The scent of roses from the garden that was the joy of my mother's heart, stole in through open doors and windows. The well - modulated tones, that were to ring musically in church and hall on both sides of the sea, and for more than a half-century to come, read the formal agreement, of which I recalled, in part, the preamble: *'We, the undersigned, citizens of the County of Powhatan, in the State of Virginia." While the glamour of that moment of ecstatic reminis- cence wrought within me, I seized my pen and wrote a tel^ram of congratulation to the revellers, seated, as I reckoned, at that very hour, about the banqueting-board. I addressed the despatch to Judge Thomas Miller, the grand- son of the chairman on the day of the Whig rally. By a remarkable and happy coincidence, for which I had hard- ly dared to hope, the telegram, sent from a coimtry station in New Jersey, flew straight and fast to the obscure hamlet nearly five hundred miles off, and was handed to Judge Miller at the head of the table while the feast was in full flow. He read it aloud, and the health of the writer was drunk amid such applause as my wildest fancy could not have foreseen in the All-So-Long-Ago when my horizon, all rose-color and gold, was bounded by the confines of "Our County." XIV RUMORS OP CHANGES— A CORN-SHUCKmO — ^NEQRO TOPICAL SONG My mother's love for Richmond was but second to that she felt for husband and children. It was evident to us in after-years that her longing to return to her early home wrought steadily, if silently, upon my father's mind and shaped his plans. lliese plans were definitively made and announced to us by the early autumn of 1844. Uncle Cams had removed to the city with his family late in the sunmier. My sister and I were to be sent to a new school just established in Richmond, and recommended to our parents by Moses Hoge, who was now assistant pastor in the First Presby- terian Church, and had full charge of a branch of the same, built farther up-town than the Old First founded by Dr. John H. Rice. We girls were to live with the Caruses that winter. In the spring the rest of the family would follow, and, thenceforward, our home would be in Richmond. A momentous change, and one that was to alter the complexion of all our lives. Yet it was so gradually and quietly effected that we were not conscious of so much as a jar in the machinery of our existence. I heard my mother say, and more than once, in after- years, crowded with incident and with cares of which we never dreamed in those eventless months: "I was never quite contented to live anywhere out of Richmond, yet I often asked myself during the seven years 143 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY we spent in Powhatan if they were not the most care- free I should ever have. I know, now, that they were." My father gave a fervent assent when he heard this. To him the sojourn was prosperous throughout. Energy, integrity, public spirit, intelligence, and, under the ex- terior chance acquaintances thought stem, the truest heart that ever throbbed with love to God and love to mah, had Won for hiln the esteedi ahd friendship df the best men in the county. Steadily he mounted, by the force of native worth, to the magistrate's bench, and was a recog- nised factor in locid atid in state politics. He had estab- lished a fiourishing Sunday-school in the "Pine Creek neighborhood," WheiB none had ever existed until he made this the nucleus of a church, fie was the confidential ad- viser of the embarrassed planter and the struggling me- chanid, and lent a helping hand to both. He was President ot a debating society, in which he was, I think, the only tnatl who was not ti college graduate. fiis business had succeeded far bejrond his expectations. Except that the increase of tneans moved him to lai^ger charities, there Was no change in our manner of life. We had always been above the pinch of penuty, living as well as our neighbors, and, so f&r as the younger members of the family knew, as well as any reasonable people need desire to live. We had our carriage and horses, my sistet* and I a riditig-horse apiece, abundance of delicacies for the table, and new clothes of excellent quality whenever We wanted them. The ambitions and glories of the world beyond our limited sphere came to ouf keti as matter of entertain- ment, not as provocatives to discontent. Two nights before we left home for our city school, the Harvest Home — "corn-shucking" — was held. It was al- ways great fun to us younglings to witness the "show." With tio premonition that I should never assist at unothet* 144 A crORN-SHUCKINQ similar function, I went into the kitchen l^te m the ^ter- noon, and, as had been my office ever since I was eight years old, superintended the setting of the supper-table for our servants and their expected guests. I was Maminy Ritta's special pet, and she put in a petition that J would stand by her now, in terms I could not have resisted if I had been as averse to the task as I was glad to perform it: ''Is you goin' to be sech a town young lady that you won't jes' step out and show us how to set de table, honey 7" oould have but one answer. A boiled ham had the place of honor at one end of the board, built out with loose planks to stretch from the yawning fireplace, boimding the lower end of the big kitchen, to Mammas room at the other. My mother had lent table^ cloth and crockery to meet the demands of the company. She had, of course, furnished the provisions loading the planks. A shoulder balanced the ham, and side-dishes of sausage, chine, spareribs, fried chicken, huge piles of com and wheat bread, mince and potato pies, and several varieties of preserves, would fill every spare foot of cloth when the hot things were in place. Floral decorations of feasts would not come into vogue for another decade and more, but I threw the sable corps of workers into ecstasies of delighted wonder by instructing Spotswood, Gilbert, and a stableman to tack branches of pipe and cedar along the smoke-browned rafters and stack them in the cor- ners. "Mos' as nice as bein' in de woods!'' ejaculated the laundress, with an audible and long-drawn snifif, parodying, in unconscious anticipation. Young John Chivery's — "I feel as if I was in groves!" It was nine o'clock before the ostensible business of the evening began. Boards, covered with straw, were the base of the mighty pyramid of com in the open space between the kitchen-yard and the stables. Straw was strewed 145 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY about the heap to a distance of twenty or thirty feet, and here the men of the party assembled, sitting flat on the padded earth. The evening was bland and the moon was at the full. About the doors of kitchen and laundry flut- tered the dusky belles who had accompanied the shuckers, and who would sit down to supper with them. Their presence was the inspiration of certain ''topical songs/' as we would name them — sometimes saucy, oftener flattering. As dear Doctor Primrose hath it, "There was not much wit, but there was a great deal of laughter, and that did nearly as well." This was what Mea and I whispered to each other in our outlook at the window of our room that gave directly upon the lively scene. We had sat in the same place for seven successive com-shuckings, as we reminded ourselves, sighing reminiscently. The top of the heap of com was taken by the biggest man present and the best singer. From his eminence he tossed down the hooded ears to the waiting hands that caught them as they hurtled through the air, and stripped them in a twinkling. As he tossed, he sang, the others catching up the chorus with a will. Hands and voices kept perfect time. One famous com-shuckers' song was encored vocifer- ously. It ran, in part, thus: "My cow Maria She fell in de fire. . Chorus "Go de corn] Go de corn! "I tell my man Dick To puU 'er out quick. (Go de corn!) 146 NEGRO TOPICAL SONG ''And Dick he said, 'Dis cow done dade!' (Go de comi)" (Being of an economic turn of mind, the owner of de- ceased Maria proceeded to make disposition of her several members :) "I made her hide over For a wagon-cover. (Gro de corn!) "I cut her hoof up For a drinkin' cup. (Go de com I) "Her tail I strip' Fur a wagon-whip. (Gro de com!) "Her ribs hoi' op Dat wagon top. (Go de corn!)" And so on until, as Mea murmured, under cover of the uproarious "Gro de com!" repeated over and over and over, with growing might of lung — "Maria was worth twice as much dead as alive." We had had our first nap when the chatter of the supper- party, saying their farewells to hosts and companions, awoke us. We tumbled out of bed and flew to the win- dow. The moon was as bright as day, the dark figures bustling between us and the heaps of shucks and the mounds of com, gleaming like gold in the moonlight, re- minded us of nimble ants scampering about their hills. The supper had evidently been eminently satisfactory. We could smell hot coffee and sausage still. Fine phrases^ im- 11 147 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY possible to any but a negro's brain and tongue, flew fast and gayly. The girls giggled and gui^led in palpable imi- tation of damsels of fairer skins and higher degree. Hampton — the spruce carriage-driver (as coachmen were named then) of Mr. Spencer D., Effie's father — bowed himself almost double right under our window in worship- ful obeisance to a bright mulatto in a blazing red frock. "Is all de ladies ockerpied wid gentlemen?" he called, perfunctorily, over his shoulder. And, ingratiatingly di- rect to the coy belle who pretended not to see his approach, "Miss Archer! is you ockerpied?" Miss Archer tittered and writhed coquettishly. *'Well, Mr. D.! I can't jes' say that I is!" "Then, jes' hook on hyar, won't you?" crooking a per- suasive elbow. XV the country girls at a city school — velvet hats and clay's defeat Our father took us to Richmond the first of October. A stage ran between Cumberland Court House and the city, gomg down one day and coming up the next, taking in Powhatan wayside stations and one or more in Chesterfield. We rarely used the public conveyance. This important journey was made in our own carriage. A rack at the back contained two trunks. Other luggage had gone down by the stage. We had dinner at a half-way house of enter- tainment, leaving home at 9 o'clock a.m., and coming in sight of the town at five in the afternoon. That night I was lulled to sleep for the first time by what was to be forevermore associated in my thoughts with the fair City of Seven Hills — the song of the river- rapids. It is a song — never a moan. Men have come and men may go; the pleasant places endeared by history, tradition, and memory may be, and have been, laid waste; the holy and beautiful houses in which our fathers wor- shipped have been burned with fire, the bridges spanning the rolling river have been broken down, and others have arisen in their place; but one thing has remained as un- changed as the heavens reflected in the broad breast of the stream — that is the sweet and solemn anthem, dear to the heart of one who has lived long within the sound of it, as the song of the surf to the homesick exile who asked in the Vale of Tempe, ** Where is the sea!" 149 MARION HABLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY We were duly entered in the school conducted by Mrs. Nottingham and her four daughters in an irregularly built frame-house — ^painted "colonial yellow" — ^which stood at the comer of Fifth and Franklin Streets. It was pulled down long ago to make room for a stately brick residence, built and occupied by my brother Horace. The school was Presbyterian, through and through. Mr. Hoge had a Bible-class there every Monday morning; the Nottingham family, including boarders, attended Sunday and week-day services in the chapel, a block farther down Fifth Street. The eloquent curate of the Old First was rising fast into prominence in city and church. His chapel was crowded to the doors on Sunday afternoons when there was no service in the mother-church, and filled in the forenoon with the colony which, it was settled, should form itself into a corporate and independent body within a few months. It spoke well for the drill we had had from our late tutor, and said something for the obedient spirit in which we had followed the line of study indicated by him, that Mea and I were, after the preliminary examination, classed with girls older than ourselves, and who had been regular attendants upon boarding and day schools of note. If we were surprised at this, having anticipated a different re- sult from the comparison of a desultory home-education in the country, with the "finish" of city methods, we were the more amazed at the manners of our present associates. They were, without exception, the offspring of refined and well-to-do parents. The daughters of distinguished clei^- men, of eminent jurists, of governors and congressmen, of wealthy merchants and rich James River planters, were our classmates in school sessions and our companions when lessons were over. It was our initial experience in the arrogant democracy of the "Institution." Be it day-school, boarding-school, or college, the story 150 COUNTRY GIRLS AT A CITY SCHOOL of this experience is the same the world over. The frank brutality of question and comment; the violent and reason- less partisanships; the irrational intimacies, and the short lives of these; the combinations against lawful authority; the deceptions and evasions to screen ofifenders from the consequences of indolence or disobedience — were but a few of the revelations made to the two country girls in the trial-months of that winter. I had my first shock in the course of an examination upon ancient history conducted by the second and gen- tlest of the Nottingham sisters — Miss Sarah. I was un- affectedly diffident in the presence of girls who were so much more fashionably attired than we in oiu* brown merino frocks made by ''Miss Judy," and trimmed with velvet of a darker shade, that I felt more ill at ease than my innate pride would let me show. But I kept my eyes upon the kind face of the catechist, and answered in my turn distinctly, if low, trying with all my might to think of nothing but the subject in hand. I observed that Mea did the same. I was always sure of her scholarship, and I tingled with pride at her composure and the refin^ in- tonations that rendered replies invariably correct. Hon- estly, I had thought far more of her than of myself, when, after a question from Miss Sarah revealed the fact that I had read Plutarch! s Lives, a tall girl next to me dug her elbow into my ribs: "Law, child! you think yourself so smart!" She was the daughter of one of the eminent professional men I have alluded to, and three years my senior. I knew her father by reputation, and had been immensely im- pressed with a sense of the honor of being seated beside her in the class. "Miss Blank!" said Miss Sarah, as stem as she could ever be. "I am surprised!" The girl giggled. So did a dozen others. My cheeks 151 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY flamed hotly, and my temper followed suit. I made up my mind, then and there, never to like that "creature." I have seen the like misbehavior in college girls who took the highest honors. Prof. Brander Matthews, of Colmnbia University, once said to a class in English literature, of which my son was a member: " I could go through all of my classes and pick out, with unerring certainty, the young men who belong to what may be called 'reading families.' Nothing in the college cur- riculum ever takes the place in education of a refined early environment and intellectual atmosphere." I am inclined to adapt the wise utterance to the cultiva- tion of what we class, awkwardly, under the head of ** man- ners." The child, who is tau^t, by precept and hourly example in home-life, that poUteness is a reUgious duty, and sharp speech vulgar, and who is trained to practise with the members of his family the "small, sweet courte- sies of Ufe" that make the society man and woman ele- gant and popular, will suffer many things at the tongues of school and college mates, yet will not his "manners" depart from him — when he is older! As home-bred girls, we had to undergo a system of moral and mental acclimation during that session. I do not regret the ordeal. Quiet, confidential talks with Cousin Mary, whose tact was as fine as her breeding, helped me to sustain philosophically what would have made me miser- able but for her tender and judicious ministrations. "It is always right to do the right thing," was a maxim she wrought into my consciousness by many repetitions. "The danger of association with rude and coarse people is that we may fall into their ways to protect ourselves. It may be good for you to rough it for a while, so long as it does not roughen you." Little by little we got used to the "roughing." School- 162 COUNTRY GIRLS AT A CITY SCHOOL work we thoroughly enjoyed, and our teachers appreciated tiiis. From each of them we met with kind and helpful treatment as soon as the routine of study was fully es- tablished. Our French master suppUed the crucial test of philosophy and diUgence. He was a ** character" in his way, and he fostered the reputation. In all my days I have never known a man who could, at pleasure, be such a savage and so fine a gentleman. He was six-feet-something in height, superbly proportioned and heavily mustachioed. Few men curtained the upper lip then. He had received a university education in France; had been a rich man in New York, manying there the daughter of Samuel Ogden, a well-known citizen, the father of Anna Cora Mowatt, the actress, who afterward became Mrs. Ritchie. Isidore Guillet lost wife and fortune in the same year, and, after a vain effort to recoup his finances at the North, removed to Richmond with his three sons, and became a fashionable French teacher. He was fierce in class, and suave outside of the recitation-room. Our late and now- more-than-ever-lamented tutor had laid a fair foundation for us in the French language. We were "up" in the verbs to an extent that excited the rude applause of our classmates. We read French as fluently as English, and were tolerably conversant with such French classics as were current in young ladies' seminaries. These things were less than vanity when M. Guillet and Manesca took the field. We were required to copy daily seven or eight foolscap pages-full of that detestable "System." Begin- ning with "Avez vous le clou?^' and running the gamut of '*le bon clou/' "le mauvais clou,'' and "le ban clou de voire phe," "le mauvais clou de voire grandmh^e," up to the maddening discords of " VinterrogaHf et le negatif" — we were rushed breathlessly along the lines ordained by the merciless *' System" and more merciless master, until 153 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY it was a marvel that nerves and health were not wrecked I said just now that the lion roared him soft in general society. Throughout a series of Spanish lessons given to us two girls through the medium of French, he was the mildest-mannered monster I ever beheld. One day he went out of his way to account for the unlikeness to the language-master of the class. The explanation was a re- fined version of Mr. Bagnet's code— ^" Discipline must be maintained.^' To the pair of girls who read and recited to him in their private sitting-room, he was the finished gentleman in demeanor, and in talk delightfully instructive. His family in Paris had known the present generation of Lafayettes. Lamartine — at that epoch of French Revolu- tionary history, the popular idol — ^was his personal friend. He brought and read to us letters from the author-states- man, thrilling with interest, and kept us advised, through his family correspondence, of the stirring changes going on in his native land. All this was in the uncovenanted conversational exercise that succeeded the Spanish lesson. The latter over, he would toss aside the books used in it with an airy "Eh, hien done! pour la conversaiionr' and plunge into the matter uppermost in his mind, chatting brilliantly and gayly in the most elegant French imagin- able, bringing into our commonplace, provincial lives the flavor and sparkle of the Parisian salon. To return to our first winter in a city school : The session began on October 5th. We had ceased to be homesick, and were learning to sustain, with seeming good-humor, crit- icisms of oiu" "coimtrified ways and old-fashioned talk," when our mother came to town for her fall shopping. She arrived on the first of November, my father tarrying behind to vote on the fourth. We had a glorious Satxu-day. It was our very first real shopping expedition, and it has had no equal in our subsequent experiences. There was a lecture on Saturday morning. Mr. Richard Sterling, the 154 VELVET HATS AND CLAY'S DEFEAT brother-in-law of our late tutor, and the head-master of a classical school for boys, lectured to us weekly upon Natural Philosophy. We were out by eleven o'clock, and on emei^ging from the house, we found our mother awaiting us without. The day was divine, and we had worn our best walking- dresses, in anticipation of the shopping frolic. Three of the girls had commented upon our smart attire, one re- marking that we "really looked like folks." The vocabu- lary of school-girls usually harmonizes with their deport- ment. The tall girl I have spoken of as "Miss Blank," added to her patronizing notice of the country girls, the encouraging assurance that "if we only had bonnets less than a century old, we would be quite presentable." We held our peace, hugging to our souls the knowledge that we were that day to try on two velvet bonnets — real velvet — ^the like of which had never graced our heads before. We could afford to smile superior to contempt and to patronage — ^the lowest device of the mean mind, the favorite tool of the consciously imderbred. I forgot heat and bitterness, and misanthropy died a natiu*al death in the milliner's shop. The new hat was a dream of beauty and becomingness in my unlearned eyes. It was a soft plum-color, and had a tiny marabou feather on the side. I had never worn a feather. Mea's was dark-blue and of uncut velvet. It, too, was adorned with a white feather. I could have touched the tender blue heavens with one finger when it was decided that we might wear the new bonnets home, and have the old ones sent up instead. "You know I never like to have new clothes worn for the first time to church," our mother remarked, aside, to us. We walked up-town, meeting my father at the foot of Capitol Street. He was in a prodigious hurry, forging 155 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY along at a rate that made it difficult for me to overtake him when my mother told me to "run after him, and we would all go home together." He drew out his watch when I told my errand breath- lessly. His eyes were bright with excitement; as he hiu*- ried back to offer his arm to his wife, he said : "I must be on Broad Street when the Northern train comes in. We have just time if you don't mind walking briskly." Mind it I I could have run every step of the way if that would bring the news to us more quickly. My heart smote me remorsefully. For in the engrossing event of the new bonnet I had forgotten, for the time, that decisive news of the election would certainly be received by the mail-train which ran into Richmond at two o'clock. It must be re- membered that the period of which I write antedated the electric telegraph. We had but one through mail daily. Election news had been pouring in heavily, but slowly. We were not quite sure, even yet, how our own State had gone. The returns from New York and Pennsylvania would es- tablish the fact of the great Whig victory beyond a doubt. We said "the Clay victory," and were confident that it was an accomplished, established fact. True, my father and Uncle Cams had spoken rather gravely than appre- hensively last night of the unprecedentedly large Irish vote that had been polled. We were at the comer of Broad and Tenth Streets, and still at racing speed, when the train drew slowly into the station. The track lay in the centre of Broad Street, and the terminus was flush with the sidewalk. I was on one side of my father; my mother had his other arm. Mea, never a rapid walker, was some paces in the rear. I felt my father's step falter and slacken suddenly. Looking into his face, I saw it darken and harden. The mobile mouth was a straight, tense line. I thought that a groan escaped 156 VELVET HATS AND CLAY'S DEFEAT him. Before I could exclaim, a man strode toward us from the train. He grasped my father's arm and said something in his ear. I caught five words of one sentence: "The Irish vote did it!" At the same instant the ludicrous touch, never lacking from the supreme moments of Ufe, was suppUed to this by a boy walking down the street, his young face disfigured by the wrathful disappointment stamped upon the visages of most of the men thronging the sidewalk. . Some ardent Democrat had nailed a vigorous poke-stalk against the fence, and the lad stopped to kick it viciously. Even my father smiled at the impotent fury of the action. "That's right, my boy!" he said, and struck the weed into the gutter with a blow of his cane. "I wish other evils were as easily disposed of!" was all that escaped the tightly-closed Ups for the next half-hour. The gloom rested upon face and spirits for twenty-four hours. Richmond was a Whig city, and the very air seemed oppressed by what we reckoned as a National woe. It is not easy to appreciate in this century that the defeat of a Presidential candidate imported so much to the best men in the country. "How did you know what had happened, father?" I ventured to ask that night when the silent meal was over. We had moved and spoken as if the beloved dead lay under our roof. I stole out to the long back porch as we arose from table, and stood there, leaning over the rail- ing and listening to the dirge chanted by the river. The stars twinkled murkily through the city fogs; a sallow moon hung low in the west. It was a dolorous world. I wondered how soon the United States Government would collapse into anarchy. Could — ^would my father continue to Uve here under the rule of Polk? How I loathed the name and the party that had made it historic ! So quietly had my father approached that I was made aware of his 157 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY proximity by the scent of his cigar. I was vaguely con- scious of a gleam of gratitude that he had this slight solace. His cigar meant much to him. I laid my hand on that resting on the railmg. Such strong, capable hands as his were! His fingers were closed silently upon mine, and I gathered courage to put my question. The blow had fallen before we met the man who had hissed at "the Irish vote." "How did you know what had happened, father?" No need to speak more definitely. Our minds had room for but one thought. " It was arranged with the engineer and conductor that a flag should be made fast to the locomotive if there were good news. It was to be a large and handsome flag. Hun- dreds were on the lookout for it. As soon as I caught sight of the train I saw that the flag was not there." He smoked hard and fast. A choking in my throat held me silent. For, in a lightning flash of fancy, I had before me the glorious might-have-been that would have driven the waiting himdreds mad with joy. I pictured how proudly the "large, handsome flag" would have floated in the sunshine, and the wild enthusiasm of the crowds col- lected upon the sidewalks — the gladness that would have flooded our hearts and our home. It was, perhaps, five minutes before I could manage my voice to say: "How do you suppose Mr. Clay will bear it?" I was a woman-child, and my whole soul went out in the longing to comfort the defeated demigod. "Like the hero that he is, my daughter. This'' — still not naming the disaster — "means more to the nation than to him." He raised his hat involuntarily, as I had seen him do that bright, happy May morning when we walked down to Jordan's Creek to be amused by the Democratic bar- becue. 168 VELVET HATS AND CLAY'S DEFEAT He removed it entirely a week later, and bowed his bared head silently, when a fellow-Whig told him, with moist eyes, that the decisive tidings were brought to the hero as he stood in a social gathering of friends. Mr. Clay — so ran the tale I have never heard contradicted — was called out of the n)om by the messenger, returning in a few minutes to resume the conversation the summons had interrupted, with unruffled mien and the perfect coiui;esy that never failed him in public and in private. It was said then that he repeated on that evening, in reply to the expressed sor- row of his companions — ^if, indeed, it was not said then for the first time— the unmortal utterance: *'I would rather be right than President!" The inevitable dash of the ludicrous struck across the calamity in the form of my father's disapproval of the vel- vet bonnet I would not have exchanged on Saturday for a ducal tiara. I had meant to reserve the appearance of it as a pleasant surprise, and to call his attention to it when I was dressed for church next day. I did not blame him for not noticing it in our rapid tramp up Capitol Street on Saturday. He had weightier matters on his mind. With the honest desire of diverting him from the train of ideas that had darkened his visage for twenty-four hours, I donned the precious head-piece ten minutes before it was time to set out for church, and danced into my moth- er's room where he sat reading. Walking up to him, I swept a marvellous courtesy and bolted the query full at him: "How do you like my new bonnet?" He lowered the book and surveyed me with lack-lustre eyes. "Not at all, I am sorry to say." I fairly staggered back, casting a look of anguished ap- peal at my mother. Being of my sex, she comprehend- ed it. 159 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY "Why, father I we think it very pretty," laying her hand on his shoulder. "And she never had a velvet bonnet before." I saw the significant tightening of the small fingers, and he must have felt it. But the dull eyes did not hghten, the corners of the mouth did not Uft. "As I said, I do not admire it. Nor do I think it be- coming." I turned on my heel, as he might have done, and went to my room. When Mea and I joined our parents in the lower hall, the splendors of the new bonnets were extin- guished by thick barege veils. We had not meant to wear them in November. They were mdispensable for summer noons. After I had confided my tale of woe to my sister, we hastened to exhume the veils from our trunks and to bind them over our hats. We walked, slow and taciturn, behind our elders for five squares. Then my father turned and beckoned to us. He was actually smiling — a whim- sical gleam that had in it something of shame, and much of humor. "Take off those veils!" he said, positively, yet kindly. And, as we hesitated visibly : " I mean what I say ! I want to take a good look at those bonnets." It was in a quiet comer of a secluded street, lined with what was once a favorite shade-tree in Richmond — the Otaheite mulberry. The night had been cold, and the last russet leaves were ankle-deep on the sidewalk. They rustled as I moved uneasily in loosening my veil. I never passed the spot afterward without thinking of the absurd httle episode in the history of those melancholy days. "I see, now, that they are very pretty and very be- coming," my father pursued, as they were divested of the ugly mufflers. " I have been very cross for the past twenty- four hours. I suppose because I have been horribly upset leo VELVET HATS AND CLAY'S DEFEAT by the National calamity. We will turn over a new and cleaner leaf." He was often stem, and oftencr imperative. It was his nature to be strong in all that he set his hand or mind unto. I have yet to see another strong man who was so ready to acknowledge a fault, and who made such clean work of the act. XVI HOBfE AT CHBISTMAS— A CANDY-FULL AND HOG-KILLING We went home at Christmas! Twenty years were to elapse before I should spend an- other Christmas week in the country. We did not know this then. Not a hitch impeded the smooth unrolling of the weeks of expectation and the days of preparation for the hoUdays. We were to set out on Monday. On Friday, Spotswood drove up to our door, and Mary Anne, my mother's own maid, alighted. That evening James Ivey reported for escort duty. Even elderly women seldom travelled alone at that date. About young girls were thrown protective parallels that would widen our collie- woman's mouth with laughter and her eyes with amaze- ment. There were no footpads on the stage -road from Richmond to Powhatan, and had these gentry abounded in the forests running down to the wheel-tracks, stalwart Spotswood and a shot-gim would have kept them at bay. Maid and outrider were the outward sign of unspoken and unwritten conventions rooted in love of womankind. The physical weakness of the sex was their strength ; their de- pendence upon stronger arms and tender hearts their war- rant for any and every demand they chose to make upon their natural protectors. We had none of these things in mind that joyful Mon- day morning when Uncle Cams, on one hand, and James Ivey on the other, helped us into the carriage. Carriage- steps were folded up, accordion-wise, and doubled back and 162 HOME AT CHRISTMAS down upon the floor of the vehicle when not in use. The clatter, as the coach-door was opened and the steps let down, was the familiar accompaniment of successive ar- rivals of guests at hospitable homes, and worshippers at country churches. The trim flight fell with a merry rattle for the two hap- piest girls in the State, and we sprang in, followed by Mary Anne. We were wedged snugly in place by parcels that filled every comer and almost touched the roof. Presents we had been buying for a month with our own pocket-money and making in our few spare hours, were bound into bundles and packed in boxes. The wells under the cushioned seats were crammed with fragiles and con- fectionery, the like of which our lesser sisters and brothers had never tasted. Uncle Cams prophesied a snow-storm. My mother used to say that he was a wise weather-prophet. We stubborn- ly discredited the prediction until we had left the city spires five miles behind us, and James Ivey's overcoat and leggings (some called them "spatter-dashes") were dotted with feathery flakes. Whereupon we discovered that there was nothing in the world jolUer than travelling in a snow- storm, and grew wUdly hilarious in the prospect. The snow fell steadily and in grim eamest. By the time we got to flat Rock, where we were to have the horses and ourselves fed, the wheels chumed up, at every revolution, mud that was crushed strawberry in color, topped with whiteness that might have been whipped cream ; for the roads were heavy by reason of an open winter. This was Christmas snow. We exulted in it as if we had had a hand in the making. Our gallant outrider, albeit a staid youth of three-and-twenty, fell in with our humor. He made feeble fun of his own appearance as each wrinkle in his garments became a drift, and his dark hair was Uke a horsehair wig such as we had seen in pictwes of English 12 163 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY barristers. His bay horse was a match to our iron-grays, and the twelve hoofs were ploughing through a level fall of six inches before we espied the tremulous sparks we recognized as village windows. Our throats ached with laughing and our hearts with great swelling waves of happiness, as we tiunbled out of oiu" seats — and our bundles after us — at the gate of the long, low house that might have been mean in eyes accus- tomed to rows of three-storied brick "residences" on city streets. Every door was flung wide; every window was red with fire and lamp Ught. We had fried chicken and waflBes, hot rolls, ham, beaten biscuits, honey, three kinds of preserves, and, by special petition of all the children, a mighty bowl of snow and cream, abundantly sweetened, for supper. This dispatched, and at full length, the journey having made us hungry, and the sight of us having quickened the appetites of the rest, we sat about the fire in the great "chamber" on the first floor, that was the throbbing heart of the home, and talked until ten o'clock. The faithful clock that hung above the mantel did not vary five minutes from the truth in that number of years; but it was dumbly discreet, never obtruding an audible reminder of the flight of hours. I saw one of the same pattern in a curio shop last week. The salesman asked fifty dollars for it. The chimney in "the chamber" drew better than any other in the house. A fire was kindled on that hearth, night and morning, for nine months in the year. My mother main- tained that the excellent health of her young family was due in part to that fact. A Uttle blaze dispelled the linger- ing dampness of the morning and the gathering fogs of night. She knew nothing of germs, benevolent and malev- olent, but she appreciated the leading fact that cold and humidity signify danger, heat and dryness go with health. I coveted no girl's home and apparel, as Mea and I snug- 164 HOME AT CHRISTMAS gled down under our blankets on the mattress my father was so far in advance of his times as to insist should be substituted for a feather-bed in each bedroom occupied by a child. The "whun" was one of the "notions" that earned for him the reputation of eccentricity with con- servative neighbors. Our windows were casements, and rattled sharply in blasts that had thrashed the snow-storm into a tempest. The wind pounded, as with hammers, upon the sloping roof over our happy heads. Longfellow had not yet written « My little ones are folded like the flocks," but I know my mother felt it. She came near saying it when I told her at the breakfast- table that I fell asleep, saying to myself: "He'll go into the barn and keep himself waiin And hide his head under his wing." "I could think of nothing, whenever I awoke, but the mother sheep with her lambs all with her in the fold," was her answer. "And of 'the hollow of His hand.' We have much to make us thankful this Christmas." "To make us thankful!" She was ever on the watch for that. Like Martin Luther's little bird, she "sat on her twig, content, and let God take care." A bright sun left little of what had promised to be a deep snow, by Christmas Day. Four Christmas-guns were fired at midnight of Christmas Eve in four different quarters of the village. That is, holes were drilled with a big auger into the heart of a stout oak or hickory, and stuffed with powder. At twelve o'clock a torch was applied by a fast runner, who took to his heels on the instant to escape the explosion. The detonation was that of a big cannon. 165 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Sometimes, the tree was rent apart. That was a matter of small moment m a r^on where acres of forest-lands were cleared for tobacco fields by the primitive barbarism of girdling giant trees that had struck their roots into the virgin soil and lifted strong arms to heaven for centuries. From midnight to simrise the sound of ''pop-crackers" and pistol-shots was hardly intermitted by a minute's si- lence. With the awakening of quieter, because older folk, the air rang with shouts of ''Christmas gift!" addressed impartially to young and old, white and black. The salutation was a grievous puzzle and positive an- noyance to our New-England grandmother, the first Christ- mas she passed with us. By the time she was ready for breakfast she had emptied her pocket of loose coins, and bestowed small articles of dress and ornament upon three or four of the (to her apprehension) importunate claimants. When she made known the grievance — ^which she did in her usual imperious fashion — ^my father shouted with laughter. With difficulty he drilled into her mind that the greeting was not a petition, still less a demand. From that day he forbade any of us to say "Christmas gift!" to "Old Mistis," as the servants called her. We children wished her, "A merry Christmas." The servants never learned the unaccustom^ form. The old lady did not enter into the real significance of the words that offended her. Nor, for that matter, did one out of a hundred of those who had used it all their lives, as each Christmas rolled around. It never dawned upon me until I heard how Russian peas- ants and Russian nobility alike greet every one they meet on Easter morning with — "The Lord is risen," receiving the answer, " He is risen indeed !" The exultant cry of " Christ- mas gift !" was a proclamation of the best thing that ever came into the world. The exchange of holiday offerings at the festal season commemorates the same. All over Christendom it is an act of grateful, if too often blind, 166 A CANDY-PULL obedience to the command — "Freely ye have received, freely give." Tliere were twelve servants in our family — eight adults and four children. Not one was overlooked in the distri- bution of presents that followed breakfast and family prayers. The servants were called in to morning and even- ing prayers as regularly as the white members were assem- bled for the service. The custom was universal in town and country, and was, without doubt, borrowed from Eng- lish country life — ^the model for Virginian descendants. Men and women took time to pray, and made haste to do nothing. We prate long and loudly now of deep breathing. We practised it in that earlier generation. On Christmas night we had a " molasses stew." We have learned to say "candy-pull" since then. A huge cauldron of molasses was boiled in the kitchen — a detached building of a story-and-a-half, standing about fifty feet from "the house." Gilbert — ^the dining-room servant, who would be "a butler" now — brought it into the dining-room when it was done to a turn, and poured it into great buttered plat- ters arranged around the long table. All of us, girls and" boys, had pinned aprons or towels over our festive gar- ments, and put back our cuffs from our wrists. My mother set the pace in the pulling. She had a reputation for mak- ing the whitest and most spongy candy in the county, and she did it in the daintiest way imaginable. Buttering the tips of her fingers Ughtly, she drew carefully from the sur- face of the platter enough of the cooling mixture for a good "pull." In two minutes she had an amber ribbon, glossy and elastic, that bleached fast to cream-color under her rapid, weaving motion, until she coiled or braided com- pleted candy — brittle, dry, and porous — upon a dish lined with paper. She never let anybody take the other end of the rope; she did not butter her fingers a second time, and used the taper tips alone in the work, and she had the 167 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY candy on the dish before any of the others had the sticky, scalding mass in working order. We dipped our fingers again and again in butter and, when hard bestead, into flour, which last resort my mother scorned as unpro- fessional, and each girl had a boy at the other end of her rope. It was graceful work when done secundum artem. The fast play of hands; the dexterous toss and exchange of the ends of shining strands that stiffened too soon if not handled aright; the strain upon bared wrists and strong shoulders as the great ropes hardened; the laughing faces bent over the task ; the cries of feigned distress as the im- mature confectionery became sticky, or parted into strings, under careless manipulation; the merry peals of* laughter at defeat or success — ^made the Christmas frolic picturesque and gay. I wondered then, and I have often asked since, why no painter has ever chosen as a subject this one of our national pastimes. A homeUer, but as characteristic an incident of that Christmas — the last we were to have in the country home — was hog-killing. The " hog and hominy," supposed by an ignorant reading- public to have formed the main sustenance of the Virginian planter and his big family, are as popularly believed to have been raised upon his own farm or farms. Large herds of pigs were bom and brought up on Virginia lands. Per- haps one-half of the pork cured into bacon by country and by village folk, was bought from Kentucky drovers. Early in the winter — before the roads became impassable — immense droves of full-grown hogs crowded the routes leading over mountain and valley into the sister State. We had notice of the appioach of one of these to our little town before it appeared at the far end of the main street, by the hoarse grunting that swelled into hideous volume — unmistakable and indescribable — a continuous rush of dissonance, across which were projected occasional squeals. 168 A HOG-KILLING A drove had entered the village a week before Christ- mas, and rested for the night in the wide "old field" back of the Bell Tavern. Citizens of the Court House and from the vicinity had bought freely from the drovers. More than twenty big-boned grunters were enclosed in a large pen at the foot of our garden, and fed lavishly for ten days, to recover them from the fatigue of the journey that left them leaner than suited the fancy of the purchaser. On the morning of the cold day appointed for the "killing," they were driven to a near-by "horse-branch" and washed. At noon they were slaughtered at a spot so distant from the house that no sound indicative of the deed reached our ears. Next day the carcasses were duly cut up into hams, shoulders, middUngs (or sides of bacon), chines, and spareribs. Lean leavmgs from the dissection were apportioned for sausage-meat; the heads and feet would be made into souse (headcheese); even the tails, when roasted in the embers, were juicy tidbits devoured relishfully by children, white and black. Not an edible atom of the genial porker went to waste in the household of the notable housewife. The entrails, cleaned and scalded into "chitterlings," were accounted a luscious delicacy in the kitchen. They rarely appeared upon the table of "white folks." I never saw them dished for ourselves, or our friends. Yet I have heard my father tell of meeting John Marshall, then Chief Justice of the United States, in the Richmond streets one morning, as the great man was on his way home from the Old Market. He had a brace of ducks over one arm, and a string of chitterUngs swung jauntily- from the other. And why not? Judge Marshall had "Hudibras" at his tongue's end, and could have quoted: • "His warped ear hung o'er the strings, Which was but souse to chitterlings." 169 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY The Virginia house-mother had classic precedent for the utilization of what her granddaughter accounts but offal. I once heard a celebrated divine say, unctuously: "'Hog-killing time' is to me the feast of the year." And nobody stared, or smiled, or said him "Nay." Chine, sparerib, and sausage, such as titillated our palates in the first half of the nineteenth century, are not to be had now for love or money. The base imitations sold to us in the shambles are the output of "contract work." xvn A NOTABLE AFFAIR OF HONOR Early in the second winter of our residence in Rich- mond, the community and the State were thrilled to pain- ful interest by the most notable duel recorded in the history of Vii^nia. On the desk at my side lies a time-embrowned pamphlet, containing a full report of the l^al proceedings that suc- ceeded the tragedy. The leading Democratic paper of the State at that time was published by Thomas Ritchie and his sons. The father, to whom was awarded the title of "The Nastor of the South- em Press," was a dignified gentleman who had won the esteem of his fellow-citizens by a long life spent under the limelight that beats more fiercely nowhere than upon a political leader who is also an editor. In morals, stainless, in domestic and social life, exemplary and beloved, the elder Ritchie enjoyed, in the evening of his day, a reputa- tion unblurred by the rancor of partisan spite. The policy of his paper was fearless, but never unscrupulous. To the Democratic party, the Enquirer was at once banner and bulwark. Of his elder son, William Foushee, I shall have something to say in later chapters, and in a lighter vein. The second son, the father's namesake, was recognized as the moving spirit of the editorial columns. John Hampden Pleasants was as strongly identified with the Whig party. He was a man in the prime of life ; like the Ritchies, descended from an ancient and honorable 171 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Virginia family, noble in ph3rsique, and courtly in bearing. He held a trenchant pen, and had been associated from his youth up with the press. He had lately assumed the oflBce of editor-in-chief of a new paper, and brought it into notice by vigorous and brilliant editorials that were the talk of both parties. The opening gun of what was to be a sanguinary combat was fired by a Washington correspondent of the Enquirer, under date of January 16, 1846: "I am much mistaken if Mr. John Hampden Pleasants does not intend, with his new paper, to out-Herod Herod — to take the lead of the IrUeUigencer, if possible, in exciting Abolitionism by showing Southern Whig sympathy in their movements; and thus, for the benefit of Whiggery, to cheat them into the belief that the Southern patrons of either of these gentlemen are ceasing to detest their in- cendiary principles, and beginning, like the Whigs of the North, to coalesce with them. "They agitate to affect public opinion at the South, and Messrs. Gales and Pleasants practically tell them to go on — that they are succeeding to admiration." It was a poor shot — more like a boy's play with a toy gun than a marksman's aim. But the bullet was poisoned by the reference to Abolitionism. That was never ineffec- tive. A friend in conservative Philadelphia called Mr. Pleasants' notice to the attack, which had up to that time escaped his eyes: *'I have d d this as a lie every time I had a chance, although I believe that you, like myself — ^a Virginian and a slaveholder — regard Slavery as an evil." Mr. Pleasants replied in terms that were singularly mild for a fighting political editor. I may say, here, that it is a gross blunder to compare the methods of party-writers and orators of to-day with those of sixty years ago, to the disadvantage of the former. 172 A NOTABLE AFFAIR OF HONOR They fought, then, without the gloves, and as long as breath lasted. "I confess my surprise, nay, my regret," wrote Mr. Pleasants, "that the present editors of the Enquirer should, by publication, have indorsed, so far as that sort of indorsement can go, and without any explanatory re- mark, the misrepresentations of their Washington corre- spondent. They ought, as pubUc men, to know that I stand upon exactly the same platform with their father in respect to this subject. In 1832 we stood, for once, shoulder to shoulder, and since that time we have both expressed, without intermission, the same abhorrence of Northern Abolition, and the same determination, under no circumstances which could be imagined, to submit, in the slightest degree, to its dictation or intrusion. . . . "These were also the views — namely, that Slavery was an evil, and ought to be got rid of, but at our own time, at our own motion, and in our own way — of Washington, Jefferson, Henry, George Mason, the two Lees, Madison, Monroe, Wirt, and all the early patriots, statesmen, and sages of Virginia — without exception! "Such are my opinions still, and if they constitute me an Abolitionist, I can only say that I would go further to see some of the Abolition leaders hanged than any man in Virginia, especially since their defeat of Mr. Clay. "In respect to Slavery, I take no pious, no fanatical view. I am not opposed to it because I think it morally wrong, for I know the multitude of slaves to be better off than the whites. I am against it for the sake of the whites, my own race. I see young and powerful commonwealths around us, with whom, while we carry the burden of Slavery, we can never compete in power, and yet with whom we must prepare to contend with equal arms, or consent to be their slaves and vassals — we or our children. In aU, I look but to the glory and liberty of Virginia." 173 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY The confession of State's Rights would seem strong enough to soften the heart of an original Secessionist — a being as yet unheard of — and the respectful mention of the Nestor of the Enquirer might have drawn the fire of the filial editor. How far these failed of their effect is obvious in the return shot: ''Although the language used by Mr. Pleasants may not be considered directly offensive, yet we are unwilling to allow him or others to make hypotheses in regard to our veracity. When we desire lectures on morals we hope to be allowed to choose our own preceptor. We certainly shall not apply to Aim/" In Mr. Pleasants' rejoinder he again reminds the young men that their father and himself had been of the same mind on the Slavery question for twenty years : "The correspondent may have believed what he said, in ignorance of the facts, and may therefore be guiltless of premeditated injustice, but the editors who indorse his (ftdumny by printing it without any explanation, either did know better, in which case their candor and liberality are compromised, or ought to have known better, in which case they themselves may say what responsibility they in- cur by printing an accusation utterly false in fact, and calculated to infuse the greatest possible prejudice against him respecting whom it is promulgated." The answer of the Enquirer was a sneer throughout: "We doubt whether he knows, himself, what principles he may be disposed to advocate. His most intimate friends are sometimes puzzled to understand his position. ... If our correspondent 'Macon' wishes it, he will, of course, have the use of our columns, but if he will take our advice, he will let Mr. J. H. P. alone. To use an old proverb — 'Give the gentleman rope enough, and he will hang himself!'" In a long letter to a personal friend, but published in 174 A NOTABLE AFFAIR OF HONOR the Nea>8 and Star — what would be cjalled now an "open letter" — Mr. Pleasants sums up the points of the con- troversy, and calmly assumes the animus of the attack to be personal enmity, a sort of vendetta feud, against which argument is powerless: "Justice from the Richmond Enquirer I have long ago ceased to expect. For more than twenty years I have Uved under its ceaseless misrepresentations and malevo- lent misconstructions. I had hoped, when the former editor removed to Washington to receive the rich rewards of his devotion to party, to live upon better terms with his successors, and I have studied to cultivate better re- lations by respectful consideration and undeviating cour- tesy; but I have found that other passions besides the love of liberty are transmitted from sire to son. . . . Calmly re- viewing this piece of impertinence, I should be of opinion that this assailant meditated fight, if I could think that a young brave would seek, as an antagonist upon whom to flesh his maiden sword, a man so much older than him- self as I am, and with dependent children." In allusion to a former altercation with "D Secretario," a "foe illustrious for his virtues and talents, whom this aspirant after knighthood" declined to encounter — ^the senior combatant concludes: " Battle, then, being clearly not his object, I must suppose that he meant no more than a Uttle gasconade, and the re- covery, at a cheap rate, of a forfeited reputation for courage." With the, to modem taste, odd blending of personality with editorial anonymity that characterized the pro- fessional duel throughout, "We, the junior editor," retorts: "This letter affords strong corroborative evidence of our opinion expressed in our article of the 27th ultimo, and from Mr. J. H. Pleasants' communication, evidently under- 175 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY stood by him to the extent we intended — namely, that facts within our knowledge proved him to be a coward. "He appeals to the confines of age and dependent chil- dren. Let it be! We shall not disturb him." Ten years after the correspondence and the "affair*' to which it was the prelude, an eminently respectable citizen of Richmond told my husband of a street-comer scene, date of February 21, 1846, the day on which the last con- tribution to the war of words above recorded, appeared in the Enquirer. "One of the groups one saw on all sides, in heated dis- cussion of the newspaper controversy and the probable outcome, was collected about Doctor , then, as now, pastor of the Church. He read out the last sentences of Ritchie's ultimatum with strong excitement. Then he struck the paper with his finger, and said: 'That settles the matter! Pleasants must fight! There is no way out of it !' " One of the party ventured a remonstrance to the effect that * Pleasants was not a hot-headed boy to throw his life away. He might be made to see reason, and the matter be smoothed over,' etc. "The minister broke in warmly, with — "'Impossible, sir, impossible! No honorable man could sit down quietly under the insult! He must fight! There is no alternative!' "Now," continued the narrator, "I am not a church- member, and I had no overstrained scruples against duel- ling at that time. But it sent a queer shock through me when I heard a minister of the gospel of peace take that ground. I felt that I could never go to hear him preach again. And I never did! I heard he made a most feeling allusion to poor Pleasants in a sermon preached shortly after his death. That didu't take the bad taste out of my mouth." 176 A NOTABLE AFFAIR OF HONOR How general was the sympathy with the incautiously expressed opinion of the divine can hardly be appreciated now that the duello is reckoned among the errors of a ruder age. The city was in a ferment for the three days sepa- rating the 21st of February and the 25th, on which the memorable encounter took place. If any friend essayed to reconcile the ofifending and offended parties, we have no note of it. The nearest approach to arbitration recorded in the story of the trial is in the testimony of a man well- acquainted with both parties, who was asked by one of Mr. Ritchie's seconds to *'go upon the ground as a mutual friend." He testified on the stand: "I declined to do so. I asked him if the matter could be adjusted. I asked if Mr. Ritchie would not be willing to withdraw the epithet of 'coward,' in case Mr. Pleasants should come upon the field. His reply was that Mr. Ritchie conscientiously be- lieved Mr. Pleasants to be a coward.'* The persuasions of other friends to whom he spoke, at an evening party ( !), of the afifair to come ofif on the monow, overcame the scruples of the reluctant pacificator. He accompanied the surgeon (the most eminent in the city, and one of the Faculty of Richmond Medical C!ollege) to the ground next morning. The meeting was no secret, except — presumably — to the authorities who might have prevented it. Going up to Mr. Ritchie's second^ he made a final effort to avert the murder: " I renewed the application I had made the evening be- fore, telling him that Mr. Pleasants was on the field, and asking him if he would not withdraw the imputation of cowardice. He replied that he would keep his friend there fifteen mmutes, and no longer." The morning was raw, and the wind from the river was searching. There had been rain during the night, and the 177 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ground was slippery with sleet. The principals were equipped with other arms than the duelling pistols. "Mr. Pleasants put a revolver into the left pocket of his coat; then he took two duelling pistols, one in his right, and the other in his left hand." At this point the witness interpolates: ''I looked away about that time." (As well he might!) ''The next weapon I saw him arm himself with was his sword-cane under his left arm. He had a bowie-knife under his vest." Of Mr. Ritchie it was testified: ''He had four pistols and also a revolver. He had the larger pistols in his belt. I did not see his sword until after the rencontre. He had it drawn when I came up to him. I supposed it was a bowie-knife." After a brief parley as to the disadvantages of a position first selected, and the choice of a second, the word was given to advance and fire. The principals were two hun- dred yards apart when the word was given. "Mr. Ritchie fired at the distance of twenty-five or thirty yards. Mr. Pleasants fired his first pistol within about fifteen or twenty feet of Mr. Ritchie. ... At the third shot they were more rapid. Mr. Pleasants advanced. At the third fire Mr. Ritchie's form became obscure; Mr. Pleasants still advancing, I saw him within six or seven feet of Mr. Ritchie. It was then that Mr. Pleasants fired his second pistol." Thus the eminent surgeon, who had refused to come to the field as the friend of both parties, but yielded when asked to serve in his professional capacity. He remarks, parenthetically, here: "I am now giving my recollection of events transpiring in a short time and under great excitement." Perhaps, in spite of the great excitement, the training of his calling held his senses steady, for his story of the fight is graphic and succinct. 178 A NOTABLE AFFAIR OF HONOR ''I saw Mr. Pleasants level his second pistol; I heard the report; I saw Mr. Ritchie stagger back, and I remarked to Mr. D. " (the man who had been overpersuaded to wit- ness the murder as a "mutual friend ")> '* ' Ritchie is a dead man !' I so inferred, because he had staggered back. Then I heard several discharges without knowing who was fire- ing. I saw Mr. Pleasants striking at Mr. Ritchie with some weapon — whether a cane or a pistol, I do not know. I also saw him make several thrusts with a sword-cane. He gave several blows and two or three thrusts. I do not know if the sword was sheathed. During this part of the affair I saw Mr. Ritchie with his sword in his hand. I did not see him draw it. I saw him in the attitude of one making a thrust, and did see him make one or two thrusts at Mr. Pleasants. I remarked to Mr. D., 'Let us go up, or he'll be stabbed!* Two or three times the cry was made, ' Stop, Pleasants ! Stop, Ritchie !' We went up. Mr. Pleasants was tottering; Mr. Ritchie was standing a few feet away, the point of his sword on the ground; he was perfectly quiet. Mr. Archer took Mr. Pleasants' arm and laid him down. He was on the ground when I reached him. Before I got to him I saw Mr. Ritchie leaving the ground. He walked a short distance, and then ran." It transpired afterward that not one of Pleasants's balls had struck Ritchie. The presumption was that the elder man was wounded by his opponent's first fire, and fired wildly in consequence. He received six balls in various parts of his body. But one of his bullets was found, and that in the gable of a building out of the line of the firing. The ball was embedded in the wood, nine feet above the ground. Mad with pain and bUnded by rage, the wounded man struck at the other's face when they were near to- gether— some said, with the useless pistol, others with his sword-cane or bowie-knife. When the fugitive reached the carriage in waiting at the foot of the hiU, his face was cov- 13 179 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ered with blood. His phyacum was in the carriage, and examined him at once. But for the cut lip he was abso- lutely uninjured. The sun was just rising when John Hampden Pleasants was lifted into the carriage and borne back to the city. He knew himself to be mortally wounded from the mo- ment he fell. This was on Wednesday, February 25th. Before the short winter day neared its noon, the tale was known from one end of Richmond to the other, and the whole popu- lation heaved with excitement. Business was practically suspended while men talked over the terrible event; the sidewalks were blocked by gossipiDg idlers. Our school was called to order at nine o'clock daily. On this morning, teachers and pupils were unfit for lessons. For Mr. Pleasants' only daughter was one of us, and a general favorite. His niece was likewise a pupil, and the two had the same desk. Their vacant chairs made the tragedy a personal grief to each of us. When Mrs. Notting- ham tode us get our Bibles ready for the morning service, not a girl there could read without a break in her trembling voice, and when the dear old lady made tender mention in her prayer of the "sorrowing," and for "those drawing near unto death," our sobs drowned the fervent tones. I recall, as one of the minor incidents of the dreadful day, that when I went home in the afternoon, my grand- mother insisted I should read the newspaper corr^ spondence aloud to her. She was a captious tyrant at times, and, like many another deaf person, sensitive as to the extent of her infirmity. She "was not so very deaf, except in damp weather, or when she had a cold. If people would only speak distinctly, and not mumble, she would have no trouble in understanding what was said." In this connection she often made flattering exception of my- self as the "one girl she knew who could speak English." ISO A NOTABLE AFFAIR OF HONOR In this capacity she summoned me to her side. She had the week's papers on her lap. I must pick out the articles "that were responsible for this scandalous afiFair." Down I sat, close beside her "good ear," and read, with precise articulation and right emphasis, the editorials from which I have made excerpts in this chapter. In copying them to-day, the strait-laced New-England- er's clarification of the awful event is in my mind and ear. Every detail of the duel and the cold-blooded preparations therefor — the deadly weapons borne by, and girt about the principals; the sang-froid of seconds and attendant "friends"; the savagery of the combat; the tone of public sentiment that made the foul fight within sight of the steeples of the city practicable, although the leading men of the place were cognizant of each step that led to the scene on the river-bank before sunrise that gray morning — can we, in these later times we are wont to compare re- gretfully with those, sum up the details and the catas- trophe in phrase more fit and true? I resented it hotly, if silently, then. Even my father, who always spoke of duelling as a " remnant of Middle Age barbarism," shared in the universal grief for his party leader laid low in the prime of his useful manhood, and would suffer no censure of the challenge that had made the fight inevitable. " Pleasants is a brave man, and a proud. He could not endure to sit down quietly under the aspersion of cow- ardice." Another terrible day of suspense dragged its slow length along. Hourly bulletins from the chamber where the wounded man was making his last struggle with Fate, alternately cheered and depressed us. He was conscious and cheerful ; he had exonerated his opponent from blame in the matter of the duel : " I thought I had run him through. It was providential 181 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY that I did not. Ritchie is a biave man. I shall not re- cover. You will be candid with me, Doctor? It is all right." These were some of the sentences caught up by young and old, and repeated with tearful pride in the dying hero. That was what they called him; and when on Friday morn- ing the flag on the capitol hung at half-mast, the mourners who went about the streets were his fellow-townsmen, who had no word of condemnation for him and the rash act that ended his career. On Saturday morning it b^gan to snow. By Sunday afternoon the streets were eighteen inches deep on the level, with the heaviest snow-fall of the season. Mrs. Pleasants, the widow of a governor of Viiginia, and the mother of the slain editor, was a member of the Grace Street Presbyterian Church, of which Reverend Doctor Stiles was then pastor. The funeral services were held there on Sunday, at 3 o'clock p.m. By two the side- walks were blocked by a crowd of silent spectators, and, half an hour later, every seat in the church, except those reserved for the family and immediate friends of the de- ceased, was filled. After these had taken their places, there was not standing-room in aisles or galleries. The / sermon was an eloquent tribute to the private virtues and the public services of the deceased. One memorable ex- tract is inscribed upon the monument erected by admirera and friends over his grave in Shockoe Hill Cemetery: TlQlttb a <3eniU0 tibovc Salent, a Courage above 1>etoi6m None ever forgot the scene who saw the long line of funeral carriages winding, like a black stream, through streets where the snow came up to the axles, under the low-hang- ing sky that stooped heavily and gloomed into leaden gray 1S2 A NOTABLE AFFAIR OF HONOR by the time the cort^e reached the cemetery. And all the afternoon the brooding air throbbed with the tolling bells. We said and believed that Richmond had never known so sad a day since she went into mourning for the three- score victims of the burning of the theatre in 1811. The trial of Thomas Ritchie for murder in the first, and of the seconds as "principals in the second degree," fol- lowed the duel with swiftness amazing to the reader of criminal cases in our age. On March 31, 1846, four of the ablest lawyers in Virginia appeared in court to defend the prisoner. The old brochure which records the proceedings is curious and deeply interesting reading; in nothing more remark- able than in the defence of what was admitted to be ''an unhappy custom" and directly opposed to the laws of the country. " The letter of the law is made to yield to the spirit of the times*' is an italicized sentence in the principal speech of the defence. The same speaker dwelt long and earnestly upon precedents that palliated, excused, and warranted the time-honored (although "unhappy") practice. Not less than fifteen instances of the supremacy of the higher law of the "spirit of the times" were drawn from English history. "In not one of which had there been any prosecu- tion. "And now, gentlemen of the jury, does any one sup- pose that duelUng can be suppressed, or capitally punished, when the first men in the kingdom — such men as Pitt and Fox, and Castlereagh and Canning and Grattan, and Nelson and Wellington, lend the high sanction of their names, and feel themselves justified and compelled to peril their lives upon a point of honor? And I would ask my f riendi the Commonwealth's Attomeyi if such men as these 183 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY constitute the 'swordsmen of England/ and were alone worthy of the times of Tamerlane and Bajasset? . . • ''Was Andrew Jackson regarded as a 'swordsman' and duellist because he fought, not one, but three duels, and once shed the blood of a fellow-man in single combat? He was twice elected to the first office in the world, and died a Christian. . . . How many of Henry Clajr^s numerous friends in Virginia, and, especially, the religious portion of them (including ministers of the Gospel), refused to vote for him as President of the United States because he had fought two duels? . . . "The coroner's inquest held on the body of General Hamilton brought in a verdict of wilful murder against Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States. "Colonel Burr afterward took his seat in the Senate of the United States as Vice-President; his second, afterward, became a judge; and the second of General Hamilton — a most amiable and accomplished man — I served with in Congress, some years ago " I call upon you, then, gentlemen, by every motive that can bind you to a discharge of your duty, to do justice to my unfortunate young friend. Bind up the wounds of his broken-hearted parents; carry joy and peace and conso- lation to his numerous family and friends; wash out the stain that has been attempted upon his character and reputation, and restore him to his country — ^as, in truth, he is — pure and unspotted." TTie address of the Commonwealth's Attorney is com- paratively brief and emphatically half-hearted. We are entirely prepared for the announcement in smaller type at the foot of the last page: "The argument on both sides" (!) "having been con- cluded, the jury took the case, and, without leaving the box, returned a verdict of 'Not guilty!' "The verdict was received by the large auditory with 184 A NOTABLE AFFAIR OF HONOR loud manifestations of applause. Order was promptly com- manded by the officers of the court. "Mr. Ritchie then left the court-house, accompanied by the greater portion of the spectators, who seemed eager to shake hands with him and to congratulate him upon his honorable acquittal." xvra THE MENACE OP SLAVE INSURRECTION "Richmond, June Sih, 1S47. ''Dear Effie, — ^It is past ten o'clock, and a rainy night. Just such a one as would make a comfortable bed and a sound snooze no mean objects of desire. "George Moody, alias 'The Irresistible/ arrived this after- noon, and will leave in the morning, and I cannot let so good an opportunity of writing to you escape. I must scribble a brief epistle. ''The drive down from Powhatan was delightful. I found Mr. Belt extremely pleasant, full of anecdote, a great talker, yet, withal — as Mr. Miller had told me — a good listener. A very necessary qualification, by-the-way, for any one with whom I may chance to be in company. "The first thing I heard when I reached home was tidings of that worst of bugbears to a Southern woman — an impend- ing insurrection. A double guard was on duty at the capitol, and a detachment of military from the armory paraded the streets all night. I was, I confess, somewhat alarmed, and not a little startled, but gradually my fears wore away, and I slept as soundly that night as if no such thing were in agitation. '"Puss Sheppard was in to supper, and her parting saluta- tion to us at going was : ' Farewell I If I am alive in the morn- ing I will come and see if you are!' "The whole matter ended, like Mr. C.'s sermon — 'just where it began — viz., in nothing.' "Richmond is rather dull at present. The Texas excite- ment has subsided almost entirely, and those who gave cre- 186 THE MENACE OF SLAVE INSURRECTION dence to the report of the insurrection are desirous to keep as still as possible. ^^ Morning, — I can write no more. I am sure your good- nature will acquit me of blame so far as matter, chirography, and quality go, when I tell you that I have written this partly by the light of a lamp which iSnally went out, self-extinguished for want of oil, and partly this morning, when I am suffering with a sick-headache. I feel more like going to bed than writing, but 'The Unexceptionable' is about to take his de- parture, and waits for this. Write soon and much. I will try to treat you better next time." There is much reading between the lines to be done for the right comprehension of that letter. My genre pictures of days that are no more would be incomplete were I to fail to touch upon the "worst of bugbears" I feigned to pass over lightly. In the debate upon the abolition of slavery in my native State, lost by one vote in the Legislature of 1831-32, while Nat Turner's insurrection was fresh in the public mind, John Randolph declared, "Whenever the fire-alarm rings in Richmond every mother clasps her baby closer to her breast." I cannot recollect when the whisper of the possibility of "Insurrection" (we needed not to specify of what kind) did not send a sick chill to my heart. The menace I here dismiss with a sentence or two was the most serious that had loomed upon my horizon. I could not trust myself to dwell upon it within the two dajrs that had elapsed since my return from a vacation month in Powhatan. How keenly every circumstance attending it was bitten into my mind is proved by the distinctness of the etching preserved by a memory that has let many things of greater mo- ment escape its hold. My host, Mr. D., had come in to dinner the day before that set for my stage-journey back to town, with the pleasing 187 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY intelligence that Mr. Lloyd Belt, a former citizen of Pow- hatan, but for twenty years a resident of Richmond, was "going down" — Richmond was always "down," as Lon- don is "up" from every part of England — ^the next day, and would be glad to take me in his carriage. As I wrote to EflSe, the drive was delightful. My courtly escort took as much pains to entertain me as if I had been a belle and a beauty, instead of an unformed school-girl. It was a way they had — ^those gentlemen of the Old School — of recognizing the woman in every baby-girl, and doing it honor. It did not strike me as strange that Mr. Belt beguiled the thirty-mile journey with anecdote and disquisition. He was charming. I never thought that he was likewise condescending. I am quite as sure that the idea did not enter his knightly imagination. As we drove leisurely up Main Street from the bridge, we noticed that groups of men stood on the street comers and in the doors of stores, chatting gravely, and, it would seem, confidentially. "There must be news from the seat of war!" opined my companion. The Mexican War was then in progre^, and accompany- ing raids into the debatable territory of Texas kept public sentiment in a ferment. My father and the rest of the family, with a couple of neighbors, were enjo)dng the cool of the day upon our front porch. He came down to the gate to assist me to alight. So did Mr. Strobia, our elderly next-door neigh- bor, and he handed me up the steps while my father lin- gered to thank my escort for bringing me safely home. In the joyous confusion of greetings, I had not observed that Mr. Belt was leaning down from the carriage to ray father's ear, and that both were very grave, until Puss Sheppard, like the rattlepate she was, whispered loudly to Mr. Strobia : 188 THE MENACE OF SLAVE INSURRECTION "Pm scared to death! What is the latest news? You men won't tell us." "I have heard no news about anythmg or anybody P' ejaculated the old gentleman, testily and loudly, glancing over his shoulder at Gilbert, who had my trunk on his shoulder and was carrying it in at the side-gate. " Upon my soul, I haven't !" And as she caught his arm and swung around to get the truth from his eyes, he bustled down the steps and so on home. I had the tale in full by the time my bonnet was off. Mea, on one side, and Puss on the other, poured it forth in excited whispers, having closed "the chamber" door. Abolitionists had been at work among the n^roes in Hen- rico and Hanover counties for weeks. There were indica- tions of an organized conspiracy (in scope and detail so like the plot for which John IBrown's blood paid twelve years thereafter, that I bethought me of it when the news from Harper's Ferry stunned the nation), and the city was under arms. Governor Smith was said to have issued a proclamation to militia and citizens at large in Latin. I laughed there. "'Extra Billy!' He knows less of Latin than of Choc- taw!" The worthy functionary had earned the s6briqv£i by superdiligence in the matter of extra baggage while in the service of a stage-coach company, and as he was a Demo- crat we never forgot it. "Let that pass!" said Mea, impatiently. "We can't get away from the fact that where there is so much smoke there must be a httle fire. Some evil business is on foot, and all the servants know what it is, whether we do or not." I felt that she was right when Mary Anne and " Mammy," Gilbert, Tom, his assistant, and my Httle maid Paulina, with black Molly, Percy's nurse, trooped in, one after the other, to welcome " Miss Firginny " home. They had done 189 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY the like ever since I was bom. I should have felt hurt and angry had they failed in the ceremony. My sharpened senses detected something that was overdone in manner and speech. They were too glad to see me, and while they protested, I discerned sarcasm in their grins, a sinister roll in lively eyeballs. We talked fast over the supper-table, and of all manner of things irrelevant to the topic uppermost in our thoughts. Once, while Gilbert and his half-grown subaltern were out of the room, I ventured a hasty whisper to my father, at whose right I sat: " Father, have we any anns in the house if they should come?" Without turning his head, he saw, out of the tail of his eye, Gilbert on the threshold, a plate of hot waffles in hand, and Tom at his heels bearing a pitcher of fresh water. My father reached out a deliberate hand for a slice of bread from a plate near his elbow. "All that I have to say, my daughter" (his speech as deliberate as his hand, and every syllable sharp and clear), "is that we are prepared for them', come when and how they may." A perceptible shiver, as when one catches breath after an electric shock, ran around the table. All felt that he had thrown down the gauntlet, and was ready to take the consequences. My heart leaped up as an elastic bough from the weight that had bowed it to the earth. It was no efifort after that to be gay. I told stories of my country sojourn, retailed the humors of the visit to our old neigh- borhood, mimicking this and that rustic, telling of comical sayings of the colored people who pressed me with queries as to town life — in short, unbottled a store of fun and gossip that lasted until bedtime. Then, as I told my correspondent, I went to bed and slept the sleep of youth, health, and an easy mind. 190 THE MENACE OF SLAVE INSURRECTION And this because he who never lied to me had said that he was "prepared" for the assassins, come when they might. A week later, when the fireless smoke had vanished quite from the horizon, and we dared jest at the "scare," I asked my mother what arsenal my father had had in reserve that he could speak so confidently of preparation for midnight attack and domestic treachery. "Nothing more formidable than a carving-knife," she answered, merrily, "and courage that has always served him in the hour of peril. He was not alarmed. I believe he would face a hundred negroes with no other weapon than his bare hands." I am often asked why, if our family servants were really and warmly attached to us, we should have let the "bug- bear" poison our pleasures and haunt our midnight visions. To the present hour I am conscious of a peculiar stricture of the heart that stops my breath for a second, at the sud- den blast of a hunter's horn in the country. Before I was eight years old I had heard the tale of Gabriel's projected insurrection, and of the bloodier outbreak of murderous fury led by Nat Turner, the petted favorite of a trusting master. Heard that the signal of attack in both cases was to be "a trumpet blown long and loud." Again and again, on my visits to country plantations, I have been thrown into a paroxysm of terror when awakened from sleep in the dead of night, by the sound of the horns carried by "coon hunters" in their rounds of the woods nearest us. I could not have been over ten, when, on a visit to " Lethe," a homestead occupied for a while by Uncle Cams, I was rambling in the garden soon after sunrise, picking roses, and let them fall from nerveless fingers at the ringing blast of a "trumpet blown long and loud", from the brow of a neighboring hill. As it pealed louder and longer, imtil the blue welkin above me repeated the soimd, I fled as fast 191 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY as my freezing feet would carry me, to the deepest recesses of the graveyard at the foot of the garden, and hid in a tangle of wild raspberry bushes higher than my head. There I lay, wet with the dews of the past night, and my face and hands scratched to bleeding, until the winding horn grew faint and fainter, and the bay of a pack of hounds told me what a fool panic had made of me. We always thought of the graveyard as an asylum in the event of a rising. No n^ro would venture to enter it by day or night. In any ordinary period of danger or distress, I would I^ve trusted my life in the hands of the men and women who had been bom on the same plantation with my mother, and the younger generation, to whom she had been a faithful and benignant friend from their cradles. In fire and flood and tempest; in good report and evil report; in sickness and in health; in poverty, as in riches — they would have stood with, and for us to the death. We knew them to be but children of a larger growth, passionate and unreasoning, facile and impulsive, and fanatical beyond anything conceivable by the full-blooded white. The superstitious savagery their ancestors had brought from barbarous and benighted Africa, was yet in their veins. We had heard how Gabriel, a leader in prayer-meetings, and encouraged by the whites to do Christian evangeliza- tion among his own race, had deliberately meditated and written down, as sections of the code to be put into prac- tice, when he should come into his kingdom of Lower Vir- ginia— a plan of murder of all male whites, and a partition of the women and girl-children among his followers, together with arson and tortures exceeding the deviltries of the red Indians. We had heard from the fips of eye- witnesses, scenes succeeding the Southampton massacre of every white within the reach of the murderous horde howling at the heels of the n^ro preacher whom his 192 THE MENACE OF SLAVE INSURRECTION master had taught to read and write — how the first victim of the uprising, in the name of God and freedom, was that master as he lay asleep at his wife's side. Of how coolly — even complacently — ^Turner recorded: "He sprang up, calhng his wife's name. It was his last word. A single blow was suflScient to kill him. We forgot a baby that was asleep in the cradle, but Hark went back and dis- patched it." In every plan of rising against their masters, Religion was a potent element. It was, to their excitable im- aginations, a veritable Holy War, from which there would be no discharge. The "Mammy" who had nursed her mistress's baby at her own bosom, would brain it, with the milk yet wet upon its lips, if bidden by the "prophet" to make the sacrifice. Nat Turner split with his axe the skull of a boy he had carried in his arms scores of times, and stayed not his hand, although the little fellow met him with a happy laugh and outstretched arms and the cry, "Uncle Nat, you have come to give me a ride! Haven't you?" I repeat, we knew with what elements we should have to deal if the "rising" ever took an organized form. This ever-present knowledge lay at the root of the hatred of the "abolition movement." To the Northerner, dwelling at ease among his own people, it was — except to the leaders — an abstract principle. "All men are created free and equal" — a slaveholder had written before his Northern brother emancipated his unprofitable serfs. Ergo, rea- soned the Northern brother, in judicial survey of the in- creasing race, whose labor was still gainful to tobacco and wheat planter, the negro slave had a right to "liberty and the pursuit of happiness." He did not count the cost of a consummation devoijtly to be desired. He had no occasion to meditate upon the bloody steps by which the enslaved and alien race would 193 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY climb to the height the Abolitionist would stimulate him to attain. So well was it understood that a mother ran dangerous risks if she put her child into the care of the colored woman who complained that she " was tired of that sort of work/' that n^lect of such dislike of a nurse's duties was considered foolhardy. I heard a good old lady, who owned so many servants that she hired a dozen or so to her neighbors, lament that Mrs. Blank ''did not mind what I told her about Frances' determinatioji not to take care of children. I hired the girl to her as a chambermaid, and gave her fair warning that she just would no^ be a nurse. A baby was bom when Frances had been there four months, and she was set to nurse it. You must have heard the dreadful story? Perhaps you saw it in the papers. When the child was six months old the wretched creature pounded glass and put it in the baby's milk. The child died, and the girl was hanged." Ugly stories, these, but so true in every particular that I cannot leave them out of my chronicle of real life and the workings of what we never thought, then, of calling "the peculiar institution." One of my most distinct recollections of the discussions of Slavery held in my hearing is that my saintly Aunt Betsy said, sadly and thoughtfully: **One thing is certain— we will have to pay for the great sin of having them here. How, or when, God alone knows." "We did not bring them to Virginia!" was my mother's answer. "And I, for one, wish they were all back in Africa. But what can we do, now that they are on our hands?" Before turning to other and pleasanter themes, let me say that my father, after consultation with the wife who had brought to him eight or ten "family servants" as part of her father's estate, resolved to free them and send them 194 THE MENACE OF SLAVE INSURRECTION to Liberia at his own expense. This was in my early child- hood, yet I recollect how the scheme failed through the obstinate refusal of the slaves to leave master, home, and country for freedom in a strange land. They clung to my mother's knees, and prayed her, with wild weeping, not to let them go. They had blood relatives and dear friends here; their children had intermarried with men and women in dififerent parts of the county; their grandfathers and greatr-grandfathers had left them no legacy of memories that would draw them toward the far-ofif country which was but the echo of an empty name to their descendants. They were comfortable and happy here. Why send them, for no fault of theirs, into exile? "There is something in what they say!" my father had said to my mother, in reviewing the scene. " I cannot see that anything is left for us to do except to keep on as we are, and wait for further indications of the Divine will." This was in the thirties, not many years after an act of gradual emancipation was lost in the Legislature by the pitiful majority I named in an earlier paragraph. A score of years had passed since that momentous debate in our capitol, and our Urim and Thummin had not signified that we could do anything better than to ''keep on as we were." It would be idle to say that we were not, from time to time, aware that a volcano slumbered fitfully beneath us. There were dark sides to the Slavery Question, for master, as for slave. 14 xrx WEDDING AND BRIDESMAID — THE ROUTINE OP A LARGE FAMILY — MY FIRST BEREAVEMENT In the summer of 1851, my grandmother had bought and given to her only child the house which was to be our home as long as we remained a resident family in Richmond. Of this house I shall have a story to tell in the next chap- ter. It stands upon Leigh Street (named for the dis- tinguished lawyer of whom we have heard in these pages as taking a part in the Clay campaign), and the locality was then quietly, but eminently, aristocratic. There were few new houses, and the old had a rural, rather than an urban, air. Each had its garden, stocked with shrubbery and flow- ers. Some had encompassing lawns and outlying copses of virgin native growth. The new home held a large family. The stately old dame who had settled us for life, occupied a sunny front chamber, and in addition to our household proper, we had had with us, for two years, my mother's widowed brother-in-law, "Uncle'' Carus, and the stepdaughter for whose sake we had consented to receive him. My aunt had died soon after her youngest child (Anne) was taken to a Better C!ountry; Cousin Paulina went a year later, and as the mother's parting request to the eldest of her flock was that she would **take care of her father," separation was not to be thought of. None of us loved the lonely old man. One and all, we loved her who was a younger sister to our mother, and a second mother to her children. So we sat down to our meals every day, a full dozen, all 196 WEDDING AND BRIDESMAID told, and as we were seldom without a visitor, we must have been "thirteen at table", times without number. If we had ever heard the absurd superstition that would have forbidden it, we never gave it a thought. I should not have liked to meet my father's frown and hear his com- ment, had the matter been broached in his hearing. The modem (nominal) mistress would be horrified at the thought of twelve eaters, drinkers, and sleepers under the roof of a private house. We descried nothing out of the way in it, and fared exceeding comfortably from year's end to year's end. Large families were stiU respectable in the public eye, and an increase in the number of domestics kept the addition to the white family from bearing hard upon the housemother. How gayly and smoothly the little craft of my life moved on up to the middle of '53, let a few passages from a letter dated July 23d of that year, testify: ''I came back from the mountains on the 2d of this month. I had a charming visit at Piedmont. I believe I left warm friends behind me when I reluctantly said 'Good- bye' to the hospitable abode. I was the only young lady on the plantation, and there were four grown brothers and a cousin or two. Each had his pet riding-horse, which he 'must have me try.' I had rides, morning and evening, and once s,t high noon. In June! Think of it I I won't tell you which Rosinante I preferred. You might have a notion that his master shared his honors, and these shrewd guesses are in- convenient sometimes. The very considerate gallants found out, 'by the merest chance,' that it made me sick to ride in a closed carriage, and, of course, as there were two buggies on the place, there was 'tall' bidding as to which I should dis- tinguish by accepting a seat in it. Sarah C, her mother, and sister were kindness itself to me. I was quite ashamed of my unworthiness of such petting. . . . " I got home just in time to help Mea with the preparations for her Northern trip, and to get ready for Sarah Ragland's 197 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY wedding — an event that had its influence in shaping my sum- mer plans. "We enjoyed the 'occasion' heartily. How could I do otherwise when my attendant groomsman was ordered for the affair from Charlottesville? — the very youth who smote my already beriddled heart when I was up in that r^on. He is a cousin of the Raglands — Charley Massie by name — and the arrangement was Itfary's (bless her heart!). Mr. Bud- well, the bridegroom, was indisputably the handsomest man in the room. This was as it should be; but I never attended another wedding where this could be said with truth. My knight was the next best-looking, and for once I was content with a second-best article.'^ I allude in this letter to ''Cousin Mollie's" illness, but with no expression of anidety as to the result. She had been delicate ever since I could recollect anything. She went to Saratoga every summer, and now and then to Florida in the winter. The only intimation I ever had from her as to the cause of her continued singlehood was in answer to the girlish outburst: "Cousin Mary, you must have been beautiful when you were young I You will al- ways be charming. I can't comprehend why you have never married!" Her speech was ever even and sweet. I detected a ring of impatience or of pain in it, as she said : ** Why should I marry, Namesake? To get a nurse for life?" I had suspected all along that she had a history known to none of us. After that I knew it, and asked no more questions. Patient, brave, unselfishly heroic — "The sweetest soul That ever looked with human eyes,'* — she lingered day after day, now weaker, now rallying, until she spoke her own conviction to me one day in late 198 THE ROUTINE OF A LARGE FAMILY July, as I sat by^ fanning her, and no one else was pres- ent. I smiled as she opened her lai^e dark eyes, the only beauty left in the wasted face, and saw me. ''You are better, dear I We shall have you up and out driving before long." "No, dear child!" — ^infinite weariness in tone and look. "The old clock has run clean down!" I did not believe it, and I said it stoutly aloud, and to myself. She seemed no more x languid— only drowsy — ^the next afternoon, as I fluttered into the room and leaned over her in a glow of excitement: "Cousin Mollie, darling I I have come in to say that Junius Fishbum is down-stairs. He is in town for a day on his way to Newport." The great eyes opened wide, a smile lighted them into liveliness. "Oh, I am so glad!" she gasped. She was "glad" of everjrthing that gave me pleasure. I had never doubted that. I had never gone to her with a pain or a pleasure without getting my greedy fill of sym- pathy. When I had said a hearty "bon voyage!" to my caller, I went back to tell her of the interview. She was dying. We watched by her from evening to morning twilight. Ned Rhodes, who was in Boston when he got my letter, telling briefly what had come to us, sent me lines I read then for the first time. Had the writer shared that vigil with us, he could not have described it more vividly: "We watched her breathing thro' the night. Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro. 199 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Our very hopes belied our fears. Our fears our hopes belied: We thought her dying while she slept, And sleeping when she died/' At midnight there was a rally for a few minutes. I was wetting the dry lips, leaning over the pillow, so that she looked into my eyes in unclosing hers. A smile of heavenly sweetness played over her face — a ray that irradiated, with- out moving a feature or line. The poor mouth stirred ever so slightly. I bent closer to it to hear the whisper: "I'm almost there!" Two months later I wrote to my old friend : "Our great sorrow in July was my first affliction. Yet I was wonderfully supported under it, and the terrible desolation that has grown upon us, instead of lessening. I say 'sup- ported,' for not once have I wished her back; but I miss her —oh, so sadly I "'I cannot make her dead!' "Then mother went to the country for a month, and I was left as housekeeper, with the whole care of the family on my hands. Rising betimes to preside at father's early breakfast, pickling, preserving, sewing, overseeing the ser- vants, etcetera. "Enough of this! Although the little girls' lessons begin again to-day, and I have my sister's domestic and social duties to perform in addition to my own, I have more leisure than you might think, and you shall have the benefit of a spare half-hour on this bright Monday morning. (Alice practising, meanwhile, in the same room!) "Mea is still in Boston and the vicinity, and will not return for a month or more. Lizzie M. is to be married late in Octo- ber or early in November, and wishes to have Mea with her. Another of the three Lizzies, and the prettiest — Lizzie N. — married last week a Mr. L. — a nice young man, Mea says. I have never seen him, although they have been engaged for 200 MY FIRST BEREAVEMENT some time. He has taken up his abode in Boston, to keep his lovely wife with her invalid mother. "And while upon marriage — E. G. is to v^d on October 11th, Mr. R. H., one of ten brothers. She is 'doing very well/ say the gossips. "Sarah and Mr. Budwell are at home again, he handsomer than ever, while she looks prettier and happier than she ever was. before. " While retailing news, let me chronicle the arrival of Master Robert Wallace Courtney, an interesting youth, who — as father dryly remarked, when I said that he 'came from a foreign shore' — 'speaks the language of the Cry-mea.' "Heigho! so goes this mad world of ours: death; marriage; birth. Ranks are mowed down, and filled up as soon. Few of us appreciate what a fearful thing it is to die, and fewer yet how awful it is to live — ^writing our histories by our actions in the Book of God's Remembrance, a stroke for every word, movement, and thought! Again I say, if Death be fearful. Life is awful! "We are prone to forget, as one and another fall, and the chasm is closed up and Life seems the same — except within the bleeding hearts of mourners — ^that our day is coming as surely as those others have gone. In effect, we arrogate im- mortality for ourselves. "The longer I live, and the more I see of the things that perish with the using, the more firmly persuaded am I that there is but one reaUty in life, and that is Religion. Why not make it an every-day business? Since the loving care of the Father is the only thing that may not be taken from us, why do we not look to it for every joy, and cling to it for every comfort? . . . " Write soon. Will you not come to me? I am very lonely at times. One sister ganel Another absent! "I am wondering if you have changed as much as I feel that I have? It is not natural to suppose that you have. You have not the same impression of added responsibility, the emulation to throw yourself into the breach made by the removal of one so beloved, and, in her quiet way, exercising 201 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY so much influence. If I could but hope that patience and prayerful watchfulness would ever make me 'altogether such an one' as she was! ''How many and how happy have been the meetings in heaven since I last saw you! Dear little Sallie B. I How often in fancy do I see her walk away in the moonlight night of our parting! I never look from the front window in the evening without recalling that hour/' XX OUR TRUE FAMILY GHOST-STORY One evening of the winter following the events recorded in the last chapter, "Ned" Rhodes and I had spent a cosey two hours together. My parents never did chaperon duty, in the modern acceptation of the word. They made a habit, without hinting at it as a duty, of knowing per- sonally every man who called upon us. When, as in the present case, and it was a common one, the visitor was well known to them, and they liked him, both of them came into the drawing-room, sat for a half-hour or longer, as the spirit moved them, then slipped out, separately, to their own sitting-room and books. I have drawn Ned Rhodes's picture at length as "Char- ley" in Alone. I will only say here that he was my firm and leal friend from the time I was twelve years old to the time of his death, in the early eighties. He had a piece of new music for me to-night, and we fell to work with piano and flute soon after my father's exit. It was not difficult. The songs and duets that followed were familiar to us both. We chatted by the glowing grate when we left the piano — gayly and lightly, of nothing in particular — ^the inconsequent gossip of two old and inti- mate acquaintances that called for no efiPort from either. I mention this to show that I carried a careless spirit and a light heart with me, as I went ofiP in the direction of my bedroom, having extinguished the hanging lamp in the hall, and taking one of the lamps from the parlor to light myself bedward. 203 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY It was a big, square Colonial house, with much waste of space in the matter of halls and passages. The entrance- hall on the first floor was virtually a reception-room, and nearly as large as any apartment on that level. It was cut across the left side by an archway, filled with Venetian blinds and door. Beyond these was a broad, easy stair- way, dropping, by a succession of landings, to the lower from the upper story. Directly opposite the front door was a second and narrower arch, tiie door in which was, likewise, of Venetian slats. This led to the rooms at the back of the house. The plan of the second floor was the same. On this eventful night I passed through the smaUer archway, closing the door behind me. It had a spring latch that clicked into place as I swung it to. The bed- room I shared with my sister, who was not at home that night, was directly across the passage from that occupied by our parents. A line of light under their door proved that they were still up, and I knocked. "Come in!" called both, in unison. My mother, wrapped in her dressing-gown, lay back in her rocking-chair, her book closed upon her finger. My father had laid aside his coat, and stood on the rug, winding his watch. "I was hoping that you would look in," he said. "I wanted to ask what that new piano-and-flute piece is. I like it!" We exchanged a few sentences on the subject; I kissed both good-night, and went out into the hall, humming, as I went, the air that had caught his fancy. The lamp in my hand had two strong burners. Gas had not then been introduced into private dwellings in Rich- mond. We used what was sold as " burning fluid, " in il- luminating our houses — something less gross than camphene or oil, and giving more light than either. I carried the lamp in front of me, so that it threw a bri^t li^t upon 201 OUR TRUE FAMILY GHOST-STORY the door across the passage, here a little over six feet wide. As I shut the door of my mother's room, I saw, as distinctly as if by dayUght, a small woman in gray start out of the opposite door, glide noiselessly along the wall, and dis- appear at the Venetian blinds giving upon the big front hall. I have reviewed that moment and its incident a thousand times, in the effort to persuade myself that the apparition was an optical illusion or a trick of fancy. The thousandth-and-first attempt results as did the first. I shut my eyes to see — always the one figure, the same motion, the same disappearance. She was dressed in gray; she was small and lithe; her head was bowed upon her hands, and she sUpped away, hugging the wall, as in flight, vanishing at the closed door. The door I had heard latch itself five minutes ago I Which did not open to let her through I I recall, as clearly as I see the apparition, what I thought in the few seconds that flew by as I stood to watch her. I was not in the least frightened at first. My young maid, PauUna, a bright mulatto of fifteen, had more than once that winter fallen asleep upon the rug before my fire, when she went into the room to see that aU was in readiness for my retiring. The servants slept in buildings detached from the main resi- dence, a custom to which I have referred before. "The house" was locked up by my father's own hands at ten o'clock, unless there were some function to keep one or more of the servants up and on duty. Therefore, when I had twice awakened Paulina from her unlawful slumber, I had sent her off to the "offices" — ^in English parlance — with a sharp reproof and warning against a repetition of the offence. My instant thought now was: "The Uttle minx has been at it again I" The next, "She went Uke a cat!" The third, in a lightning flash, "She did not open the door to go through!" Finally — "Nor did she open the door when she came out of my room !" 205 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY I had never, up to that instant; known one thrill of supernatural dread since I was old enough to give full credence to my father's assurances that there were no such things as ghosts, and to laugh at the tales told by Ignorant negroes to frighten one another, and to awe white children. I had never been afraid of the darkness or of solitude. I would take my doll and book to the grave- yard and spend whole happy afternoons there, because it was quiet and shady, and nobody would interrupt study or dream. It was, then, the stress of extraordinary emotion which swept me back into the room I had just quitted, and bore me up to the table by which my mother sat, there to set down the lamp I could scarcely hold, enunciating hoarsely: "I have seen a ghost!" My father wheeled sharply about. " Whatr At that supreme moment, the influence of his scornful dislike to every species of superstition made me " hedge," and falter, in articulating, ''If there is such a thing as a ghost, I have seen one!" Before I could utter another sound he had caught up the lamp and was gone. Excited, and almost blind and dumb as I was, I experienced a new sinking of heart as I heard him draw back the bolt of the door through which the Thing had passed, without unclosing it. He explored the whole house, my mother and I sitting, silent, and listen- ing to his swift tramp upon floor and stairs. In a few minutes the search was over. He was perfectly calm in returning to us. "There is nobody in the house who has not a right to be here. And nobody awake except ourselves." Setting down the lamp, he put his hand on my head — his own, and almost only, form of caress. " Now, daughter, try and tell us what you think you saw ?" 206 OUR TRUE FAMILY GHOST-STORY Grateful for the unlooked-for gentleness, I rallied to tell the story simply and without excitement. When I had finished, he made no inmiediate reply, and I looked up timidly. ''I really saw it, father, just as I have said I At least, IbeUeveldidr "I know it, my child. But we will talk no more of it to-night. I wiU go to your room with you.'* He preceded me with the lamp. When we were in my chamber, he looked under the bed (how did he guess that I should do it as soon as his back was turned, if he had not?). Then he carried the light into the small dressing-room behind the chamber. I heard him open the doors of a wardrobe that stood there, and try the fastenings of a window. "There is nothing to harm you here," he said, coming back, and speaking as gently as before. "Now, try not to think of what you believe you saw. Say your prayers and go to bed, like a good, brave girl!" He kissed me again, putting his arm around me and, holding me to him tenderly, said "Good-night," and went out. I was ashamed of my fright — ^heartily ashamed I Yet I was afraid to look in the mirror while I undid and combed my hair and put on my night-cap. When, at last, I dared put out the light, I scurried across the floor, plunged into bed, and drew the blankets tightly over my head. My father looked sympathizingly at my heavy eyes next morning when I came down to prayers. After break- fast he took me aside and told me to keep what I had seen to myself. "Neither your mother nor I will speak of it in the hear- ing of the children and servants. You may, of course, take your sister into your confidence. She may be trusted. But my opinion is that the fewer who know of a thing that 207 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY seems unaccountabley the better. And your sister is more nervous than you." Thus it came about that nothing was said to Mea, and that we three who knew of the visitation did not discuss it, and tried honestly not to think of it. Until; perhaps a month after my fright, about nine o'clock, one wet night, my mother entered the chamber where my father and I were talking over political news, as we still had a habit of doing, and said, hurriedly, glancing nerv- ously behind her: "I have seen Virginia's ghost 1" She saw it, just as I had described, issuing from the closed door and gliding away close to the wall, then vanish- ing at the Venetian door. "It was all in gray," she reported, "but with something white wrapped about the head. It is very strange!" Still we held our peace. My father's will was law, and he counselled discretion. "We will await further developments," he said, orac- ularly. Looking back, I think it strange that the example of his cool fearlessness so far wrought upon me that I would not allow the mystery to prey upon my spirits, or to make me afraid to go about the house as I had been wont to do. Once my father broke the reserve we maintained, even to each other, by asking if I would like to exchange my sleeping-room for another. "Why should I?" I interrogated, trsdng to laugh. "We are not sure where she goes after she leaves it. It is some- thing to know that she is no longer there." Mea had to be taken into confidence after she burst into the drawing-room at twilight, one evening, and shut the door, setting her back against it and trembling from head to foot. She was as white as a sheet, and when she spoke, it was in a whisper. Something had chased her 208 OUR TRUE FAMILY GHOST-STORY down-stairs, she declared. The hall-lamp was burning, and she could see, by looking over her shoulder, that the halls and stairs were empty but for her terrified self. But Something — Somebody — in high-heeled shoes, that went "Tapl tap! tap!" on the oaken floor and staircase, was behind her from the time she left the upper chamber where she had been dressing, until she reached the parlor door. Her nerves were not as stout as mine, perhaps, but she was no coward, and she was not given to foolish imagina- tions. When we told her what had been seen, she took a more philosophical view of the situation than I was able to do. "Bodiless things can't hurt bodies!" she opined, and readily joined our secret circle. Were we, as a family, as I heard a woman say when we were not panic-stricken at the rumored approach of yellow- fever, "a queer lot, taken altogether"? I think so, some- times. The crisis came in February of that same winter. My sister Alice and a young cousin who was near her age — fourteen — were sent off to bed a little after nine one evening, that they might get plenty of "beauty sleep." Passing the drawing-room door, which was ajar, they were tempted to enter by the red gleam of the blazing fire of soft coal. Nobody else was there to enjoy it, and they sat them down for a school-girlish talk, prolonged until the far-off cry "All's well!" of the sentinel at the "Barrack" on Capitol Square told the conscience - smitten pair that it was ten o'clock. Going into the hall, they were surprised to find it dark. We found afterward that the servant whose duty it was to fill the lamp had neglected it, and it had burned out. It was a brilliant moonlight night, and the great window on the lower landing of the staircase was unshuttered. The arched door dividing the two halls was open, and from the doorway of the parlor they had a full 209 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY view of the stairs. The moonbeams flooded it half-way up to the upper landing; and from the dark hall they saw a white figure moving slowly down the steps. The mis- chievous pair instantly jumped to the conclusion that one of "the boys" — ^my brothers — was on his way, en cUshabilU, to get a drink of water from the pitcher that always stood on a table in the reception-room, or main hall. To get it, he must pass within a few feet of them, and they shrank back into the embrasure of the door behind them, pinching each other in wicked glee to think how they would tease the boy about the prank next morning. Down the stairs it moved, without sound, and slowly, the concealed watchers imagined, listening for any movement that might make retreat expedient. They said, afterward, that his night- gown trailed on the stairs, also that he might have had something white cast over his head. These things did not strike them a? singular while they watched his progress, so full were they of the fun of the adventure. It crossed the moonlit landing — an unbroken sheet of light — and stepped, yet more slowly, from stair to stair of the four that composed the lowermost flight. It was on the floor and almost within the archway when the front door opened suddenly and in walked the boys, who had been out for a stroll. In a quarter-second the apparition was gone. As Alice phrased it: "It did not go backward or forward. It did not sink into the floor. It just was notT* With wild screams the girls threw themselves upon the astonished boys, and sobbed out the story. In the full persuasion that a trick had been played upon the frightened children, the brothers rushed up-stairs and made a search of the premises. The hubbub called every grown member of the household to the spot except our deaf grandmother, who was fast asleep in her bed up-stairs. 210 OUR TRUE FAMILY GHOST-STORY Assuming the command which was his right, my father ordered all hands to bed so authoritatively that none vent- ured to gainsay the edict. In the morning he made light to the girls and boys of the whole afifair, fairly laughing it out of court, and, breakfast over, sent them ofif to school and academy. Then he summoned our mother, my sister, and myself to a private conference in "the chamber." He began business without preliminaries. Standing on the rug, his back to the fire, his hands behind him, in genuine English-squirely style, he said, as nearly as I can recall his words: "It is useless to try to hide from ourselves any longer that there is something wrong with this house. I have known it for a year and more. In fact, we had not lived here three months before I was made aware that some mjrstery hung about it. " One windy November night I had gone to bed as usual, before your mother finished her book." He glanced smilingly at her. Her proclivity for reading into the small hours was a family joke. " It was a stormy night, as I said, and I lay with closed eyes, listening to the wind and rain, and thinking over next day's business, when somebody touched my feet. Somebody — not something ! Hands were laid lightly upon them, were lifted and laid in the same way upon my knees, and so on until they rested more heavily on my chest, and I felt that some one was looking into my face. Up to that moment I had not a doubt that it was your mother. like the careful wife she is, she was arranging the covers over me to keep out stray draughts. So, when she bent to look into my face, I opened my eyes to thank her. "She was not there! I was gazing into the empty air. The pressure was removed as soon as I lifted my eyelids. I raised myself on my elbow and looked toward the fire- place. Your mother was deep in her book, her back tow- 15 211 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ard me. I turned over without sound, and looked under the bed from the side next the wall. The fireUght and lamplight shone through, unobstructed. "I speak of this now for the first time. I have never opened my Ups about it, even to your mother, until this moment. But it has happened to me, not once, nor twice, nor twenty — but fifty times — maybe more. It is always the same thing. The hands — ^I have settled in my mind that they are those of a small woman or of a child, they are so Httle and light — ^are laid on my feet, then on my knees, and travel upward to my chest. There they rest for a few seconds, sometimes for a whole minute — I have timed them — and something looks into my face and is gone! "How do I account for it? I don't account for it at all! I know that it is! That is all. Shakespeare said, long be- fore I was bom, that 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.' This is one of them. You can see, now, daughter" — turning to me — "why I was not incredulous when you brought your ghost upon the scene. I have been on the lookout for what our spiritualistic friends call ' further manifestations.' " "You beUeve, then," Mea broke in, "that the girls really saw something supernatural on the stairs last night? That it was not a trick of moonUght and imagination?" " If we can make them think so, it will be better for them than to fill their little brains with ghostly fears. That was the re^^on I took a jesting tone at breakfast-time. I charged them, on the penalty of being the laughing-stock of all of us, not to speak of it to any one except ourselves. I wish you all to take the cue. Moreover, and above every- thing else, don't let the servants get hold of it. There would be no living in the house with them, if they were to catch the idea that it is 'haunted.'" He drew his brows into the horseshoe frown that meant 212 OUR TRUE FAMILY GHOST-STORY annoyance and perplexity. "How I hate the word! You girls are old enough to understand that the value of this property would be destroyed were this story to creep abroad. I would better bum the house down at once than to attempt to sell it at any time within the next fifty years with a ghost-tale tagged to it. "Now, here lies the case! We can talk to outsiders of what we have seen and felt and heard in this, our home, where your grandmother, your mother and father have hoped to live comfortably and to die in peace, or we can keep our own counsel Uke sensible, brave Christians. 'Bodiless spirits cannot hurt bodies,' and" — ^the frown passing before a humorous gleam — "the Uttle gray lady seems to be amiable enough. I can testify that her hands are light, and that they pet, not strike. She is timid, too. What do you say — ^all of you? Can we hold our tongues?" We promised in one voice. We kept the pledge so well that both the girls and the boys were convinced of our incredulity. Our father forbade them positively to drop a hint of their foolish fancies in the hearing of the servants. Young as they were, they knew what stigma would attach to a haunted house in the community. As time passed, the incident faded from their minds. It was never men- tioned in their hearing. A year went by without further demonstration on the part of the little gray lady, except for two nocturnal visita- tions of the small, caressing hands. My father admitted this when we questioned him on the subject; but he would not talk of it. The one comic element connected with the bodiless visit- ant was introduced, oddly enough, by our sanctimonious clerical uncle-in-law, who now and then paid us visits of varying lengths. As he came unannounced, it was not in- variably convenient to receive him. On one occasion his appearance caused dismay akin to consternation. We 213 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY were expecting a houseful of younger friends within two daySy and needed the guest-room he must occupy. He was good for a week at the shortest. True to the Arab-like traditions of hospitality that per- vaded all ranks of Old Dominion society, we suffered noth- ing of this to appear in our behavior. Nor could he have heard the anguished discussion of ways and means that went on between Mea and myself late that night. It was, therefore, a delightful surprise when he announced, next morning, his intention of going out to Olney that day, and to remain there for — perhaps a week. He "had let too long a time elapse since he had paid the good people there a visit. He didn't want them to think he had forgotten them." One of the "good people," the wife of my mother's brother, drove into town to spend the day with us, a week after the close of his stay at Olney. "Aunt Sue" was a prime favorite with us all, and she was in fine feather to-day, full of fun and anecdote. She interrupted a spicy bit of family news to say, by-and-by: "Did any of you ever suspect that your house is haunted?" "How ridiculous!" laughed my mother. "Why do you ask?" The narrator laughed yet more merrily. "The funniest thing you ever heard ! The old gentleman had an awful scare the last night he was here. I asked him what he had eaten — and drunk — for supper that evening. But he stuck to it that he was standing at his window, looking out into the moonlight in the garden, when somebody came up behind him, and took him by the elbows and turned him clear around! He felt the two hands that grabbed hold of him so plainly that he made sure Horace had hidden under the bed and jumped out to scare him. So he looked under the bed and in the ward- 214 OUR TRUE FAMILY GHOST-STORY robe and the closet^ and, for all I know, in the bureau drawers and under the washstand, for the boy. There was nobody in the room but himself, and the door was locked. He says he wouldn't sleep in that room another night for a thousand dollars." "Nobody is Ukely to ofifer it!" retorted Mea, dryly. "I have slept there nearly a thousand nights, and nothing ever caught hold of me." Passing over what might or might not have been a link in the true, weird history of our bodiless tenant, I leap a chasm of a dozen years to wind up the tale of the "little gray lady," so far as it bears directly upon our family. After the death of her husband and the marriages of sons and daughters left my mother alone in the old colonial homestead, she decided to sell it and to Uve with my youngest sister. The property was bought as a "Church Home" — a sort of orphanage, conducted under the patronage of a prominent Episcopal parish renowned for good works. In altering the premises to adapt buildings to their new uses, the workmen came upon the skeleton of a small woman about four feet below the surface of the front yard. She lay less than six feet away from the wall of the house, and directly under the drawing-room window. There was no sign of coffin or coffin-plate. Under her head was a high, richly carved tortoise-shell comb, mute evidence that she had not been buried in cap and shroud, as was the custom a hundred years agone. The oldest inhabitant of a city that is tenacious of domestic legends, had never heard of an inter- ment in that quarter of a residential and aristocratic district. The street, named for the eminent lawyer, must have been laid out since the house was built, and may have been cut right through grounds, then far more spacious than when we bought the place. Even so, the grave was dug in the front garden, and so close to the house as to 215 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY render untenable the theory that the plot was ever part of a fanuly burying-ground. The papers took inquisitive note of all these circum- BtanceSy and let the matter drop as an unexplained mys- tery. Within the present occupancy of the house, I have heard that the gray lady still walks on moonlight nights, and, in gusty midnights, visits the bedside of terrified in- mates to press small, light hands upon the feet, and so passing upward, to rest upon the chest of the awakened sleeper. I was asked by one who had felt them, if I had "ever heard the legend that a bride, dressed for her wed- ding, fell dead in that upper chamber ages ago." My informant could not tell me from whom she had the grewsome tale, or the date thereof. "Somebody had told her that it happened once upon a time." She knew that the unquiet creature still '^ walked the halls and stairs." She diould have been "laid" by the decent ceremony of burial in consecrated ground, awarded to the exhumed bones. I have talked with a grandson of our former next-door neighbor, and had from him a circumstantial account of the disinterment of the nameless remains. They must have lain nearer the turf above them, a century back, than when they were found. The young man was a boy when he ran to the hole made by the workmen's spades, and watched the men bring to light the entire skeleton. He verified the story of the high, carved comb. He told me, too, of a midnight alarm of screaming children at the vision of a little gray lady, walking between the double row of beds in the dormitory, adding: **I told those who asked if any story was attached to the house, that I had lived next door ever since I was bom, and played every day with your sisters and brothers, and never heard a whisper that the house was haunted." So said all our neighbors. We kept our own counsel. It was our father's wise decree. 216 OUR TRUE FAMILY GHOST-STORY I have told my ghost-story with no attempt at explana- tion of psychical phenomena. After all these years I fall back, when questioned as to hypotheses, upon my father's terse dicta: "How do I account for it? I don't account for it at aU!" TWO MONUMENTAL FRIENDSHIP8 Even at that period, when I visited my father's Northern kindred, I failed to bring them to a right comprehension of the frank, and oftentimes intimate, relations existing be- tween the young people of both sexes in my Viiginia home. I have marvelled within m]rself since, how these relations came to be established at the first. We brought to the New World, and retained, scores of English customs of domestic management, and traditions of social obligations. It was never the fashion in England, or in her Northern colonies, for boys to begin "visiting the young ladies" be- fore they discarded roundabouts, and to keep up the fas- cinating habit until they tottered into the grave at four- score. For the same dozen young fellows to call at least once a week upon as many young girls; to read, chat, jest, flirt, drive, ride, and walk with them, month after month, and year after year, perhaps choosing one of the dozen as a lifelong partner, and quite as often running ofif for a season to another county or State, and bringing home a wife, with whom the philosophic coterie speedily got ac- quainted amiably, widening the circle to take her in, with never a thought of chagrin. The thumbnail sketches I have jotted down in my "purposeful" chapter, bring in the same names, again and again. They were, indeed, and in truth, household words. None of the young men and maidens catalogued in the Christmas doggerel I shall speak of, presently, intermarried. Two — perhaps four — had secret intentions that tended tow- 218 TWO MONUMENTAL FRIENDSHIPS ard such a result in the fukiess of time. Intentions, that interfered in nowise with their participation in the general hilarity. If there were any difference in the demeanor of the engaged, or partially betrothed, pairs from the behavior of the fancy-free, it was in a somewhat too obvious show of impartiality. Engagements were never "announced," and if suspected, were ignored in general society. Thus it often happened that a direct proposal took a girl utterly by surprise. I was but sixteen, and on a summer vacation in Albe- marle Coimty, when a coll^ian of nineteen, who was swing- ing me "under green apple boughs" — lazily, because the rapid rush through the air would interfere with the chat we were carrying on, in full sight of groups scattered on the porch steps and about the lawn — brought down my thoughts— which had strayed far afield imder the influence of the languorous motion, the sunset and the soft mingling of young voices — with stunning velocity, by declaring that he adored me, and "couldn't keep it to himself any longer." With never the suspicion of a blush, I looked him straight in the eyes and begged him not to make a goose of him- self, adding: "I didn't think you mistook me for a girl who enjoys that kind of badinage. It is not a bit to my taste. And we have been such good friends!" When he suffocated himself dangerously with protesta- tions that actually brought tears to his eyes, I represented that lookers-on would think we had quarrelled if I left the swing and his society abruptly, as I certainly should do if he did not begin to talk sensibly, out of hand. I set the example by calling to a boy who was passing with a basket of apples, and calmly selecting one, taking my time in doing it. Coquetry ? Not a bit of it ! I liked the lad too well to allow him to make a breach in our friendship by love- 219 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY making. When he came to his senses (four years later!) he thanked me for not taking the matter seriously. We gave, and attended, few large parties. But there were no dead calms in our intercourse. Somebody was always getting up a frolic of some sort. Tableaux, musicales, "sociables,'' where, in Christmas week, and sometimes at other times, we played old-fashioned games, such as "Con- sequences" upon sUps of paper, and "Kings of England" with cards, and "What is my thought Uke?" viva voce. We had picnics in warm weather. Richmond College boys invited us out to receptions following orations on February 22d, and we had Valentine parties, with original verses, on February 14th. Nowhere, and at no time, was there romping. Still less would kissing-games be allowed among really "nice" young people. This was deemed incredible by my Boston cousins, and yet more strange the fact that we kept up among ourselves decorous conventions that appeared stiff and inconsistent to those not to the manor bom and bred. For example, while I might, and did, name our most in- timate masculine visitors, "Tom," "Dick," or "Harry" in chat with my girl friends, I addressed them as "Mr. Smith," "Jones," or "Robinson," and always spoke of them in the same manner in mentioning them to strangers. For a man to touch a lady's ann or shoulder to attract her attention, was an unpardonable liberty. If a pair were seen to "hold hands," it was taken for granted that they were engaged or — as I heard a matron say, when she had surprised a couple walking in the moonlight, the fair one's hand on the swain's arm, and his laid Ughtly upon it — " they ought to be." The well-bred girl of the fifties might be a rattle; she might enjoy life with guileless abandon that earned her the reputation of "dashing"; she parried shaft of teasing and badinage with weapons of proof; but she was never "fast." 220 TWO MONUMENTAL FRIENDSHIPS She kept her self-respect, and challenged the reverent re- spect of the men who knew her best. To this code of social and ceremonial ethics, and to the ban put upon dancing and card-playing by church and parents, is undoubtedly due the fact that Southern women of that, generation were almost invariably what we would call, "good talkers." In the remembrance, and in con- trasting that all-so-long-ago with the times in which we live, I could write a jeremiade upon "Conversation as a Lost Art." From the list of names drawn into line by some Yule- tide rhymes of my own, bearing the date of "1852," I single two that must have more than a passing notice if I would write the true story of my threescore-and-ten years. Mary Massie Ragland was, at that Christmas-tide, twenty- two years of age. I had liked and admired her from the first. In time she grew into a place in my heart no other friend had ever held, and which, left vacant by her death six years later, has never been taken. I think no man or woman has more than one complete, all-satisfying friend- ship in a lifetime. Her portrait hangs against the wall in my bedchamber now. I awake each morning to meet her gaze bent, as in life, on mine. In sorrow and in joy, I have gone secretly to my room, as to an oratory, to seek in the depths of the beautiful eyes the sympathy never denied while she was with me, and visible to my dull vision. To a mind stored richly with the best literature, eager to ac- quire and faithful to retain, she added exquisite fancies, poetic tastes, and love for the beautiful that was a passion. Her heart was warm, deep, tender, and true. It well-nigh breaks mine in remembering how true! In all the ten years in which we lived and loved together in closest intimacy, not a cloud ever crossed the heaven of our friendship. One remark, uttered simply and with infinite gentleness 221 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY by her, after a great loss had chastened her buoyant spirits, stands with me as the keynote to action and character. I was commenting somewhat sharply upon my disap- pointment in not meeting, from one whom I loved and trusted, the fulness of s}mipathy I thought I had a right to expect in what was a genuine trial to myself. "She was hard and critical!" I moaned. "You saw it, yourself! You cannot deny it! And she was absolutely rude to you!" "Dear!" The stroking fingers upon my bowed head were a benediction; the sweet voice was eloquent with compassion. "Don't judge her harshly! She is good, and true to you and to the right. But she has never had sor- row to make her tender." How boundless was the tenderness, my mentor, who com- forted while she admonished, learned in the school of pain in which she studied until Death dismissed her spirit, was fully known to Him alone whose faithful disciple she was to the end. To the world she showed a smiling front; her merry laugh and ready repartee were the life of whatever com- pany she entered, and over and through it all, it might be reverently said of the true, heroic soul, that, to high and humble, "her compassions failed not." "Refined by nature and refined by grace!" said one above her coffin. I added, inly: "And by sorrow!" "The kind of woman to whom a fellow takes ofif his hat when he thinks of her," a young cousin, who had been as a brother to her, wrote to me after her death. " It took six thousand years to make one such. I shall never know another." While on a visit to my old and beloved preceptors, Mrs. Nottingham and her daughters, then resident in Lexington, Virginia, I met Junius Fishbum, lately graduated from 222 TWO MONUMENTAL FRIENDSHIPS Washington College — now Washington and Lee. He was an early and intimate friend of the ''Ragland girls," and in a way (according to Viiginia ways of reckoning kin- ship) a family connection of theirs, too remote to deserve recognition in any other region or society. But he claimed through this the right to omit the initial steps of ac- quaintanceship, and I recognized the right. We were quickly friends — so quickly, that it was no surprise to me when he enclosed a note to me in a letter to one of the Ragland sisters, shortly after my return home. I answered it, and thus was established a correspondence continued through a term of years, without serious interruption, up to the day when, in the second year after my marriage, my husband entered my room with a paper in his hand, and a grave look on his face. "Here is sad, sad news for you," he said, gently. "Pro- fessor Fishbum is dead!" The beautiful young wife, to whom he had been married less than two years, was a sister of "Stonewall Jackson's'' first wife, a daughter of Dr. George Junkin, then President of Washington College, and sister of the poet, Margaret Junkin Preston. After "June's" death, Mrs. Preston, my dear friend, wrote to me of a desire her widowed sister hesitated to express directly to me. Her husband had told her that more of his early and inner life was told in this series of letters to me than he could ever relate to any one else. Would I be willing to let her read a few selected by myself? I had known him before he met her. If the request were unreasonable, she would with- draw it. There could have been no surer proof of the sincerity, the purity, and absolute absence of everything pertaining to love-making and flirtation in our ten-year-long friend- ship, than was offered in the circumstance that, without a moment's hesitation or the exclusion of a single letter, I 223 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY made up a parcel of the epistles, and sent it, with my fond love, to the widow of my lamented friend. His letters were but a degree less charming than his conversation. I considered him, then, and I have not changed my opinion after seeing much more of the world of society men and brilliant women, one of the best talkers I have known. "You have hit it ofif happily there," said Mary, at the jolly reading of the lines on New- Year's Day, to " us girls." And she repeated: "Social and witty, kind and clever; His chat an easy, pleasant flow, A thread you'd never wish to sever." He was all this, and more. Our correspondence was a stage, and an important, in my education. We discussed books, authors, military and political heroes, psychology, philology, theology, and, as time made us more intimate with the depths underlying the dancing waves of thought and fancy, we talked much of religious faith and tenets. On August 26, 1850, I wrote to EfBe: "My long neglect of correspondents (for you are not the only neglected one) has caused letters in abundance to accumulate. Among others there lies before me one from my friend, Junius F., a full sheet, bearing a date anterior to your last, and requesting an 'immediate reply.' He is a fine fellow — one of my 'literary' friends. Have you chanced to see anything of his published work? His poems, essays, etc., would re- flect credit upon any one. I give you the preference to-day because it will not hurt him to wait." The same calm confidence in the liking we bore one another prevailed throughout our intercourse. Untimely storms and sudden gusts belong to the tropics of passion, not to the temperate zone of Platonic affection. 224 TWO MONUMENTAL FRIENDSHIPS It was about this time that my presumptuous brain con- ceived the thought that my friend should be in the pulpit^ instead of in the professorial chair to which he was ap- pointed after winning his degree from the University of Virginia, whither he had gone from Washington College for a postrgraduate course, and a more thorough equipment for his chosen Ufe-work. With the Brahmin traditions strong upon me, and the blue blood of Presbjrterianism seething in my veins, I forthwith made out a "call," ampli- fied through six pages of Bath post, and dispatched it to Lexington. The nearest approach to tenderness in any of our many letters, came out in his reply : "A brother's fondness gushed up in my heart as I read your earnest pleadings," was the opening sentence of a masterly exposition of the reasons that, as he phrased it, "forbid my unhallowed feet to stand within the sacred desk." I was wrong, and he was right. His fearless utter- ance of the faith which was the mainspring of life and action, carried force a Ucensed clergyman seldom gains. He fought the good fight in the ranks, refusing the com- mission that had not, as he believed, the King's seal. I had no living elder brother. I hardly felt the loss while Junius lived. In 1855 he took a year's leave of absence, and spent it in a German university. My father and myself were just setting out for Boston and the White Mountains, and accompanied him as far as New York. Junius and I were promenading the deck of the Potomac steamer when I showed him an ambrotype given me by "a friend whom I am sorry you have never met." He looked at it intently for a moment, and, in closing the case, searched my face with eyes at once smiling and piercing. "Are you trying to tell me something?" he asked, in the gentlest of tones. 225 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY I answered honestly: "No; there is nothing to tell. We are wann friends— no more." We wpre interrupted, and had no more opportunity for confidential chat until that evening, when we strolled from the hotel along the moonlighted streets to the Capitol. He alluded playfully, in a German letter, to the never-to- be-forgotten excursion — our last moonlit ramble, although we did not dream of it then — ^as "my walk with Corinne to the Capitol." (Men took time and pains to say graceful things, then-ar days!) He told me that night — what he had already written in brief in a late letter — of his betrothal, of his happiness, and his ambition to make the best of himself for the dear sake of the woman who was waiting for him in the college town engirdled by the blue Virginian mountains. The next day but one he sailed. My father and myself bade him "God-speed!" I was glad it so happened. If I had fewer causes for devout thanksgiving to the Giver of every good and perfect joy than have crowned my Ufe, I should still account myself rich in the memory of these two perfect friendships. In my ignorance of the world that lay without, and far beyond my small circle of thought, and what I believed were activities, I did not rightly appreciate the rarity of the gifts. I did know that they were passing sweet, and longed to prove m)rself worthy of holding them. This chapter of my humble record is a sprig of rosemary laid upon Friendship's Shrine. XXII THE "old AFRICAN CHURCH'' No description of the Richmond of the forties and fifties would be complete without a sketch of what was, if I mis- take not, the first Baptist Church erected in the city. The white congregation that occupied it for some years had built a large, handsome church farther up the hiU, and the squat, but spacious, house on the lower slope of Broad Street, was made over to the colored population. I say "population" advisedly. For perhaps half a cen- tury, the Richmond negroes had no other place of public worship, and the communicants in that denomination were numbered by the thousand. They are an emotionally re- ligious race, and I doubt if there were, all told, one hundred colored members of any other sect in the length and breadth of the county of Henrico. The low-browed, dingy, brick edifice surrendered to their use was said to have a seating capacity of two thousand. It was therefore in demand when mass political meetings were convened. When John B. Gough lectured in our city, no other building could accommodate the crowds that flocked to see and hear him. Big as it was, the house was filled every Sunday. There was a regular church organization in which deacons and ushers were colored. Of course the Pastor was a white. And oddly enough, or so it seemed to outsiders, the shep- herd of the black flock was the President of Richmond College and Divinity School, situated upon the outskirts of the city. 16 227 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY His pastoral duties outside of his pulpit ministrations were not onerous. The Daughters of Zion, a flourishiug society, looked after the sick and afficted. There were no colored paupers under the slave system, except, once in a great while, "a no 'count free nigger." This last word was never applied to a fellow-servant, but freely and dis- dainfully fitted to the unfortunate freedman. I was never able to disabuse my mind of appreciation of the comic element in viewing the Rev. Robert Ryland, D.D. (and I am not sure but "LL.D." as well), in his position as Pastor of the First African Church. He was a staid per- sonage of middle age, who may have been learned. If he were, the incongruity was the more absurd. He was never brilliant. Nor had he the power of adapting himself to his audience that might have saved the situation in some measure. I heard him preach once to his dusky cure of souls. He began by saying, apropos to his text from Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians: "Shortly after the Apostle's departure from that place, there arose dissensions in the church at (?o-rinth." A preamble that was greeted by appreciative groans from the women in the audience. As was the assertion, later on, in the same discourse, that — "Christ may be called the Concrete Idea of our most holy Faith." Still more pronounced was the murmured applause that succeeded the remark — "This may be true in the Abstract. It is not true in the Concrete." "Concrete" was a new word in philosophers' mouths just then, and he worked it hard. The anecdote of the parishioner who found " that blessed word * Mesopotamia' " the most comforting part of her minister's sermon, is entirely credible if she were of African descent. Polysyllables were a ceaseless feast to their im- aginations. Sesquipedalian periods were spiritual nectar and ambrosia. The barbaric and the florid were bound 228 THE ''OLD AFRICAN CHURCH" up in their nature, and the rod of an alien civilization could not drive it far from them. In church relations, they recognized and revelled rankly in the levelling principle of Christianity which, within the sacred circle of the bonds of a common faith, made no in- vidious distinctions between bond and free. The staid D.D. was to them "Brer Ryland" on week-da)rs, as on Sun- days. I am sure it never occurred to the humblest of them that whatever of dignity pertained to the rela- tion was his, by virtue of his holy calUng, and they were honored in that their spiritual guide belonged to a su- perior race and was at the head of an institution of learning. How freely they discussed him and his teachings, will be illustrated by a dialogue overheard by me in my early school-days. I was walking behind two colored women one Sunday on my way home from church. They were evidently ladies' maids, from their mincing speech and afifected gait, and were invested with what was, as palpably, their mis- tresses' discarded finery. "Brer Rylan' was quite too severe 'pon dancin'," was the first sentence that caught my ear. "He is kinder hard 'pon innercint aversions, oncet in a while. You know we read in the Bible that the angels in heaven dance 'round the throne." "Yes," assented the elder of the two, "an' play 'pon jewsharps! But I've been heard that they don' cross they feet, and that makes a mighty difference in the sin o' dancin'. Of course, we all of us knows that it's a sin for a Christy un to dance; but, as you say, Brer Rylan' is down- right oncharitable sometimes in talkin' 'bout young folks' ways and frolickin'. He will let them promenade to the music of the band when the students has parties at the college, but never a dancin' step!" 229 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY "Not even," with a shrill giggle, "if they don't cross they feetr' As time whitened the good man's hair and brought heav- ier duties to his head and hands, he fell into the habit of delegating the afternoon service at the "Old African" to his neophytes in the Divinity School. He may have judged rightly that it was excellent practice for the 'prentice hand of embryo pulpit orators. One of the brightest of these, who afterward made good the promise of distinguished usefulness in the Southern Church, was the officiating evangelist on a certain Sunday afternoon, when a lively party of girls and collegians planned to attend the "Old African, " in a body, and witness his maiden performance. He knew we were coming, and why, but he uttered not a word of protest. As he said afterward, "The sooner he got used to mixed audiences, the better." What were known as the "Amen benches," at the left of the pulpit, were reserved for white auditors. They were always full. On this afternoon they were packed tightly. The main body of the church was also filled, and we soon became aware that an unusual flutter of solemn excitement pervaded the well-dressed throng. The front block of seats on each side of the middle aisle was occupied by women, dressed in black, many of them closely veiled, and pocket-handkerchiefs were ostentatiously displayed, gen- erally clasped between black-gloved hands folded upon the pit of the stomach. "Reminds one of a rising thundercloud!" whispered a graceless youth behind me. Presently a deacon, Ukewise lugubrious in aspect, tip- toed into the pulpit, where sat the young theologue, and, holding his silk hat exactly upon the small of his back in the left hand, bent low in offering the right to the preacher. The subdued rustle and shuffling, incident to the settling into place of a large congregation, prevented us from hear- 230 THE "OLD AFRICAN CHURCH > f ing the low colloquy that succeeded the handshake. We had it in full from one of the actors, that evening. The functionary began by expressing the gratification of tiie congregation that "Brer Rylan' had sent such a talent- able young gentleman to 'ficiate 'pon dis occasion. "We been heerd a-many times of what a promisin' young gentleman Brer W. is, an' we is certainly mightily flattered at seein' him in our midst 'pon dis occasion. I jes' steps up here, suh, to say dis, an' to arsk is dere anything any of us ken do to resist Brer W. 'pon dis occasion." "Thank you, nothing!" responded the other, courteously. " You are very kind. The choir will take care of the music, as usual, I suppose?" "Suttinly, suh, suttinly! De choir am always depend- able 'pon every occasion. An' dey has prepared special music for dis solemn occasion." Reiteration of the word had not aroused the listener's curiosity. The last adjective, and the tone in which it was brought out, awoke him wide. "Solemn!" he re-echoed. "Is there an3rthing special in the services of to-day?" The hand grasping the silk hat executed a half-circle in the air that seemed to frame the black-robed block of sitters for the startled youth. "Yaas, suh! Surely Brer Rylan' must 'a' told Brer W. de nature of our comin' togedder to-day ! It's a funeral, suh. De dear departed deceasted nigh 'pon two mont' ago, but we haven't foun' it agreeable, as you mought say, to all parties concerned, fur to bring all de family an' frien's together tell terday. But dey are here now, suh, as you may see fur yourself. An' we are moughty pleased dat Brer Rylan' has sont sech a 'sponsible preacher to us as Brer W." "Mercy, man!" gasped the affrighted novice, clutching frantically at the notes he had been conning when the 231 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY deacon accosted him. "I knew nothing of the funeral when I came. I can't preach a funeral sermon out of hand I There isn't anything about death in my notes." His distress wrought visibly upon the deacon's sym- pathies. The hat described a reassjiring parabola. *' There, there! It ain't necessary for Brer W. to dis- combobberate himself 'pon dat account. A young gentle- man of Brer W.'s talents needn't get skeered at a little thing like an ev'ry-day funeral. All dat Brer W. has to do is tt) say a few words 'bout de dear deceasted; 'bout de loss to de church, an' de family, an' frien's, an' de suttinty o' death, an' de las' change. An' den a few rousements, you know, throwed in at de end. Law! I ken hear Brer W. doin' it up fine, when I think on it! **Dar! de choir is a-startin' de funeral anthim. Thank you, suh, fur comin' to us, and don't give yo'self no on- easiness! SUng in dem remarks 'spectin' de dear de- ceasted, and you'll be all right." I forget the text of the sermon that followed the anthem and the prayer. I but know that neither it, nor the intro- duction, had any relevancy to the ** occasion." Our friend became a brilliant speaker in later life. Now, he was no more sophomoric than are nine-tenths of seminary students. But as he went on, we — in the slang of this era — began to sit up and take notice; for with dexterity remarkable in a tyro, he switched off from the main line into a by-road that led, like the paths of glory, to the grave. He had fine feeling and a lively imagination, and the scene and the music had laid hold upon both. As he confessed, subse- quently, he surprised himself by his intimate acquaintance with the departed brother. He dwelt upon his fidelity to duty, his devotion to the Church of his love, and what he had done for her best interests. Singling out, as by di\ana- tion, the widow, whose long crepe veil billowed stormily with audible sobs, he referred tenderly to her lonehness, 232 THE ''OLD AFRICAN CHURCH" and committed her and the fatherless children to the Great Father and Comforter of all. By this time the congrega- tion was a seething mass of emotion. Fluttering handker- chiefs, sighs that swept the church like fitful breezes, and suppressed wails from the central block of reserved seats, drowned the feeUng peroration, but we guessed the pur- port from the speaker's face and gestures. As he sat down, the audience arose, as one woman, and broke into a funeral chant never written in any music- book, and in which the choir, who sang by note, took no part: "We'll pass over Jordan, O my brothers, O my sisters! De water's chilly an' cold, but Hallelujah to de Lamb! Honor de Lamb, my chillun, honor de Lamb!" This was shouted over and over, with upraised arms at one portion, and, as the refrain was repeated, all joined hands with those nearest to them and shook from head to foot in a sort of Dervish dance, without, however, raising the feet from the floor. It was such an ecstatic shiver as I saw thirty-odd years thereafter, when a Nubian dancer gave an exhibition in a private house in the suburbs of Jerusalem. I shall have more to say of that chant presently. Return we to the orator of the occasion, whose extemporaneous "effort" had stirred up the pious tumult. As soon as his share of the service was over, he sUpped out of the box -pulpit and sidled through the throng to the comer where we were grouped, watching for a chance to make our exit without attracting the attention of the worshippers. He had just reached us when the quick-eyed, fleet-footed deacon was at his side. We over- heard what passed between them. "Brer W., suh, I come to thank you in the name o' de bereaved fam'ly of de dear deceasted, suh, for yo' powerful sermon dis artemoon. Nothin' could 'a' been better an' 233 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY mo' suitabler. Dey all agree on dat ar' p'int, suh. Every one on 'em is yuffi/My satisfied ! You couldn't 'a' done no better, suh, ef you 'a' had a year to get ready in." Poor W., red to the roots of his fair hair, murmured his thanks, and the sable official was backing away when he recollected something unsaid: "Dar was jes' one Uttle matter I mought 'a' mentioned at de fust, suh (not dat it made no difference whatsom- ever; de fam'Iy, maybe, wouldn't keer to have me speak o' sech a trifle), but de dear deceasted vxis a sister T Then it was that W. turned an agonized face upon our convulsed group: "For Heaven's sake, is there a back door or window by which a fellow can get out of this place?" The choir of the "Old African" was one of the shows of the city. Few members of it could read the words of the hjrmns and anthems. Every one of them could read the notes, and follow them aright. The parts were well- balanced and well-sustained. Those who have heard the Fisk University Jubilee singers do not need the assurance that the quality of the negro voice is rarely sweet and rich, and that, as a race, they have a passion for music. Visitors from Northern cities who spent the Sabbath in Richmond seldom failed to hear the famed choir of the Old African. On this afternoon, the then popular and always beautiful Jerusalemy My Happy Homey was rendered with exquisite skill and feeling. George F. Root, who heard the choir more than once while he was our guest, could not say enough of the beauty of this anthem-hymn as given by the colonxl band. He declared that one soloist had "the finest natural tonor he ever heard." But these were not the representative singers of the race. Still loss should airs, composed by white musicians and sung all o\Tr the country as "negro melodies," pass as characteristic. Tliey are the white man's conception of 234 THE "OLD AFRICAN CHURCH" what the expatriated tribes should think and feel and sing. More than thirty years after the maiden sermon of which I have written, om* little party of American travellers drew back against the wall of the reputed "house of Simon the Tanner" in Jaffa (the ancient Joppa), to let a funeral pro- cession pass. The dead man, borne without a coffin, upon the shoulders of four gigantic Nubians, was of their race. Two-thirds of the crowd, that trudged, barefooted, through the muddy streets behind the bier, were of the same nationality. And as they plod- ded through the mire, they chanted the identical "wild, wailing measure " familiar to me from my infancy, which was simg that Sunday afternoon to the words " We'll pass over Jordan" — even to the oft-iterated refrain, "Honor, my chillun, honor de Lamb!" The gutterals of the outlandish tongue were all that was unlike. The air was precisely the same, and the time and intonations. We have taken great pains to trace the negro folk-lore back to its root. The musical antiquarian is yet to arise who will track to their home the unwritten tunes and chants the liberated negro is trying to forget, and to which his grandparents clung lovingly, all unaware that they were an inheritance more than a dozen generations old. Trained choirs might learn "book music," and scorn the airs crooned over their cradles, and shouted and wailed in prayer and camp meetings, by mothers and fathere. The common people held obstinately to their very own music, and were not to be shaken loose by the "notions" of "young folks who hadn't got the egg-shells off en they hades." I asked once, during a concert given by students from Hampton Institute, if the leader would call upon them for certain of the old songs — naming two or three. I was 235 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY told that they objected to learning them, because tiiey were associated with the days of their bondage. I did not take the trouble to convince the spruce maestro that what I wished to hear were memorials of the days of wild- est liberty, when their forbears hunted "big game" in their tangled native forests, and paddled their boats upon rivers the white man had never explored. XXIII HOW "alone" came to be "June 5th, 1854. "... You anticipate from this formidable array of duties, hindrances, etc., that it will be some time, yet, before I can avail myself of your bewitching invitation. I doubt if I shall be ready to accept Powhie's gallant ofifer of his escort, although it is tempting. But — "'I'm comingi yes, I'm comingl^ in July, wind, weather, and all else permitting. "You will probably see a more august personage next Sun- day. I cannot resist the temptation to let you into the secret of a little manoeuvring of my own. I had an intimation a few weeks ago that Miss L. and poor lonely Mr. S., her near neighbor, were nodding at each other across the road. There was an allusion to horseback rides, and a less fertile imagina- tion could have concocted a very tolerable story out of the facts ( ?) in hand. "But didn't I make it tell? The plausible tale crashed into the peaceful brain of our worthy uncle-in-law like a bomb- shell into a quiet chamber at midnight. How he squirmed, and fidgeted, and tried to smile! Twas ail a ghastly grin! I winked at Herbert, who chanced to come in while the narra- tive was in progress. The rogue had heard but the merest outline, and paid no attention to that; but he made a 'sight draught' upon his inventive talents, and — adding to the rides, * moonlight walks, afternoon strolls to the tobacco patch, and along the road toward the big gate to see whether the joint- worm was in the wheat,' and insinuations that these excursions 237 MARION HARLAN^D'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY were more to the lady's taste than * sanctuary privileges' — ahnost drove the venerable wooer crazy. "'Yes I' said he, bitterly, pushing back his chair from the table. ^He has a house and plantation. A land-rope is a strong ropet Women look at these things.' "He actually followed Herbert to the front door to suppli- cate— Herbert declares, 'with tears in both eyes' — that he would at least tell him if his information was 'authentic, or if it might not be that he was trying to scare him?' Herbert ex- cused himself upon the plea of pressing business, but invited him to 'drop into the office some time if he would have further particulars.' "Oiu' plot works to a charm. The reverend swain sets out 'this very week' for Powhatan, and 'means to have the matter settled.' So, look out for him! "All this rigmarole is strictly true. No boy of seventeen was ever more angrily jealous or desperate. You may, if you like, let the Montrosians into the fun, but, until the matter is settled, don't let the key pass into other hands. "Isn't it glorious? Two bald heads ducking and ogling to one fortunate damsel — their bleared eyes looking 'pistols for two, coffee for one!' at each other? What an entrancing in- terruption to the monotony of a life that, imtil now, has flowed as gently as a canal stream over a grade of a foot to a mile?" I remark, en passant, what will probably interest not a living creature of this generation — to wit, that neither of the competitors won the amiable woman they made ridiculous by their wintry wooing. She returned a kindly negative to both bachelor and widower, and died, as she had lived, the beloved maiden "Auntie" of numerous nieces and nephews. Before transcribing other passages from the same letter — one of unusual length even for that epistolary age — I must retrace my steps to pick up the first thread of what was in time to thicken into a "cord of stronger twine." When I was sixteen I began to write a book. It was a 238 HOW ''ALONE" CAME TO BE school-girl's story — a picture crudely done, but as truth- ful as I could make it — of what was going on in the small world I thought large, and every personage who figured in it was a portrait. In that book I lived and moved, and had my inmost being for that year. I spoke to nobody of what I was doing. The shrinking from confiding to my nearest and dearest what I was writing, was reluctance un- feigned and unconquerable in the case of this, my best- beloved brain-child. None of my own household ques- tioned me as to what went on in the hours spent in my "study," as the comer, or closet, or room where I planted myself and desk, was named. We had a way of respecting one another's eccentricities that had no insignificant share in maintaining the harmony which earned for ouis the reputation of a singularly happy family. I was allowed to plan my day's work, so long as it did not impinge upon the rights or convenience of the rest. Directly after breakfast, I called my two wilUng Uttle pupil- sisters to their lessons. The rock and shoals of threatened financial disaster that menaced our home for a while, were safely overpast by now. W^e were once more in smooth water, and sacrifices might be remitted. I continued to teach my little maids for sheer love of them, and of seeing their minds grow. Both were bright and docile. Alice had an intellect of uncommon strength and of a remarkably original cast. It was a deUght to instruct her for some years. After that, we studied together. Our "school-time" lasted from nine until one. I never emerged from the study until three — the universal dinner- hour in Richmond. If visitors called, as often happened, my mother and sister excused me. In the afternoon we went out together, making calls, or walking, or driving. In the evening there was usually company, or we practised with piano and flute, and, as Herbert grew old enough to join our "band," he brought in his guitar, or we met in 239 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ''the chamber/' and one read aloud m the sweet old way while the others wrought with needle and pencil and draw- ing-board. Tliis was the routine varied by occasional con- certs and parties. Now and then, I got away from the group and wrote until midnight. In 1853 the Southern Era, a semi-literary weekly owned and run by the then powerful and popular "Sons of Tem- perance," offered a prize of fifty dollars for the best tem- perance serial of a given length. I had written at sixteen, and recast it at eighteen, a story entitled "Marrying Through Prudential Motives," and sent it secretly to Godey's Magazine. It bore the signature of "Mary Vale" — a veiled suggestion of my real name. For four years I heard nothing of the waif. I had had experiences enough of the same kind to dishearten a vain or a timorous writer. It was balm to my mortified soul to reflect that nobody was the wiser for the ventures and the failures. So I set my pen in rest, and went in for the prize ; less, I avow, for the fifty dollars than for the reward for seeing my ambitious bantling in print. So faint and few were my expectations of this consummation, that I went off to Boston for the summer, without intimating to any one the audacious cast I had made. I had been with my cousins six weeks when my mother sent me a copy of the Southern Era, containing what she said in a letter by the same mail, "promised to be the best serial it had pub- lished." I opened the letter first, and tore the wrapper from the paper carelessly. How it leaped at me from the outermost page! OUR PRIZE STORTI KATE HARPER By Marlon Harland 240 HOW ''ALONE" CAME TO BE All set up in what we christened in the last quarter- century, "scare-heads." As I learned later from home-letters, the editor, after advertising vainly for the author's address, had published without waiting for it. I wrote home that night to my father, poiuing out the whole revelation, and stipulating that the secret should be kept among ourselves. "Marion Harland" was, again, a hint of my name, so covert that it was not guessed at by readers in general. The editor, an acquaintance of my father, was informed of my right to draw the money. I continued to send tales and poems to him for two years, and preserved my in- cognito. In the late spring of 1853, "Mea," Herbert, and I were sitting in the parlor on a wild night when it rained as rain falls nowhere else as in the seven-hilled city. My com- panions had their magazines. Mea's, as I well recollect, was Harper's New Monthly; my brother had the Southern Literary Messenger. Ned Rhodes had taken Harper's for me from the very first issue. My father subscribed con- scientiously for the Messenger to encourage Southern literature. All right-minded Viiginians acknowledged the duty of extending such encouragement to the extent of the subscription price of "native productions." I had dragged out the rough copy of my book from the bottom of my desk that day, and was now looking it over at a table on one side of the fireplace. Chancing upon the page describing Celestia Pratt's entrance upon school-life, I laughed aloud. "What is it?" queried my sister, looking up in surprise. "See if you know her," I responded, and read out the scene. She joined in the laugh. "To the life!" she pronounced. "Go on!" I finished the chapter, and the two resumed their maga- zines. Presently Herbert tossed his aside. 241 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY " I say !" with boyish impetuosity. "This is stupid after what you gave us. Haven't you 'anything more of the same sort?'" It was a slang phrase of the day. It was the "Open Sesame" of my literary life. They kept me reading until nearly midnight, dipping in here for a scene, there for a character-sketch, imtil my voice gave out. I began rewriting Alone next day, and we welcomed stormy evenings for the next two months. When the MS. was ready for the press, I wrote the "Dedication to my Brother and Sister" as a pleasant surprise to my generous critics. They did not suspect it until they read it in print. Getting the work into print was not so easy as the eager praises of my small audience might have inclined me to expect. The principal book-store in Richmond at that time was owned by Adolphus Morris, a warm personal friend of my father. The two had been intimate for years, and the families of the friends maintained most cordial relations. Yet it was with sore and palpable quakings of heart that I betook myself to the office of the man who took on dignity as a prospective publisher, and laid bare my project. It was positive pain to tell him that I had been writing under divers signatures for the press since I was fourteen. The task grew harder as the judicial look, I have learned to know since as the publisher's perfunctory guise, crept over the handsome face. When I owned, with blushes that scorched my hair, to the authorship of the "Robert Remer" series, and of the prize story in the Era, he said frankly and coolly that he "had never read either." He "fancied that he had heard Mrs. Morris speak of the Remer papers. Religious — ^were they not?" He liked me, and his pretty wife (who had far more brains and vivacity than he) had made a pet of me. He honored my father, and was under business obUgations to 242 HOW /'ALONE" CAME TO BE him. I was conscious, while I labored away at my share in my first business interview, that he lent kindly heed to me for these reasons, and not that he had the smallest grain of faith in the merits of my work. I was a child in his sight, and he would humor my whim. "I am willing to submit your manuscript to my reader," he said, at last. I looked the blank ignorance I felt. He explained patronizingly. He had patronized me from the moment I said that I had written a book. I have become familiar with this phase of publisherhood, also, since that awful day. '•John R. T. reads all my manuscripts!" fell upon my ear like a trickle of boiling lead. "Send it down when it is ready, and I will put it into his hands. You know, I suppose, that everything intended for printing must be written on one side of the paper?" I answered meekly that I had heard as much, bade him "Good morning!" and crept homeward, humbled to the dust. "John R. T.!" (Nobody ever left out the "R." m speaking of him, and nobody, so far as I ever heard, knew for what it stood.) He was the bright son of a worthy citizen; had been graduated at the University of Virginia; studied at the law, and entered the editorial profession as manager-in- chief, etc., of the Southern Literary Messenger. He had social ambitions, and had succeeded in acquiring a sort of world-weary air, and a gentle languor of tone and bear- ing which might have been copied from D'Israeli's Young Duke, a book in high favor in aristocratic circles. I never saw "Johnny" — ^as graceless youths who went to school with him grieved him to the heart by calling him on the street— without thinking of the novel. Like most cari- catures, the likeness was unmistakable. , 17 243 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY And into the hands of this "reader" I was to commit my "brain-child!" I cried out against the act in such tenns as these, and stronger, in relating the substance of the interview to my father. " Be sensible, little girl I Keep a cool head I" he counselled. "Business is business. And I suppose John R. understands his. I will take the manuscript to Morris myself to- morrow." "And make him comprehend," I interjected, "that I do not shirk criticism. I see the faults of my book. If I were sure that it would be judged fairly, I wouldn't mind it so much." The reader kept the manuscript two months. Then my father wrote a civil demand to Mr. Morris for the return of the work. I was too sick of soul to lift a finger to reclaim what I was persuaded was predestined to be a dead failure. Two days later the bulky parcel came back, Mr. Morris had enclosed with it the reader's opinion: " I r^ret that the young author's anxiety to regain pos- session of her bantUng has prevented me from reading more than a few pages of the story. Judging from what I have read, however, I should not advise you to publish it upon speculation." I laid the note before my father after supper that even- ing. Our mother had early inculcated in our minds the eminent expediency of never speaking of unpleasant topics to a tired and hungry man. We always waited until bath, food, and rest had had their perfect work upon the head of the house. He leaned back in his arm-chair, the even- ing paper at his elbow, his slippered feet to the glowing grate, and a good cigar between his lips. His teeth tight- ened suddenly upon it when he heard the note. It was curt. To my flayed sensibilities, it was brutal. I see, now, that it was businesslike and impersonal. Were I a professional "reader," I should indite one as brief, and 244 HOW "ALONE'' CAME TO BE not a whit more sympathetic. Alone was my first book, and a sentient fraction of my soul and heart. For a whole minute there was no sound in the room but the bubbling song of the soft coal. I sat upon a stool beside my confidant, and, having passed the letter up to him, my head sank gradually to his knee. I was unspeak- ably miserable, but I made no moan. He had not patience with weak wails when anything remained to be done. His cigar had gone out, for when I lifted my head at his move- ment toward the lamp, he had folded the scrap of paper into a spile, and was lighting it. He touched the dead oigar with the flame, and drew hard upon it until it was in working order before he said: ''I believe in that book! I shall send it back to Morris, to-morrow, and tell him to bring it out in good style and send the bill to me." "But," I gasped, "you may lose money by it!" "I don't think so. At any rate, we will make the ex- periment." XXIV THE DAWNING OF LITERABT UFB "January 28th, 1854. "My vert deab Friend, — ^I wish you were here this mom- ingl I long to talk with you. Tliere are many things I cannot commit to paper, or of which I might be ashamed as soon as they were written. There are no short-hand and long- tongued reporters at our face-to-face confabulations. ''Of one thing I will give you a hint: Have you any recol- lection of a certain MS., portions of which were read in your hearing last spring? I should not be surprised if you were to hear something of it before long. Keep your eyes upon the papers for a few weeks, and if you see nothing that looks like a harbinger of the advent, just conclude that I have changed my mind at the last gasp and recalled it. For U has gone out of my hands! After the appearance of an3rthing that looks that way, I unseal your mouth. "Seriously, I have much pending upon this venture. The success of the book may be the opening of the path I cannot but feel that Providence has marked out for me. "As it is a Virginia story, Southerners should buy it, if it has no other merit. My misgivings are grave and many; but my advisers urge me on, and notices of fugitive articles that have appeared in Northern and Southern papers have in- oculated me with a little confidence in the wisdom of their counsel. "I had not meant to say this, or, indeed, to mention the matter at all, but as the day of publication draws near, I am, to use an expressive Yankeeism — 'fidgety.' •'If an3rthing I have said savors of undue solicitude for the bantling's welfare, recollect that I am the mother. One thing 246 THE DAWNING OF LITERARY LIFE mare: I shall have nothmg to do with advertisements. If they laud the work too highly, bear in mind that it is 'all in the way of trade/ and that booksellers will have their way. "Our 'Musical Molasses Stew' came off last night. We had a grand 'time!' Violin, flute, guitar, piano— ^11 played by masculine amateurs, and a chorus of men's voices. It was 'nae sae bad,' as the Scotch critic said of Mrs. Siddons's acting. The same might be said of the real frolic of pulling the treacte. My partner was a young Nova Scotian — 'Blackader' by name — an intelligent, agreeable, and versatile youth who entered gloriously into the spirit of the occasion. He played upon the piano, sang treble, tenor, and bass by turns, and pulled and laughed with me until he had no strength left." I was but feebly convalescent from a brief illness when, chancing to pick up the latest number of Godej/s Magor zine, and fluttering the leaves aimlessly, my eyes rested upon a paragraph in the "Editor's Table." "Will the author of 'Marrying Through Prudential Motives' send her address to the editor?" A queer story followed. The tale, sent so long ago to Mr. Godey that I had almost foigotten it, had fallen behind a drawer of his desk, and lain there for three years and more. When it finally turned up, curiosity, aroused by its disappearance and exhmnation, led the editor to read it more carefully than if it had reached him through ordinary channels. He liked it, published it, and waited to hear from the author. By some mischance that particular number of the "Lady's Book" had escaped my notice. The story was copied into an English periodical; translated from this into French, and appeared on the other side of the channel. Another British monthly "took up the wondrous tale" by rendering the French version back into the vernacular. In this guise the much-handled bit of fiction was brought across the seas by The Albion, a New York periodical that 247 MARION HARLAND'B AUTOBIOGRAPHY published only ElngMi ''stuff." Mr. Godey arraigiiad The Albian for piracy, and the truth was revealed by degrees. Richmond papers copied the odd ''happening" bm Northern, and Mr. Morris made capital of it m ad- vertising the forthcomiiig novel. I have more thi^A once spoken of the Richipond of that dftte as "pn>yinci^.'' It was so backward in literary eaterprise that the leading bookseller had not f^ilities ^t his commaad for publishing the book committed to him. On March 0, 1854, I wrote to my Powbi^tfm corrp- spondent: "Cousin Joe says he was charged by you to get 'my book/ I am sorry to say that it cannot be procured as yet. Un- looked for delays have impeded the work of publication. But, as the proofs arrive daily, now, I trust that the wheels are beginning to run more smoothly. It is printed in Philadel* phia, although copyrighted in Richmond. Not a printer in this city could finish it before the 1st of May, so we were forced to send it to the North. . . . "You will read arid like it, if only because I wrote it. Whether or not others may cavil at the religious tone, and ridicule the simplicity of the narrative, remains to be seen. Thus far I have had encoiu'agement from all sides. My own fears are the drawback to sanguine expectation.'' The actual advent of Alone was a surprise, after all the waiting and wondering that left the heart sick with hope deferred. I was setting out for a walk one balmy May morning, and standing on the front porch to draw on my gloves, when Doctor Haxall, who had long had in our family the sobriquet of "the beloved physician," reined in his horses at the gate and called out that he was "just coming to ask me to drive with him." He had often done the like good turn to me. I was not robust, and he had watched my growth with 248 THE DAWNING OF LITERARY LIFE mom thai! professional solicitude. Had he been bf my very own kindred, he could not have been kinder or dis- played more active interest in all my affaks — great to tne and small to him. ''Headache?" he queried, with a keen look at my paid face when I was seated at his side. ''Not exactly! I think the warm weather makes me languid." "More likely overexcited nerves. You must learn to take life more philosophically. But we won't talk shop!" We were bowling along at a fine rate. The doctor drove fast, blooded horses, and liked to handle the ribbons himself. The day was deliciously fresh, the air sweet with early roses and honeysuckle. I called his attention, in passing Conway Robinson's grounds, to the perfume of violets rising in almost visible waves from a ravine where the grass was whitened by them as with a light fall of snow. I asked no questions as we tuhied down Capitol Street, and thence into Main Street. Sometimes I sat in the carriage while he paid a professional call. This might be his intention now. We brought up abruptly at Morris's book-store, and the blessed man leaped out and held his hand to me. He probably had an errand there. He handed me into the interior in his brisk way, and marched straight up to Mr. Morris, who advanced to meet us. "Good-morning! I have come for a copy of this young lady's book!" U I had ever fainted, I should have swooned on the spot. For there, in heaps and heaps upon the front counter — in bindings of dark-blue, and purple, and crimson, ahd leaf-brown — ^lay in lordly state, portly volumes, on the backs of which, in gleaming gold that shimmered and shook before my incredulous vision, was stamped: "Alone." I saw> through the sudden daselement of the whole wotld 249 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY about me, that a clerk had set a chair for me. I sat down gratefully. Mr. Morris was talking: "Opened this morning! I sent six copies up to you. I suppose you got them?" "No!" I tried so hard to say it firmly that it sounded careless. I would have added, "I did not know it was out," but dared not attempt a sentence. Mr. Morris attended us to the door to point to placards a porter was tacking to boards put there for that express purpose: JUST OUTII ALOMEI Bj larioi Harlaid The doctor nodded satisfiedly and handed me into the carriage. In taking my seat, I thought, in a dull, sick way, of Bruce at the source of the Nile. I had had day- dreams of this day and hour a thousand times in the last ten years. Of how I should walk down-town some day, and see a placard at this very door bearing the title of a novel written and bound, and lettered in gilt, and pubushbd! bearing my pen-name! The vision was a reality; the dream was a triumphant fulfilment. And I was sitting, unchanged, and non-appreciative, by the dear old doctor, and his full, cordial tones were sajdng of the portly purple volume lying on the seat between us: "Well, my dear child, I congratulate you, and I hope a second edition will be called for within six months I" He did not ply me with questions. He may not have suspected that the shock had numbed my ideas and stiff- ened my tongue. If he had, he could not have borne him- self more tactfully. He was a man who had seen the 250 THE DAWNING OF LITERARY LIFE world and hobnobbed with really distinguished live authors. It would not have been possible for him to enter fully into what this day was to me. When I thought of Bruce and the Nile, it was because I did not compre- hend that the very magnitude of the crisis was what de- prived me of the power of appreciating what had hap- pened. No! I am not inclined to ridicule the unsophisticated girl whose emotions were too mighty for speech that May noon, and to minimize what excited them. Nothing that wealth or fame could ever offer me in years to come could stir the depths of heart and mind as they were upheaved in that supreme hour. The parcel of books had been opened and the contents examined, by the time I got home. I stole past the open door of my mother's chamber, where she and Aunt Rice, who was visiting us, and Mea were chatting vivaciously, and betook myself to my room. When my sister looked me up at dinner-time I told her to excuse me from coming down. "The heat had made me giddy and headachy." She bade me "lie still. She would send me a cup of tea." "I'll leave you this for company," she cooed, laying the book tenderly on my pillow. ^*We think it beau- tiful." With that she went out softly, shutting me in with my "beautiful" first-bom. Mea always had her wits within easycaU. The sixth sense was bom within her. I saw of the travail of my soul and was satisfied; was repaid a thousandfold for months of toil and years of waiting, when my father read my book. He did not go down-town again that day, after coming home to dinner. My mother told me, with a happy break in her laugh, how he had hardly touched the food on his plate. Aunt Rice's 251 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY pleasant prattle' saved the situation from awkwardness when he lapsed into a brown study and talked less than he ate. When dessert was brought in, he excused himself and disappeared from general view for the rest of the afternoon. The door of " the chamber " to which he with- drew was fast shut. Nobody disturbed him until it was too dark to read by daylight. My mother took in a lighted lamp and set it on the table by him. "He didn't see or hear me!" was her report. "He is a quarter through the book already, and he doesn't skip a word." He spent just fifteen minutes at the supper-table. It was two o'clock in the morning before he reached the last page. After prayers next morning he put his arm about me and held me fast for a moment. Then he kissed me very gravely. "I was right about that book, daughter!" That was all! but it was, to my speechless self, as if the morning stars had sung together for joy. I record here and now what I did not know in the spring- tide of my happiness. I never had — I shall never have — another reader like him. As long as he lived, he " believed " in me and in my work with a sincerity and fervor as im- possible for me to describe as it can be for any outsider to believe. He made the perusal of each volume (and they numbered a score before he died) as solemn a ceremony as he instituted for the first. His absolute absorption in it was the secret jest of the family, but they respected it at heart. When he talked with me of the characters that bore part in my stories, he treated them as real flesh-and- blood entities. He found fault with one, and sjonpathized with another, and argued with a third, as seeing them in propia personoB, It was strange — phenomenal — when one oonsiders the light weight of the literature under advise- 252 THE DAWNING OF LITERARY LIFE ment and the mental calibre of the man. To me it was at once inspiration and my exceeding great reward. "June 5ih, 1854. "Dear Effie, — ^From a formidable pile of letters of good wishes and congratulation, I select (not happen upon!) your sweet, affectionate epistle, every word of which, if it did not come from your heart, went straight to mine. "I shall never be a literary iceberg! That is clear. I have had a surfeit of compliments in public and in private, but a word of appreciation from a true, loving friend gives me more delicious pleasure than all else. "I make no excuse for speaking freely to you of what you say is 'near akin' to you. I thank you heartily for owning the relationship. Two editions have been 'run off' already, and another is now in press — unprecedented success in this part of the world — or so they tell me. Northern papers notice the book more at length and more handsomely than does the Richmond press. ''Of the sales in your county, I know nothing. Oh yesf C. W. told Mr. Rhodes that ' Miss Virginia Hawes's novel is having a tremendous run in Powhatan. Tre-men-dous, sir! Why, I had an order to buy a copy and send it up, m3r8elf, sir!' "Isn't that characteristic?" XXV BROUGHT FACE TO PACE WITH MY FATE The promised visit to Powhatan was paid in July. ''How happily the days of Thalaba went by I 99 I said over the strangely musical line to mjrself scores of times in the two months of my stay in the dear old county. " Homestead/' the home of the D.'s, was never more beau- tiful, and uhe days were full of innocent fun, and junketings without number. College and University boys were at home, and city people were flocking to the country. There were walliG, drives, "dining-days," early and late horse- back parties, setting out from one hospitable house before sunrise, and breakfasting at another ten or twelve miles away ; or, better yet, leaving home at sunset, and pacing, cantering, and galloping (women never rode trotting horses) along highroad and plantation lane to a house, buried in ancestral woods, in the very heart of the county, for supper, returning by the light of the harvest moon, as fresh as when we set forth. With no premonition that this was to be the most eventful summer and autumn of my hitherto tranquil life, I gave myself up, wholly and happily, to the influences that sweetened and glorified it. Late in August I resolved rather suddenly to go home. My sister was in Boston; my father would not leave his business for so much as a week ; my mother and the younger children ought to be in the country. Since she would not resign my father to what she spoke of as "Fate and ser- 264 FACE TO FACE WITH MY FATE vants," I would throw my now rejuvenated body into the breach, abide by the stuff and her husband and sons, while she took a sadly needed rest with old friends in Nottoway County. Recollecting how persistently I clung to the decision in the face of a tempest of protest, my own heart in secret league with the protestants, I acknowledge with humble gratitude the guidance of the "moving finger that writes" out the destinies we think to control for ourselves. The glow of the halcyon summer had not passed from my spirit when I wrote to my late hostess two days after my return: "Richmond, August 2Qth, 1854. "My Own Friend, — I said *! will write next week,' but it suits my feelings and convenience to write this morning. ''In the first place, my heart is so full of happiness that it overflows upon and toward everybody that I love, and don't you dear Homesteadians — ^yourself and Powhie, especially — come in for a share? "Mrs. Noble was very pleasant, but the journey was a bit tedious. It always is! Richmond looked enchanting when at last the spires and chimneys appeared upon the horizon, and my sweet home was never so pretty before. "Mother had planned an agreeable surprise, and not told me that the painters had been at work elsewhere than in my room. So the freshly painted shutters and the white window- facings and cornices, contrasted with the gray walls, were doubly beautiful, because not expected. Then Percy came tumbling down the steps, clapping his hands and shouting in glee, and Alice's bright smile shone upon me at the gate, and mother left company in the parlor to give me four kisses — and all I could say was, 'I have had such a pleasant visit, and now I am so glad to see you all!' 'Tather could not be coaxed to bed that night until one o'clock, although mother reminded him that he had a head- ache. "'Never mind! Daughters don't come home every night I' 256 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY '"But this one will be tired outl' "'Well, she may sleep late to-morrow morning.' He doesn't know how la^y I have grown of late. I am surprised to find vegetation so luxuriant here. My inquiries concerning the Mate drought' are answered by a stare of amazement. Rain has been abundant in this region. In our garden the vegetables and grape-vines grow rank and tall. And as for flowers! There were seven bouquets in the parlor, smiling and breathing a welcome. Last night I re- ceived one per rail from Horace Lacy (bless his soul I) , and Herbert to-night brought up another and a magnificent, when he came to his late supper. "Mother had delicious peaches for supper the night I got back, but advised me to 'eat them sparingly, at first.' Yester- day I forgot her caution, and I think I am the better for the lapse. Peaches, watermelons, apples, sweet potatoes, etc., were liberally patronized by us all. The cholera 'scare' seems to be over. Doctor Haxall advised the members of our family to make no change in their diet while they con- tinued well, and they have prospered wonderfully under his regimen. . . . "I wish I had time to tell you of some queer letters I found waiting for me. Father would not forward them, 'for fear of annoying me.' They are meant to be complimentary, one requesting 'some particulars of your birthplace, education,' etc. 'Wish he may get them I' "Now, dear, forgive this egotistical scrawl — written as fast as fingers can scratch — but just seat yourself and tell me exactly what you have been doing, saying, and thinking since I left; how our pet, Powhie (the dear old scampi), is thriving; and the state of your mother's health, also the news from The Jungle. "Our Heavenly Father bless and love you, my darling!" We packed my mother and her younger children off to the country the first of September, and rejoiced unselfishly that they had escaped the fervid heats of the following week. Our house was deliciously cool by comparison with 256 FACE TO FACE WITH MY FATE • the sultriness of the outer world. The thick Walls and lofty ceilings kept the temperature at an equable and com- fortable point. We breakfasted early, and by nine o'clock the day was my own — or six consecutive hours of it. In unconscious imitation of Charlotte Bronte, who be- gan Jane Eyre while The Professor was "plodding his weary round from publisher to publisher," I had begun another book by the time Alone was turned over to the tender mercies of Mr. Morris's "reader." I finished the first draught on the forenoon of September 11th, having wrought at it with the fierce joy in work that ever comes to me after a season of absolute or comparative idleness. I was very weary when the last word was written: "Alma was asleep!" I read it aloud to myself in the safe solitude of my shaded library. I had not heard then that Thackeray slapped his thigh exultantly after describing the touch of pride Becky felt in her husband's athletic pummelling of her lover. I could have understood it fully at that instant. "Thackeray, my boy, that is a stroke of genius!" cried the great author, aloud, in honest pride. The small woman writer sat wearily back in her chair, and said — not murmured: "I flatter myself that is a neat touch!" Then I found that my head ached. Moreover, it had a strange, empty feeling. I compared it to a squeezed sponge. I likewise reminded myself that I had not been out of the house for two days; that my father had shaken his head when I told him it was "too hot for walking," warning me that I "must not throw away the good the country had done for me." He would ask me, at supper- time, if I had taken the admonition to heart. I went off to my room, bathed, and dressed for a roimd of calls. This I proceeded to make, keeping on the shady side of the street. I called at three houses, and found every- 267 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY body out. The sun was setting when I stood in front of my mirror on my return, and laid aside bonnet and mantle (we called it a "visite")- The red light from the west shot across me while I was brushing up the hair the hot dampness had laid flat. It struck me suddenly that I was looking rather well. I wore what we knew as a "spencer" of thin, dotted white muslin. It would be a "shirt-waist" to-day. It was belted at what was then a slim waist above a skirt of "changeable" silk. Herbert had said it "reminded him of a pale sunrise," but there were faint green reflections among shimmering pinks. There must be somebody in the immediate neighborhood upon whom I might call while I was dressed to go out. A dart of self- reproach followed swiftly upon the thought. My old and favorite tutor, Mr. Howison, had broken down in health two years after accepting a call to his first parish. An obstinate affection of the throat made preach- ing impracticable. At the end of a year of compulsory inaction, he resumed the practice of law in Richmond, and within another twelve months married the woman he had sought and won before his illness. They lived in a pleasant house upon the next street, so near that we often "ran around" to see each other. "Mary's" younger sister had died during my absence from home, and as I reminded myself, now, I ought to have called before this. Half a square from her door, I recalled that the young clergyman who was supplying Doctor Hoge's pulpit while he was abroad, and whom I had heard preach last Sun- day, was staying at the Howison's. It was not right, in the eyes of the church, that he should go to a hotel, and since he would go nowhere except as a boarder, the Howi- sons had opened door and hearts to make him at home in his temporary charge. He had given us an interesting sermon on Sunday, and made a pleasing impression gen- 258 FACE TO FACE WITH MY FATE erally. I had not thought of him since, until almost at the gate of my friends' house. Then I said, inly: " Should the youthful divine be hanging about the porch or yard, Fll walk on unconcernedly and postpone the call." Being famihar with the ways of young sprigs of divinity, and having over twenty blood-relatives who had the right to prefix their baptismal names by "The Reverend," I had no especial fondness for the brand. Furthermore, three callow clerics and one full-fledged had already in- vited me to share parsonage and poverty with them. For all I had one and the same reply. It might be my pre- destined lot, as certain anxious friends began to hint, to live out my earthly days in single blessedness; and, if the ancient anti-race-suicide apostles were to be credited, then to lead apes in Hades for an indefinite period. I would risk the terrors of both states sooner than take upon me the duties and liabilities of a minister's wife. Upon that I was determined. The youthful divine was nowhere in sight. Nor did he show up during the half-hour I passed with the Howisons. They proposed walking home with me when I arose to go. Just outside the gate we espied a tall figure striding up the street, swinging his cane in very unclerical style. Mr. Howison stopped. '*Ah, Mr. Terhune! I was hoping you might join us." Then he introduced him to me. Of course, he asked per- mission to accompany us, and we four strolled abreast through the twilight of the embowered street. I had known the sister of Mr. Terhune, who, as the widow of Doctor Hoge's most intimate friend, was a frequent visitor to Richmond. I asked civilly after her, and was answered as civilly. We remarked upon the heat of the day and the fine sunset; then we were at our gate, where my father and brother were looking out for me. My escorts declined the invitation to enter garden and 18 269 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY house; Mr. Howison passed over to me a big bunch of roses he had gathered from his garden and brought with him, and, having exchanged "Good-evenings," we three lingered at the gate to admire the flowers. There was no finer col- lection of roses in any private garden in town than those which were the lawyer's pets and pride. My face was buried in the cool deliciousness of my bouquet when, through the perfect stillness of the evening, we heard our new acquaintance say: ^ "Your friend. Miss Hawes, walks well." He had, as we had noticed on Sunday, a voice of mar- vellous compass, with peculiar "carrying" quaUties. He had not spoken more loudly than his companions, and, having reached the comer of the street, he fancied himself beyond earshot. Every word floated back to us. We laughed — ^all three of us. Then I said, deliberately: "If that man ever asks me to marry him, I shall have to do it! I vowed solemnly, long ago, to marry the first man who thinks me handsome, if he should give me the chance. Let us hope this one won't 1" "Amen!" responded my hearers, my father adding, "His cloth rules him out." It may have been a week later in the season that I was strolling down Broad Street in company with "Tom" Baxter, Mr. Rhodes's chummiest crony. He had over- taken me a few squares farther up-town, and was begging me, in the naive way most girls found bewitching, to take a turning that would lead us by an office where he was to leave a paper he had promised to deliver at that hour. "Then," he pursued, with the same refreshing simplicity of tone and look, "there will be nothing to hinder me from going all the way home with you." I refused point-blank, and he detained me for a minute at the parting of the ways, entreating and arguing, until I cut the nonsense short by saying that / had an engage- 260 FACE TO FACE WITH MY FATE ment which I must keep without regard to his convenience^ and walked on. Tom was an amusing fellow, and hand- some enough to win forgiveness for his absurdities. I was smiling to myself in the recollection of the little farce, when I met, face to face, but not eye to eye — for we were both looking at the pavement — the man who had said that I walked well. He stepped aside hurriedly ; the hand that swung the cane went up to his hat, and we went our separate ways. That evening I was surprised to receive a call from our pastor pro tempore. He told me, months afterward, that he was homesick and lonely on that particular afternoon. At least two-thirds of the best people in the parish were out of town, and he found little to interest him in those he met socially. ''You smiled in such a genial fashion when we met on that bless6d comer that I felt better at once. The recol- lection of that friendly look gave me courage to call, out of hand." Whereupon, I brought sentimentality down on the run by asking if he had ever heard the negro proverb, "Fired at the blackbird and hit the crow " ? "That was Tom Baxter's smile — ^not yours!" XXVI LTTERART WELL-WISHERS — GEORGE D. PRENTICE — BfRS. SIGOURNBY — GRACE GREENWOOD — H. W. LONGFELLOW — JAMBS REDPATH — *'THE WANDERING JEW " Authors were not so plentiful then as to attract no at- tention in a crowd of non-literary people. Men and women who had climbed the heights had leisure to glance down at those nearer the foot of the hill, and to send back a cheering hail. I had twenty letters from Greoige D. Pren- tice, known of all men as the friend and helper of youth- ful writers. All were kind and encouraging. By-and-by, they were fatherly and familiar. As when I lamented that I had never been able to make my head work without my heart, he responded, "Hearts without heads are too im- pulsive, sometimes too hot. Heads without hearts are too cold. Suppose you settle the matter by giving the heart into my keeping, in trust for the happy man who will call for it some day?" His letters during the war were tinged with sadness. In one he wrote: **My whole heart is one throbbing prayer to the God of Nations that He will have mercy upon my beloved country." In reply to a letter of sympathy after the death of a gallant young son, who fell on the battle-field, he said: "My dear boy never gave me a pang except by entering the army (in obedience to what he felt was the call of duty), and in dying. A nobler, more dutiful son never gladdened a father's heart." 262 LITERARY WELL-WISHERS Our correspondence was continued as long as the poet- editor lived. I owe him much. I wish I had made him comprehend how much. Mrs. Sigoumey, then on "the retired list" of American authors, sent me a copy of her latest volume of poems — A Western Home — and three or four letters of motherly counsel, one of which advised me to take certain epochs of American history as foundation-stones for any novels I might write in future, and bidding me "God-speed!" Grace Greenwood opened a correspondence with the younger woman who had admired her afar off, and we kept up the friendship until she went abroad to Uve, re- suming our intercourse upon her return to New York in the early eighties. From Mr. Longfellow I had two letters. One told me that Mrs. Longfellow was "reading Alone in her turn." "I am pleased to note upon the title-page of my copy, * Sixth Edition.' That looks very like a guide-board pointing to Fame. I should think you would feel as does the traveller in the Tyrol who sees, at a turn in the rocky pass, a finger-post with the inscription — *To Rome.' Hoping that you will not be molested by the bandits who sometimes infest that route, I am sincerely yours, Henry W. Longfellow." I have carried the letter, word for word, in my heart for more than half a century. A patent of nobility would not have brought me keener and more exquisite pleasure. Not that I deceived myself, for one mad hour, with the fancy that I could ever gain the right to stand for one beatific moment on a level with the immortals whom I worshipped. In the first flush of my petty triumph, I felt my limitations. The appreciation of these has grown upon me with each succeeding year. "Fred" Cozzens, the "Sparrowgrass" of humorous literature, said to me once when I expressed something of this conviction: 263 MARION ttARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY "Yet you occupy an important niche." I replied in all sincerity: "I know my place. But the niche is small, and it is not high up. All that I can hope ij3 to fill it worthily, sUch as it is.'' The history of one bulky packet of letters takes me back to the orderly progress of my story, and to the most singu- lar and romantic episode of that first year of confessedly literary life. . Alone had been out in the world about three months, when I received a letter from a stranger, postmarked "Baltimore," and bearing the letter-head of a daily paper published in that city. The signature was "James Red- path." The writer related briefly that, chancing to go into Morris's book-store while on a visit to Richmond, he had had {torn the publisher a copy of my book, and read it. He went on to say: "It is full of faults, as you will discover for yourself in time. Personally, I may remark, that I detest both your politics and your theology. Ail the same, you will make your mark upon the age. In the full persuasion of this, I write to pledge myself to do all in my power to forward your literary interests. I am not on the staff of the Baltimore paper, although now visiting the editor-in-chief. But I have influence in more than one quarter, and you will hear from me again." I laid the queer epistle before my father, and we agreed that my outspoken critic was slightly demented. I was already used to odd communications from odd people, some from anonymous admirere, some from reviewers, pro- fessional and amateur, who sought to "do me good," after the disinterested style of the guild. I was therefore unprepared for the strenuous manner in which Mr. James Redpath proceeded to keep his pledge. Not a week passed in which he did not send me a clipping 264 JAMES REDPATH from some paper, containing a direct or incidental notice of my book, or work, or personality. Now he was in New Orleans, writing fiery Southern editorials, and insinuating into the body of the same, adroit mention of the rising Southern author. Now he slipped into a Cincinnati paper a poem taken from Alone, with a line or two, calling atten- tion to the novel and the author ; then a fierce attack upon the "detested politics and theology" flamed among book- notices in a Buffalo journal, tempered by regrets that "real talent should be grossly perverted by sectional prejudice and superstition." Anon, a clever review in a Boston paper pleased my friends in the classic city so much that they sent a marked copy to me, not dreaming that I had already had the critique, with the now familiar "J. K." scrawled in the margin. The climax of the melodmma was gained during the struggle over "bleeding Kansas" in 1855. A hurried note from the near neighborhood of Leavenworth informed me that a pro-slavery force, double the size of the aboUtionist militia gathered to resist it, was advancing upon the position held by the latter. My daunt- less knight wrote: "Farewell, dear and noble lady! If I am not killed in the fight, you will hear from me again and again. Should I be translated to another sphere, I shall still (if possible) rap back notices of your work through the Fox sisters or other mediums." Hearing nothing more of or from him for two months, I was really unhappy in the apprehension that his worst fears had been realized. I had grown to like him, and my gratitude for his disinterested championship was warm and deep. My father expressed his conviction that the eccen- tric was the Wandering Jew, and predicted his safe de- liverance from the pro-slavery hordes, and reappearance in somebody's editorial columns. His prophecy was ful- MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY filled in a long report in a Philadelphia sheet of a meeting with the "new star of the South," in the vestibule of the church attended by the aforesaid. Nothing that escaped my Ups was set down, but my dress and appearance, my conversational powers and deportment were paints in glowing colore, the veracious portraiture concluding with the intelligence that I would shortly be married to the son of a former Governor of Virginia — "a man, who, despite his youth, has already distinguished himself in the poUtical arena, and we are glad to say, in the Democratic ranks." I thought my father would have an apoplectic fit when he got to that! "See here, my child! I don't presmne to interfere with Salathiel, or by what other name your friend may choose to call himself, and there are all manner of tricks in the trade editorial, but this is going a Uttle too far. He sha'n't marry you oflF, without your consent — and to a Democrat!" I had the same idea, and hearing directly from Mr. Red- path soon afterward, I said as much, as kindly as I could. The remonstrance elicited a gentlemanly rejoinder. While the style of the "report" was "mere newspaper lingo," he claimed that the framework was built by an attache of the Philadelphia daily, whom he (Redpath) had commissioned to glean all he could of my appearance, etc., during a flying trip to Richmond. The young fellow had written the article and sent it to press without submitting it to Sala- thiel. The Uke should not occur again. In my answer to the apology, I expressed my profound sense of gratitude to ray advocate, and confessed my inability to divine the motive power of benefactions so numerous and unsoUcited. His reply deepened the mystery: "Your book held me back from infidelity. Chapter Sixteenth saved my life. Now that you know thus much, we will, if you please, have no more talk on your part of gratitude." 266 ''THE WANDERING JEW" Five years elapsed between the receipt of that first note signed ''James Redpath/' and the explanation of what followed. I may relate here, in a few sentences, what he wrote to me at length, and what was published in an ai>- preciative biographical sketch written by a personal friend after his death. He was bom in Scotland; emigrated in early manhood to America, and took up journalistic work. Although suc- cessful for a while, a series of misfortunes made of him a misanthropic wanderer. His brilliant talents and ex- perience found work and friends wherever he went, and he remained nowhere long. Disappointed in certain enter- prises upon which he had fixed his mind and expended his best enei^es, he found himself in Richmond, with but one purpose in his soul. He would be lost to all who knew him, and leave no trace of the failure he believed himself to be. He put a pistol in his pocket and set out for Holly- wood Cemetery. There were sequestered glens there, then, and lonely thickets into which a world-beaten man could crawl to die. On the way up-town, he stopped at the book- store and fell into talk with the proprietor, who, on learning the stranger's profession, handed him the lately-published novel. Arrived at the cemetery, Redpath was disap- pointed to see the roads and paths gay with carriages, pedestrians, and riding-parties. He would wait untU twi- light sent them back to town. He lay down upon the turf on a knoll commanding a view of the beautiful city and the river, took out his book and began reading to while away the hours that would bring quiet and solitude. The sun was high, still. He had the editorial knack of rapid reading. The dew was beginning to fall as he finished the narrative of the interrupted duel in the sixteenth chapter. I believed then, and I am yet more sure, now, that other influences than the crude story told by one whose ex- perience of life was that of a child by comparison with his, 287 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY wrought upon the lonely exile during the still hours of that perfect autumnal day. It suited his whim to think that the book turned his thoughts from hia design of eelf- deetniction. Before he slept that night he registered a vow — thus he phrased it in his explanatory letter — to write and publish one thousand notices of the book that iiad saved his life. When the vow was fulfilled — and not until then — dirt I get the key to conduct that had puzzled me, and baffled the conjectures of the few friends to whom I had told the tale. I met James Redpath, face to face, but once, and that was — if my memory serves me aright — io 1874. He waa in Newark, New Jereey, in the capacity of adviser-in-chief, or backer, of a friend who brought a [jarty of Indians from the West on a peaceful mission to Washington and some of the principal citiou, in the hope of exciting philanthropic interest in their advancement in civihsation. "He is as enthayastic in faith in the future of the red- man as I was once in the belief that the negro would arise to higher levels," remarked Salathiel, with a smile that ended in a sigh. "Heigbol youth is prone to ideals as the sparks to fly upward," Learning tiiat I was in the opera^liouse where the "show" waa held, he had in\'itcd me into his private stage-box, and there, out of sight of the audience, and indifferent to the speech-making and singing going on, on the stage, we talked for an hour with the cordial ease of old friends. My erat knight-errant was a well-mannered gentleman, still in the prime of manhood, with never a sign of the eccentric "stray" in feature, deportment, or the agreeable modulations of iiis voice. He told me of his wife. He had written to me of his marriage some years before.- She waa his balance-wheel, he said. I recollect that he likened ' to Madam Guyon. At the close of the entertainment. he was ^M led her ^H »it, we ^H *'THE WANDERING JEW" shook hands cordially and exchanged expressions of mutual regard. We never met again. How much or how little I was indebted to him for the success of my first book, I am unable to determine. I shall ever cherish the recollection of his generous spirit and stead- fast adherence to his vow of service, as one of the most interesting and gratif3dng episodes of my authorly career. xxvn MY NORTHERN KIN8PEOPLE — "qUELQU'UN" AND A UFlh LONG FRIENDSHIP I REWROTE the new book that winter, reading it, chapter by chapter, aloud to my father, in the evening. He was a judicious critic, and I need not repeat here how earnest and rapt a Ustener. I had received proposals for the pub- lication of my "next book" from six Northern publishers. In the spring my father went to New York and arranged for the preliminaries with the, then, flourishing firm of Derby & Jackson. It was brought out while I was in Boston that summer, imder the title of The Hidden Path. I anticipate dates in jotting down here that I had my first taste of professional envy in connection with this book. My journeying homeward in September was broken by a fortnight's stay at the hospitable abode of the Derbys in Yonkers. I was at a reception in New York one even- ing, when my unfortunately acute hearing brought to me a fragment of a conversation, not intended for my edifica- tion, between my publisher and a literary woman of note. Mr. Derby was telling her, after the tactless manner of men, how well The Hidden Path had "done" at the Trade Sales just concluded. "Ah!" said the famous woman, icily. "And I suppose she is naturally greatly elated?" Mr. Derby laughed. "She hides it well if she is. Have you read the book?" 270 MY NORTHERN KINSPEOPLE "Yes. You were good enough to send me a copy, you know. It is quite a creditable school-girl production." I moved clean out of hearing. I told Mr. Derby, after- ward, what I had heard, adding that my chief regret was at the lowering of my ideal of professional generosity. Up to that moment I had met with indulgent sympalliy and such noble freedom from envious h3rpercriticism, as to foster the fondly-cherished idea that the expression of lofty sentiment presupposes the ever-present dwelling of the same within the soul. In simpler phrase, that the proverb — "Higher than himself can no man think," had its converse in — "Lower than himself can no man be." In this I erred. I grant it, in this one instance. I had judged correctly of the grand Guild to which I aspired, with yearnings unutterable, to belong. It was an eventful summer. My father and I had gone on to Boston from New York, setting out, the same week, for a tour through the White Mountains. I was the only woman in the party. Our friend, Ned Rhodes, a distant cousin, Henry Field, of Boston, and my father completed the quartette. Ten days afterward, we two — my father and I — ^met a larger travelling party in New York. Mr. and Mrs. William Terhune, Mrs. Greenleaf, the widow of Doc- tor Hoge's friend; "Staff" Little, the brother of Mrs. William Terhune, and Edward Terhune, now the pastor of a church at Charlotte C. H., Virginia, composed the company which joined itself to us, and set forth merrily for Niagara and the Lakes. The trip accomplished, I settled down comfortably and happily in Boston and the charming environs thereof for the rest of the season. Another halcyon summer! If I have made scant mention of my father's kindred in the land of his birth, it is because this is a story of the Old South and of a Ufe that has ceased to be, except in the 271 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOQRAPHY hearts of the very few who may take up the boast of the Grecian historian — ''Of which I Was a part." I should be an ingrate of a despicable type were I to pass by al9 matters of no moment, the influences brought to bear upon my life at that date, and through succeeding years^ by my association With the several households who made up the family connection in that vicinityi My grandmother's brother, Uncle Iiewis Pierce, owtied and occupied the ancient homestead in Dorchester. He was ''a character" in his way; Handsome in his youth, he was still a man of imposing presence, especially When, attired in black broadcloth, and clean shaven, he sat on Sunday in the pew owned by the Pierces for eight genera- tions in the old church on ''Meeting House Hill." He did not always approve of the doctrine and politics of the officiating clergyman. He opened his mind to me to this efifect one Sunday that summer, as we jogged along in his Idw-hung phaeton, drawn by a home as portly and as well- set-up as his master. '"Hie man that is to hold forth to-day is what my wife scolds me for calling 'one of those higher law devils,'" he began by saying. "He is of the opinion that the law, for- bidding slavery and denying rights to the masters of the slaves and all that, ought to set aside the Constitution and the laws made by better men and wiser heads than his. He'd override them all, if he could. I've nothing to say against a man's having his own notions on that, or any other subject, but if he's a minister of the gospel, he ought to preach the truth he finds in the Bible, and keep his confounded politics out of the pulpit." He leaned forward to flick a fly from the sleek horse with his whip. "I've been given to understand that he doesn't like to see me and some others of the same stripe in church when he preaches for us. I pay no attention to that. If he, 272 MY NORTHERN KINSPEOPLE or any othere of his damnable way of thinking, imagine that I'm to be kept out of the church in which the Pierces owned a pew before this man and his crew were ever thought oi, he'll find himself mistaken. That's all there is about it!" It was worth seeing, after hearing this, the sturdy old representative of the Puritans, sitting bolt upright in the quaint box-pew where his forbears had worshipped the God of battles over a century before, and keeping what he called his ''weather eye" upon the suspected expounder of the gospel of peace. The obnoxious occupant of the an- cient and honorable pulpit was, to my notion, an amiable and inoffensive individual. He preached well, and with never an allusion to "higher law." Yet Uncle Lewis kept watch and ward throughout the service. I could easily believe that he would have arisen to his feet and challenged audibly any approach to the forbidden territory. The day and scene were recalled forcibly to my memory by a visit paid to my Newark home in 1864 by Francis Pierce, the protestant's oldest son, on his way home from Washington. He was one of a committee of Dorchester citizens sent to the Capital to look after the welfare of Massachusetts troops called into the field by a Republican President. The wife of the head of the Pierce homestead was one of the loveUest women ever brought into a world where saints are out of place. Near her Uved an old widow, who was a proverb for captiousness and wronghcadedness. I never heard her say a kind or charitable word of neighbor or friend, imtil she astounded me one day by breaking out into a eulogy upon Aunt Pierce and Cousin Melissa, Francis's wife : "We r^ in the Scriptures that God is love. I allers think of them two women when I hear that text. It might be said of both of 'em: they are jest love — ^through an' through!" 278 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY I carried the story to the blessdd pair, you may be sure. Whereupon, my aunt smiled compassionately. "Poor old lady! People who don't know how much trouble she has had, arc hard upon her. We can't judge one another unless we know all sides of a question. She is greatly to be pitied." And Cousin Melissa, in the gentle tone she might have learned from her beloved mother-in-law — " I always think that nobody is cross unless she is imhappy." Aurora Leigh had not been written then. If it had been, neither of the white-eouled dears would have read a word of it. Yet Mrs. Browning put this into the mouth of her heroine: "The dear Christ comfort you! You must have been most miserable To be so cruel!" The old house was a never-ending delight to me. It was built in 1640 (see Chapter I), ten years after the good ship Mary and John brought over from Plymouth the Ma^^sa- chusetts Bay Colony, landing her passengers in Boston. Robert Pierce (or Pcrcie) was, although a blood connection of the Northumberland Percies, the younger son of a younger son, and so far "out of the running" for title or fortune on that account, that he sought a home and liveli- hood in the New World. My ancestress, Ann Greenaway, whose tedioiw voyage from England to Massacha**otts was bcguilixl by her court- ship and marriage to stalwart "Robert of Dorchester," bore him many robast sons and "cafmble," if not fair daughters, dying at last in the Dorchester homestead at the rif)e age of one hundrinl and four. From her the long line of descendants may have in- herited the stout constitutions and stouter hearts that gave 274 MY NORTHERN KINSPEOPLE and kept for them a place in every community in which they have taken root. The story of the Pierce Homestead is told in Some Oolo- nial Homesteads more at length than I can give it here. The Virginia cousin was cordially welcomed to the cradle of her foremothers, and a warm attachment grew up be- tween me and each member of the two households. My cousin Francis had built a modem house upon a comer of tlie homestead grounds, and I was as happily at home there as in the original nest. Another adopted home — and in which I spent more time than in all the rest put together — was that of my cousin, Mrs. Long, "the prettiest of the three Lizzies" re- ferred to in one of my letters. Her mother, my father's favorite relative, had died since my last visit to Boston. Her daughter was married at her death-bed. She was a beautiful and intelligent woman, wedded to a man of con- genial tastes who adored her. The intimacy of this one of our Yankee cousins and ourselves began before Mea and I had ever seen her. My sister and ** Lizzie" were diligent correspondents from their school-days. To a chance remark of mine relative to their letters, I owe one of the most stable friendships that has blessed my life. We sisters were in the school-room at recess one day when I was fourteen, Mea sixteen. I was preparing a French exercise for M. Guillet, Mea writing to Boston. We had the room to ourselves for the time. My sister looked up from her paper to say : "What shall I say to Lizzie for you?" "Give her my love, and tell her to provide me with a correspondent as charming as herself." In her reply Lizzie begged leave to introduce a particular friend of her own, "intelligent and lovable — altogether in- teresting, in fact." This friend had heard her talk of her Southern cousins and wished to know them; but I must 19 276 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY write the first letter. I caught at the suggestion of what commended itself to me as adventure, and it was an epistolary age. Letters long and numerous, filled with details and disquisitions, held the place usurped by tele- phone, telegraph, and post-cards. We had time to write, and considered that we could not put it to a better pur- pose. So the next letter from my sister to my cousin con- tained a four-pager from me, addressed to "Quelqu'une." I gave fancy free play in conversing with the unknown, writing more nonsense than sober reason. I set her in the cludr opposite mine, and discoursed at her of "divers say- ings." If not ''Of ships and shoes and sealing-wax And cabbages and kings" — of wars and rumors of wars, and school duties, and current literature. In due time I had a reply in like strain, but to my con- sternation, written in a man's hand, and signed "Quel- qu'un." He apologized respectfully for the ambiguous terms of the introduction that had led me into a mistake as to his sex, and hoped that the silver that was beginning to stipple his dark hair would guarantee the propriety of a continued correspondence. "Time was," he mused, "when I could conjugate Amo in all its moods and tenses. Now I get no further than Amabam, and am constrained to confess myself in the tense at which I halt." We had written to one another once a month for two years before the sight of a note to Lizzie tore the mask from the face of my graybeard mentor, and con- firmed my father's suspicions as to his identity with Ossian Ashley, the husband of Aunt Harriet's elder daughter. The next visit I paid to Boston brought us together in the intimacy of the fanuly circle. He never dropped the r61e 276 '^QUELQU'UN" of elderly, and as time rolled on, of brotherly friend. He was, at that date, perhaps thirty-five years of age, and a superb specimen of robust manhood. I have seldom be- held a handsomer man, and his port was kingly, even when he had passed his eightieth birthday. Although a busy man of affairs, he was a systematic student. His library might have been the work-shop of a professional litterateur; he was a regular contributor to several journals upon finan- cial and literary topics, handling each with grace and strength. His translation of Victor Cherbuliez's Count Kosta was a marvellous rendering of the tone and sense of the original into elegant English. He was an excellent French and Latin scholar, and, when his son entered a German university, set himself, at sixty-odd, to study German, that he "might not shame the boy when he came home." Before that, he had removed to New York City, and en- gaged in business there as a railway stock-broker. He was, up to a few months prior to his death, President of the Wabash Railway, and maintained throughout his blame- less and beneficent life, a reputation for probity, energy, and talent. Peace to his knightly soul! He was passing good to me that summer. In company with his wife, we drove, sailed, and visited steamships, Bunker Hill Monument, and other places of historic interest. In their society I made my first visit to the theatre, and attended concerts and lectures. He lent me books, and led me on to discuss them, then, and when I was at home. And this when he was building up his business, looking after various family interests, not strictly his own (he was forever lending a hand to somebody!), and studying late into the night, as if working for a university degree. I am told that such men are so rare in our time and country as to make this one of my heroes a phenomenon. It is not marvellous that friendships like these, enjoyed 277 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY when character and opinion were in forming, should have cultivated optimism that has withstood the shock and undermining of late disappointments. It may well be that I have not known another man who, with his fortune to found, a household to support, and a press of mental toil ^hat would have exhausted the energies of the average student, would have kept up a correspondence with a child for the sake of pleasing and educating her, and car- ried it on out of affectionate interest in a provincial kins- woman. Affection and genial sjrmpathy, with whatever con- cerned me or mine, endured to the end. He was my hus- band's warm friend, a second father to my children — al- ways and everywhere, my ally. My last sight of him, before he succumbed to lingering and mortal illness, is vividly present with me. We had dined with him and his wife, and said to ourselves as we had hundreds of times, that time had mellowed, without dimming her beauty, and made him magnificent. The word is none too strong to describe him, as he towered above me in the parting words exchanged in light-heartedness unchecked by any premonition that we might never chat and laugh together again this side of the Silent Sea. He was over six feet in height; his hair and flowing beard were silver- white; his fine eyes darker and brighter by con- trast; his smile was as gentle and his repartee as ready as when he had jested with me in those bygone summers from which the glory has never faded for me. My upturned face must have expressed something of what filled heart and thoughts, for he drew me up to him suddenly, and kissed me between the eyes. Then, with the laugh I knew so well, he held out his hand to my hus- band: "You mustn't be jealous, my dear fellow! I knew her a long time before you ever saw her. And such good friends 278 '^QUELQU'UN" as we have been for — bless my soul! — can it be more than fifty years?" Again I say: "God rest his knightly soul!" It is worth living to have known one such man, and to have had him for my ''good friend" for "more than fifty years." XXVIII MY FIRST OPERA — " PETER PARLEY" — RACHEL AS "cAMILLE" ■BAYARD TAYLOR — T. B. ALDRICH — G. P. MORRIS — MARIA CUMMINS — MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY The three weeks passed in New York on my way home were thronged with novel and enchanting "sensations." I saw my first opera — MasanieUo, and it was the d6but of Elise Henssler. The party of which I was a member in- cluded Caroline Cheeseboro, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and Samuel Griswold Goodrich — "Peter Parley." To my intense satisfaction, my seat was beside the kindly old gentleman. Was not Parley's Magazine the first periodical I had ever read? And had not I devoured every book he had written, down to a set of popular biographies for which my father had subscribed as a gift to me on my eighteenth birthday? That I should, really and truly, be sitting at his side and hearing him speak, was a treat I could hardly wait until to-morrow to dilate upon in my home-diary letter. He was social and amusing, and, withal, intelligently appre- ciative of the music and actors. He rattled away jovially in the entr*actes of other operas and personal traits of stage celebrities, theatrical, and operatic. He told me, too, of how he had been ridiculed for embarking upon a career his friends thought puerile and contemptible, when he is- sued the initial number of Parley's Magazine, If I was secretly disappointed that his afifection for his juvenile constituency was more perfunctory than I had supposed 280 MY FIRST OPERA from his writings, I smothered the feeling as disloyal, and would be nothing short of charmed. I wrote to my mother next day that he was "a nice, friendly old gentleman, but impressed me as one who had outlived his enthusiasms." If I had put the truth into downright English, I should have said that the circum- stance that he was enshrined in thousands of young hearth as the aged man with a sore foot propped upon a cushion, and whose big heart was a fountain of love, and his brain a store-house of tales garnered for their delectation — was of minor importance to the profit popularity had brought him. I was yet new to the world's ways and estimate of values. The next night I saw Rachel in Les Horaces. I had never seen really great acting before. I had, however, read Charlotte Bronte's incomparable portraiture, in VHr lette, of the queen of the modern stage. Having no lan- guage of my own that could depict what was done before my eyes, and uttered to my rapt soul, I drew upon obedi- ent memory. Until that moment I had not known how faithful memory could be. In the breathless excitement of the last act of the tragedy, every word was laid ready to my hand. I seemed to read, with my subconscious per- ceptions, lines of palpitating light, the while my bodily sight lost not a gesture or look of the stricken tigress: "An inordinate will, convulsing a perishing mortal frame, bent it to battle with doom and death; fought every inch of ground, sold every drop of blood; resisted to the last 'the rape of every faculty ; woidd see, would hear, woidd breathe, would live, up to, within, well-nigh beyond the moment when Death says to all sense and all being — 'Thus far and no farther!' " I saw others — some said as great actors — ^in after years. Among them, Ristori. I do not think it was because I had seen none of them before the VashH of Charlotte 281 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Bronte's impassioned periods flashed upon my miaccus- tomed sight, that I still hold her impersonation of Camille in Lea Horaces to be the grandest triumph of the tragedian's art mine eyes have ever witnessed. Ristori was always the gentlewoman, bom and reared, in whatever r61e she as- sumed, Rachel — and again I betake myself to the weird word-paintmg: "Evil forces bore her through the tragedy; kept up her feeble strength. . . . They wrote 'Hell' on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate, she stood." I fancy that I must have been whispering the words as I gathered up my wraps and followed my companions out of the box. I recollect that one or two persons stared curiously at me. In the foyer I was introduced to some strangers, and went through certam civil forms of speech. I did not recollect names or faces when we got back to the hotel. After I was in bed, I could not sleep for hours. But one other actor has ever wrought so mightily upon nerves and imagination. When I was forty years older I was ill for forty-eight hours after seeing Salvini as Othello. During this memorable stay in New York I met Bayard Taylor. At the conclusion of his first call, I rushed to my desk and wrote to my sister: *'He has a port like Jove. "'Nature might stand up »>>* And say to all the world: "'This is a man! For once my ideal did not transcend the reality. Would that I could say it of all my dream-heroes and heroines! At his second call, Mr. Taylor was accompanied by Richard Henry Stoddard. At his first, he brought Charles Frederick Briggs, journalist and author, whose best-known book, 282 BAYARD TAYLOR— T. B. ALDRICH Harry Franco^ I had read and liked. I met him but once. Mr. Taylor honored me with his friendship until his la- mented death. My recollections of him are all pleasant. We met seldom, but our relations were cordial; the re- newal of personal association was ever that of friends who liked and understood each other. I reckoned it a favor that honored me, that his widow accepted me as her hus- band's old acquaintance, and that his memory has drawn us together in bonds of affectionate regard. Thomas Bailey Aldrich was then (in 1855) a mere stripling, yet already famous as the author of Babie Bell and Elsinore, poems that would have immortalized him had he not written another line. I came to know him well during my Northern sojourn. His charming personaUty won hearts as inevitably as his genius commanded admira- tion. Halleck's hackneyed eulogy of his early friend might be appUed, and without dissent, to the best-beIov6d of our later poets. To know him was to love him. The mag- netism of the rarely-sweet smile, the frank sincerity of his greeting, the direct appeal of the clear eyes to the brother- heart which, he took for granted, beat responsive to his, were irresistible, even to the casual acquaintance. His letters were simply bewitching — ^as when I wrote to him after each of us had grown children, asking if he would give my youngest daughter the autograph she coveted from his hand. He began by begging me to ask him, the next time I wrote, for something that he covld do, not for what was impossible for him to grant. He had laid it down as a rule, not to be broken under any temptation, whatsoever, that he would never give his autograph. '*If I could make an exception in the present case, you know how gladly I would do it, only to prove that I am un- alterably your friend, "Thomas Bailey Aldrich/' 283 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY He graced whatever he touched, and made the common- place poetic. The ineffable tenderness and purity of his verse were the atmosphere in which the man Uved and moved and breathed. The mystic afflatus of the bom poet clothed him, as with a garment. George P. Morris I met again and again. With the frank conceit, so permeated with the amiability and naivete of the veteran songster, that it offended nobody, he told me how Braham had sung Woodman, Spare That Tree, be- fore Queen Victoria, at her special request, and that Jenny Marsh of Cherry Valley was more of an accepted classic than Roy*s Wife of Aldivalloch. He narrated, too, the thrilling effect produced upon an audience in New York or Philadelphia by the singing for the first time in public of Near the Rock Where Drooped the Willow, and smiled benignantly on hearing that it was a favorite ballad in our home. He was then associated with N. P. Willis in the editorship of The New York Mirror, and agreed fully with me that it had not its peer among American Uterary periodicals. My mother had taken it for years. We had a shelf full of the bound volumes at home. I have some of them in my own library, and twice or three times in the year, have a rainy afternoon-revel over the yellowed, brittle pages mottled wth the mysterious, umber thumbmarks of Time. Colonel Morris's partner, Nathaniel Parker Willis, who had not yet taken to writing out the name at full length, was at his country-seat of *'Idlewild." He was ten years older when I saw him last, and under circumstances that took the sting from regret that I had not met him when life was fresh and faiths were easily confirmed. While in Dorchester I had enjoyed improving my ac- quaintanceship with Maria Cummins. Encyclopaedias reg- ister her briefly as *'An American novelist. She wrote The Lamplighter,*' In 1855, no other woman writer was 284 MARIA CUMMINS so prominently before the reading public. The Lamp- lighter was in every home, and gossip of the personality of the author was seized upon greedily by press and readers. Meeting Augusta Evans, of RuUedge and St. Elmo and Beuldh, four years thereafter, I was forcibly reminded of my Dorchester friend, albeit they belonged to totally different schools of literature. Both were quietly refined in manner and speech, and incredibly unspoiled by the flood of popular favor that had taken each by surprise. Alike, too, was the warmth of cordiality with which both greeted me, a stranger, whom they might never meet again. An amusing incident connected with one of Maria Cum- mins's visits broke down any Ungering trace of stranger- hood. She was to take tea at the house of my cousin, Francis Pierce. I was sitting by the window of the draw- ing-room, awaiting her arrival and gazing at the panorama of Boston Bay and the intervening hills, when an old lady, a relative-in-law of "Cousin Melissa," stole in. She was over eighty, and so pathetically alone in the lower world that Melissa — the personation of Charity, which is Love — had granted her home and care for several years. She had donned her best cap and gown; as she crept up to me, she glanced nervously from side to side, and her withered hands chafed one another in agitation she could not con- ceal. "I say, dearie," she began, in a whisper, bending down to my face, "would you mind if I was to sit in the comer over there" — nodding toward the back parlor — "and listen to your talk after Miss Cummins comes? I won't make the least mite of noise. I am an old woman. I never had a chance to hear two actresses talk before, and I may never have another." I consented, laughingly, and she took up her position just in time to escape being seen by the incoming guest. We chatted away cheerily at our far window, watching the 285 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY sunset as it crimsoned the bay and faded languidly into warm gray. ''Summer sunsets are associated in my mind, in a dreamy way, with the tinkle of cow-bells," observed my com- panion, and went on to tell how, as a child, living in Salem, she used to watch the long lines of cows coming in from the meadows at evening, and how musically the tinkle of many bells blended with other sunset sounds. "I have the same association with my Virginia home," I answered. "So had Gray with Stoke Pogis, But his herd lowed as it wound slowly over the lea." "Perhaps English cows are hungrier than ours," Miss Cummins followed, in like strain, "I prefer the chiming bells." We dropped into more serious talk after that. The un- seen listener carried off, up-stairs, when she stole out, like my little gray ghost, but one impression of the " actresses' " confabulation. Cousin Melissa told me of it next day. The old lady was grievously disappointed. We had talked of nothing but cows and cow-bells, and cows coming home hungry for supper, and such stuff. " For all the world as if they had lived on a dairy-farm all their days!" I supped with Miss Cummins and her widowed mother a day or so later, and we made merry together over the poor crone's chagrin. It was rather singular that in our several meetings neither of us spoke of Adeline D. T. Whitney. She had not then written the books that brought for her love and fame in equal portions. But she was Maria Cummins's dear friend, and a near neighbor of the Pierces. When we, at last, formed an intimacy that ceased only with her life, we wondered why this should have been delayed for a score of years, when we had so nearly touched, during that and other visits to my ancestral home. At our earliest meeting in her Milton cottage, whither 286 MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY I had gone by special invitation, she hurried down the stains with outstretched hands and — " I cannot meet you as a stranger. My dear friend, Maria Cummins, has often talked to me of you I" In the hasty sketch of a few representative members of the Literary Guild of America, as it existed a half-century ago, I have made good what I intimated a few chapters back, in alluding to my introductory experience of pro- fessional jealousies, which, if cynics are to be credited, per- vade the ranks of authors, as the mysterious, fretting leprosy ate into the condemned garment of the ancient Israelite. In all frankness, and with a swelling of heart that is both proud and thankful, I aver that no other order, or class, of men and women is so informed and permeated and colored with generous and loyal appreciation of what- ever is worthy in the work of a fellow-craftsman; so little jealous of his reputation; so ready to make his wrongs com- mon property, and to assist the lowliest member of the Guild in the hour of need. I make no exception in favor of any profession or call- ing, in offering this humble passing tribute to the Fraternity of American Authors. I could substantiate my assertion by countless illustrations drawn from personal observa- tion, had I space and time to devote to the task. In my sixty years of literary life, I have known nearly every writer of note in our country. In reviewing the list, I bow in spirit, as the seer of Patmos bent the knee in the presence of the shining ones. XXIX ANNA CORA (MOWATT) RITCHIB — EDWARD EVERETT— GOT- ERNOR WISE — A MEMORABLE DINNER-PARTY In 1854, Anna Cora Mowatt, "American actress, novelist, dramatist, and poet," as the cyclopaedias catalogue her, left the stage to become the wife of William Foushee Ritchie, of Richmond, Vii^nia. Mrs. Mowatt, nie Ogden, was the daughter of a promi- nent citizen of New York. She was bom in France, and partially educated there. Returning to America, she mar- ried, in her sixteenth year, James Mowatt, a scholarly and wealthy man, but much the senior of the child-wife. By a sudden reverse of fortune he was com{x*lled to relinquish the beautiful country home on Long Island, to which he had taken his wife soon after their marriage. With the romantic d(»sigii of siiving the* home she loved, Mrs. Mowatt began a s(»ri(»s of j)ublic Headings. Her dnmmtic talent was already well known in fashionuhle private circles. At the conclusion of lh(» n)una^il from a theatrical manager to go uix^n the* stag(\ For nine yciirs she was a prime favorite with the American thealn*-going public, and almost Jis jKipular abroad. SIm» never ntlec^med "Kavensw(KHl," and her huslxiiid dicnl while she was in the ziMiith of her brilliant succc^ss. Her union with William Ritchie*, who had adminxl her for a long time, wjus a lov(»-match on l)oth sides. He brought her to quiet Richmond, and installed her in a 288 ANNA CORA (MOWATT) RITCHIE modest cottage on our side of the town, but three blocks from my father's house. The Ritchies were one of the best of our oldest families; Mrs. Mo watt belonged to one as excellent; her character was irreproachable. I recollect Doctor Haxall insisting upon this when a very conserva- tive Mrs. Grundy "wondered if we ought to visit her." " You will see, madam, that she will speedily be as popu- lar here as she has been elsewhere. She is a lovely woman, and as to reputation — hers is irreproachable — absolutely! No tongue has ever wagged against her." I listened with curiosity that had not a tinge of personal concern in it. It went without saying that an ex-actress was out of my sphere. The church that condemned dan- cing was yet more severe upon the theatre. True, Mrs. Ritchie had left the stage, and, it was soon bruited abroad, never recited except in her own home and in the fine old colonial homestead of Brandon, where lived Mr. Ritchie's sister, Mrs. George Harrison. But she had trodden the boards for eight or nine years, and that stamped her as a personage quite unUke the rest of "us." So when William Ritchie stopped my father on the street and expressed a wish that his wife and I should know each other, he had a civil, non-committal reply, em- bodying the fact that I was expecting to go North soon, and would not be at home again before the autumn. During my absence my father sent me a copy of the Enquirer containing a review of The Hidden Path, written by Mrs. Ritchie, so complimentary, and so replete with frank, cordial interest in the author, that I could not do less than to call on my return and thank her. She was not at home. I recall, with a flush of shame, how relieved I was that a card should represent me, and that I had "done the decent thing." The "decent thing," in her opinion, was that the call should be repaid within the week. 289 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY No picture of her that I have seen does her even partial justice. In her youth she was extremely pretty. At thirty-eight, she was more than handsome. Time had not dimmed her exquisite complexion; her hair had been cut oflf during an attack of brain-fever, and grew out again in short, fair curls; her eyes were soft blue; her teeth dazzlingly white. Of her smile Edgar Allan Poe had written: "A more radiant gleam could not be imagined." In manner, she was as simple as a child. Not with studied simplicity, but out of genuine self-forgetfulness. She struck what I was to learn was the keynote to char- acter and motive, before I had known her ten minutes. I essayed to thank her for what she had said of my book. She listened in mild surprise: "Don't thank me for an act of mere justice. I Uked the book. I write book-reviews for my husband's paper. I could not do less than say what I thought." And — at my suggestion that adverse criticism was whole- some for the tyro — **Why should I look for faults when there is so much good to be seen without searching?" A woman of an utterly different type sounded the same note a score of years afterward. I said to Frances Willard, whose neighbor I was at a luncheon given in her honor by the wife of the Command- ant at Fort Mackinac: ** You know, Miss Willard, that, as General Howard said just now of us, you and I ' don't train in the same band.' " "No?" The accent and the sweet candor, the in- effable womanliness of the eyes that sought mine, touched the spring of memory. "Suppose, then, we talk only of the many points upon which we do agree? Why seek for opposition when there are so many harmonies close at hand?" Of such peacelovcrs and peacemakers is the kingdom of heaven, by whatsoever name they are called on earth. 290 ANNA CORA (MOWATT) RITCHIE Mrs. Ritchie was a Swedenborgian. I had learned that in her Autobiography of an Actress. All denominations — ^in- cluding some whose adherents would not sit down to the Lord's Supper with certain others, and those who would not partake of the consecrated "elements'' if administered by non-prelatic hands — united in shutting and bolting the door of heaven in her face. In the intimate companionship, unbroken by these and other admonitions, I never heard from Mrs. Ritchie's lips a syllable that was not redolent with the law of kindness. I learned to love her fondly and to revere her with fervor I would not have beUcved possible, six months earUer. It was not her fascination of manner alone that attracted me, or the unceasing acts of sisterly kindness she poured upon me, that deepened my devotion. She opened to me the doors of a new world: broadened and deepened and sweetened my whole nature. We never spoke of doctrines. We rarely had a talk — and henceforward our meetings were almost daily — in which she did not drop into my mind some precious grain of faith in the All-Father; of love for the good and noble in my fellow-man and of compassion, rather than blame, for the erring. Of her own church she did not talk. She assumed, rather, that we were "one family, above, beneath," and bound by the sacred tie of kinship, to "do good and to communicate." She had a helpful hand, as well as a comforting word, for the sorrow- ing and the needy. As to her benefactions, I heard of them, now and again, from others. Now it was an aged gentlewoman, worn down to the verge of nervous prostra- tion, and too poor to seek the change of air she ought to have, who was sent at the Ritchies' expense to Old Point Comfort for a month; or a struggling music-mistress, for whom Mrs. Ritchie exerted herself quietly to secure pupils; or a girl whose talent for elocution was developed by private lessons from the ex-actress; or a bedridden matron, who 20 291 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY had quieter nights after Mrs. Ritchie ran in, two or three evenings in a week, to read to her for half an hour in the rich, thrilling voice that had held hundreds enchanted in bygone days. To me she was a revelation of good-will to men. She lectured me sometimes, as a mother might and ought, al- ways in infinite tenderness. "I cannot have you say that, my child!" she said once, when I broke into a tirade against the hypocrisy and gen- eral selfishness of humankind at large, and certain offend- ers in particular. "Nobody is all-wicked. There is more unconquered evil in some natures than in others. There is good — ^a spark of divine fire — in every soul God has made. Look for it, and you will find it. Encourage it, and it will shine." And in reply to a murmur during the trial-experiences of parish work, when I "deplored the effect of these beUttUng cares and petty commonplaces upon my intellectual growth," the caressing hand was laid against my hot cheek. "Dear! you are the wife of the man of God! It is a sacred trust committed to you as his helpmate. To shirk anything that helps him would be a sin. And we climb one step at a time, you know — not by bold leaps. Nothing is belittUng that God sets for us to do." She, and some other things, gave me a royal winter. Another good friend, Mrs. Stanard, had notified me that Edward Everett, then lecturing in behalf of the Mount Vernon Association, was to be her guest while in Rich- mond, and raised me to the seventh heaven of delighted anticipation by inviting me to meet him at a dinner-party she would give him. Mrs. Ritchie forestalled the intro- duction to the great man by writing a wee note to me on the morning of the day on which the dinner was to be. The Mount Vernon Association had for its express ob- ject the purchase of Washington's home and burial-place, 292 EDWARD EVERETT to be held by the Nation, and not by the remote descendant of Mary and Augustine Washington, who had inherited it. Mrs. Ritchie was the secretary of the organization. Her note said: "A committee of our Association will wait upon Mr. Everett at the Governor's house this forenoon. I will smuggle you in. if you will go with us. I shall call for you at eleven." When we four who had come together were ushered into the spacious drawing-room of the gubernatorial mansion, we had it to ourselves. Mrs. Ritchie, with a pretty gesture that reminded one of her French birth, fell to arranging five or six chairs near the middle of the room, into a seem- ingly careless group. One faced the rest at a conversational angle. "Now!" she uttered, with a playful pretence of secrecy; "you will see Mr. Everett seat himself just there! He can do nothing else. Call it a stage trick, if you like. But he must sit there!*' The words had hardly left her lips when Mr. Everett entered, accompanied by a younger man, erect in carriage and bronzed in complexion, whom he presented to us as "My son-in-law. Lieutenant Wise." To our secret amusement, Mr. Everett took the chair set for him, and this, when three remained vacant after the ladies were all seated. Lieutenant Wise and I, as the non-attached personages present, drifted to the other side of the room while official talk went on between the orator-statesman and the com- mittee. The retentive memory, which has, from my babyhood, been both bane and blessing, speedily identified my com- panion with the author of Los Gringos (The Yankees), a satirical and very clever work that had fallen in my way 203 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY a couple of years before. He was a cousin of the Governor. I learned to-day of his connection with the Everetts. He was social, and a witty talker. I had time to discover this before the Governor appeared with his daughter, a charming girl of seventeen, who did the honors of the house with unafifected grace and ease. I had met her before, and I knew her father quite well. Mrs. Ritchie had taken herself severely to task that very week for speaking of him as "our warm-hearted, hot- headed Governor." The characterization was just. We all knew him to be both, and loved him none the less for the warm temper that had hurried him into many a scrape, pohtical and personal. We were rather proud of his beUigerency, and took real pride in wondering what "he would do next." He was eloquent in debate, a bitter partisan, a warrior who would fight to the death for friend, country or prin- ciple. Virginia never had a Governor whom she loved more, and of whom she was more justly proud. This was early in the year 1856. I do not recollect that I ever visited the state drawing-room of the mansion again, until I stood upon a dais erected on the very spot where Lieutenant Wise and I had chatted together that brilliant winter day, and I lectured to crowded parlors in behalf of the Mary Washington Monument Association. Another Governor reigned in the stead of our wann-hcarted and hot-headed soldier. Another generation of women than that which had saved the son's tomb to the Nation was now working to erect a monument over the neglected grave of the mother. When the throng had dispersed, "Annie" Wise, now Mrs. Hobson — and still of a most winsome presence — ^and I withdrew into a corner to speak of that five-and-forty- y ear-old episode, and said: "The fathers, where are they? And the prophets — they do Uve forever!" 294 A MEMORABLE DINNER-PARTY Of the group collected about Mr. Everett, on the noon preceding the delivery of his celebrated oration, but we two were left aUve upon the earth. Of the Stanard dinner I retain a lively recollection. Among the guests were Lieutenant Wise; Mr. Corcoran, the Washington banker and philanthropist; his slim, en- gaging young daughter (afterward Mrs. Eustis), and Mr. Everett's son, Sidney. Mrs. Stanard was the most judi- cious and gracious of hostesses. "A fashionable leader of fashionable society!" sneered somebody in my hearing, one day. Mrs. Ritchie took up the word promptly. Detraction never p£issed unchallenged in her presence. "Fashionable, if you will. But sincere. She is a true- hearted woman." In subscribing heartily to the truth of the statement, I append what I had abundant reason to know and believe. She was a firm friend to those she loved, steadfast in afifec- tion that outlasted youth and prosperity. She made life smooth for everybody within her reach whenever she could do it. She had the inestimable talent of divining what would best please each of her guests, and ministered to weakness and desire. On this night, she did not need to be told that a personal talk with the chief guest would be an event to me. She lured me adroitly into a nook adjoining the drawing-room, and as Mr. Everett, who was stajdng in the house, passed the door, she called him in, and presently left me on his hands for half an hour. He was always my beau ideal of the perfect gentleman. He talked quietly, in refined modu- lations and chaste English that betokened the scholar. Like all really great men, he bore himself with modest dig- nity, with never a touch of bluster or self-consciousness. In five minutes I found myself listening and replying, as to an old acquaintance. His voice was low, and so musical 295 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY as to fasten upon him the sobriquet of the ''silver-tongued orator." I could repeat, almost verbatim, his part of our talk on that occasion. I give the substance of one section that impressed me particularly. We spoke of Hiawatha, then a recent publication. Mr. Everett thought that Longfellow transgressed artistic rules, and was disobedient to literary precedent in translating Indian names in the text of the jxx>m. The repetition of "Minnehaha— Laughing Water," "The West Wind— Mud- jekeewis," "Ishkooda — ^the Comet," etcetera, was affected and tedious. "Moreover," he continued, smiUng, "I have serious doubts respecting the florid metaphors and highly figura- tive speech which Cooper and other writers of North Ameri- can Indian stories have put into the mouths of their dusky heroes." He went on to say that, when Governor of Massachusetts, he received a deputation of aborigines from the Far West. In anticipation of the visit, he primed him- self with an ornate address of welcome, couchoil in the figurative language he imagined would \yi^ familiar and agreeable to the chiefs. Tliis was deUvorcMi thn)ugh an interpreter, and roc(»ivwl in blank silence. Th(»n the prin- cipal sachem replied in curt platitudes, with never a tmjn^ or allegorical allusion. Mr. Kvc^n^tt addinl that he had leanuMl since that tlu* vocahuLHr\' of the iiuKlern Indian Is nu»agr(* and prosaic in the extn»me. The justice of the ()l)S(»rvation was lx)rne in ujx)n me when I Silt in Janu^s R(Hlj)ath*s l)Ox at the Indian F^xhibi- tion I have siM)ken of in another chapter, and heanl snatch(»s of alle<];i» date of "September 2, 1856," I feel as if I were shutting the door and turning the key upon that far-away time; bidding farewell to a 34S THE STIRRED "NEST AMONG THE OAKS" state of society that seems, by contrast with the complex interests of To-day, pastoral in simplicity. In reviewing the setting and scenes of my early history, I am reading a quaint chronicle, inhaling an atmosphere redolent of spices beloved of our granddames, and foreign to their descend- ants. It is not I who have told the story, but the girl from provinces that are no more on earth than if they had never been. The Spirit of that Past is the narrator. I ait with her by the open "chimney-piece," packed as far as arms can reach with blazing hickory logs; as she talks, the imagery of a yet older day comes to my tongue. We knew our Bibles " by heart " in both senses of the term, then, and beUeved in the spiritual symbolism of that perfervid love-Canticle — the song of the Royal Preacher. I find my- self whispering certain musical phrases while the tale goes on, and the story-teller's face grows more rapt: "Thy lips drop as the honey-comb; honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon; "Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates with pleas- ant fruits; camphire, with spikenard; "Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon." It is not a mystic love-chant, or a dreamy jaigon, that I recite under my breath. The sadly few (more sad and few with each year) who recall with me the days that are no more — and forever — will feel what I cannot put into words. Soon after the dawn of the year 1858, we had news of the death of my husband's youngest sister, a bright, en- gaging matron, of whom I had grown very fond in my visits to her New Jersey home. The happy wife of a man who adored her, and the mother of a beautiful boy, she had but one unfulfilled wish on earth. When a baby-girl 340 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY was put into her arms, she confessed this, and that now she could ask nothing more of heaven. The coveted gift cost her her life. In March, my dearest friend, Mary Ragland, paid a long- promised visit to the "nest among the oaks." She had not been strong all winter. She was never robust. I brought her up from town, in joyous confidence that the cUmate that had kept me well and vigorous would brace her up to concert pitch. For a few weeks she seemed to justify that beUef. Then the languor and slow fever re- turned. She faded before our incredulous eyes as a flower droops on the stem. She had no pain, and so shght was the rise in temperature that made her thirsty by night, that we would not have detected it had she not mentioned casually at breakfast that she arose to get a drink of water, and chanced to see, through the window, a lunar rainbow. This led to the discovery that she always arose two or three times each night to quench her thirst. It was char- acteristic that she saw the rainbow, and was eager to re- port it next day. Beautiful things floated to her by some law of natural attraction. She never took to her bed. To the last, she averred, laughingly, that she was "only lazy and languid." She "would be all right very soon." As a sort of low delirium overtook her senses, her fan- tasies were all of fair and lovely sights and sweet sounds. She asked me "where I got the chain of pearls I was wear- ing, and why she had never seen it before?" She ex- claimed at the beauty of garlands of flowers wreathing pictures and window-cornices, invisible to our eyes. Music — a passion of her life — was a solace in the fearful restless- ness of the dying hours. She would have us sing to her — first one, then the other, for an hour at a time — lying peace- fully attent, with that unearthly radiance upon her face that never left it until the coffin-lid shut it from our sight, and joining in, when a favorite hymn was sung, with the 350 A CRUCIAL CRISIS rich contralto which was her "part" in our family con- certs. **She is singing herself away," said my husband, at twi- light on the ninth of May — my mother's birthday. At nine o'clock that evening the swan-song was hushed. We carried her down to Richmond, the next day but one. I have said elsewhere that it is not given to one to have two perfect, all-satisf3dng, friendships this side of the Land that is all Love. She had gladdened our cottage for Uttle over a month. It was never quite the same after she flew heavenward. Nor was my life. To everybody else, it seemed that the "stirring" of the nest began during the visit we paid to Northern friends that summer. Our vacation was longer than usual. It could not be gay, for our mourning garments expressed but inade- quately the gloom from which our spirits could not escape, with the memory of two bereavements fresh in the minds of all. It was during this sojourn with the relatives, whose adoption of me had been frankly affectionate from the be- ginning of our association, that I learned of the desire of my father-in-law to have his son removed nearer to the rest of the family. The old Judge was proud and fond of the boy, and Virginia was a long distance away from New York — to him, and other loyal Middle Statesmen, as truly the Hub of Civilization as Boston to the bom Bostonian. Moreover, the Village Church at Charlotte Court-House was a country charge, although eminently respectable in char- acter, and honorable in all things pertaining to church traditions. Other men as young, and, in the father's opin- ion, inferior in talent and education, were called to city parishes. "It was not right for Edward to bury himself in the backwoods until such time as he would be too near the dead line, with respect to age, to hope for preferment." 351 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY All this and more of the like purport fell upon unheeding ears, when addressed to me. I had but one answer to make, after listening respectfully to argument and appeal : *'I promised Edward, of my own free will and accord, before our marriage, that I would never attempt to sway his judgment in anything relating to his profession. Least of all, would I cast the weight of what influence I might have into either scale, if he were called upon to make a change of pastorate. He must do as he thinks best." More than one church had made overtures to the rising man, and his kindred were hanging eagerly upon his de- cision. The initial "stir" had been given. It was a positive relief when we turned our faces southward. The nest was full that autumn. My husband's widower brother-in-law, crushed by his late bereavement, and com- pelled to resign the home in which his wife had taken just pride; helpless, as only a man of strictly domestic tastes can be in such circumstances, abandoned his profession of the law, and resolved to study divinity. My brother Her- bert turned his back upon a promising business career, and made the same resolution. Both men were rusty in Latin and Greek, and neither knew anything of Hebrew. My husband — ever generous to a fault in the expenditure of his own time and strength in the service of others — rashly ofTcred to *' coach'' them for a few months. I think they believed him, when he represented that Latin was mere play to him, and that an hour or two a day would be an advantage to him in refreshing his recollection of other dead languages. Alice and I bemoaned ourselves, in confidence and privily, over the loss of the quietly-happy evenings when we sewed or crocheted, while the third person of the trio read aloud, as few other men could read — according to our notion. We grudged sharing the merry chats over the little round table with those who were not quite au fait to all our mots de 352 A CRUCIAL CRISIS famiUe, and did not invariably sympathize with our judg- ment of people and things. Mr. Frazee was one of the most genial of men — good through and through, and as kind of heart as he was engaging in manner. My brother waa a fine young fellow, and his sisters loved him dearly. It was ungracious, ungenerous, and all the other ^'uns" in the English language, to regret the former order of every- day Ufe. We berated ourselves soundly, at each of our secret conferences, and kept on doing it. Home was still passing lovely, but the stirring went on. Is everything — moral, spiritual, and physical — epidemic? I put the question to myself when, less than a week after the arrival of an invitation to become the leader of the Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, and before a definite answer was returned, the mail brought an important document, portentous with signatures and seals official, requesting Rev. Edward Payson Terhune to assume the pastorate of the First Reformed Church in Newark, New Jersey. Here was i^crucial test of my voluntary pledge never, by word, look, or deed, to let my husband suspect the trend of my inclinations with respect to any proposed change of clerical relations I For, as I am at liberty now to confess, I wanted to go to Richmond horribly I Family, friends, ties of early as- sociation, strengthened by nearly fifteen years of residence at the formative period of Hfe; the solicitations of parents, brothers, sisters, and true and tried intimates, who wrote to say how delighted they were at the prospect of having me **back home" — tugged at my heartstrings until I needed Spartan firmness of will and stoical reticence, to hold me fast to my vow. Meanwhile, letters bearing Northern postmarks were fluttering down upon the one whose must be, not the casting vote alone, but the responsibility of the decision of what he felt was one of the most momentous 353 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY problems he was ever to face. Fortunately, neither of us knew then the f uU gravity of the crisis. Looking back from the top of the hill, I see so clearly the working out of a benign and merciful design in what was then perplexity, puzzle, and pain, that I cannot say whether humility or devout gratitude has the ascendancy in my thoughts. Especially is this true when I reflect that strength was vouchsafed to me to hold my peace, even from what I conceived was *'good," when my husband brought both calls to me, after four days of anxious deliberation, and bade me speak one word in favor of, or against, either. Side by side, they lay upon my table, and with them a paper upon which he had set down, clearly and fairly, the pros and eons of each. He read these aloud, slowly and emphatically, then looked up at me. "I am in a sore strait! Can you help me?" In my heart I thought I could, and that right speedily. With my tongue I said: "No one has a right to say a word. It is a. matter between God and yourself." He took up the papers silently, and went to the study. And I prayed, with strong crying and tears, that God would send us to Richmond. An hour later he came back. The light of a settled pur- pose was in his face. All he said was: " I have decided to go to Newark. We will talk it over to-morrow morning." He slept soundly that night, for the first time in a week. So did not I! XXXVI MIGRATION NORTHWARD — ACCLIMATION — ALBERT EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES, IN NEW YORK — POLITICAL PORTENTS One who had known my husband well for fifty years, wrote of him soon after his translation: "More than any other man I ever knew, he had a genius for friendship." This testimony is amply supported by the fact that he kept, to his journey's end, the friends whose loving con- fidence he gained during the five years of his Charlotte pastorate. Those who loved him in his youth loved him to the end — or so many of them as remained to see the beautiful close of his long day. We left our Parsonage home and the parish, which was our first love, laden with proofs of the deep affection in- spired by devoted service in behalf of a united constituency, and the rare personal gifts of the man who suffered, in the parting, a wrench as sharp as that which made the separa- tion a grief to each member of the flock he was leaving. It was a just tribute to his integrity of purpose and con- scientiousness that the purity of his motives in deciding upon the step were never questioned. Leading men in the church said openly that they could not have hoped to keep him, after his talents and his ability to fill worthily a wider field were recognized in the world outlying this section of the Great Vineyard. They had foreseen that the parting must come, and that before long. He was a growing man, and the sphere they offered was narrow. It was in no spirit of Christian philosophy that I dis- mantled the nest among the oaks, and packed my Lares 24 355 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY and Penates with a fair show of cheerfuhiess. Inly, I was in high revolt for a full week after the die was cast. The final acceptance of the inevitable, and the steadfast setting of my face Northward, ensued upon the persuasion that the one and only thing for a sensible. God-fearing woman to do was to make the very best of what no human power could avert. It is a family saying, based upou the assertion of my eldest daughter, that *'if mother were set down in the middle of the Desert of Sahara, and made to comprehend that she must spend the rest of her days there, she would, within ten minutes, begin to expatiate upon the many advantages of a dry chmate as a residential region." By the time we stayed our flight in Richmond, where we spent our Christmas, I took from the worn and harassed man of the hour the burden of explanation and defence of the reasons for tearing ourselves up by the roots and trans* planting the tender vine into what some of our best wishers called, *'aUen soil." I had worked myself into an honest defender of the Middle States in contradistinction to "Yankee land," before we departed, bag, baggage, and baby, for the new home. Mr. Terhune had preached twice in Newark, in Decem- ber, after formally accepting the call. We removed to that city in February of 1859. With the Saharan spirit in full flow, I met the welcoming "people"; settled in the house we bought in a pleasant quarter of the growing city — then claiming a population of less than seventy-five thousand — installed white ser- vants ; received and returned calls, and was, for the first time in my life, homesick at heart for three months. In the recollection of the eighteen years that succeeded that period of blind rebellion against the gentle leading which was, for us, wisdom and loving-kindness through- 356 ACCLIMATION out, I write down the confession in shame and confusion of face, and abasement of soul. I stay the course of the narrative at this point to record, devoutly and gratefully, that never had pastor and pastor's wife, in any section of our land, a parish in which " pleasant places" did more richly abound. I would write down, yet more emphatically and thankfully, the amazing fact that, in the dozen-and-a-half years of my dweUing among them, I never had a word of unkind criticism of myself and my ways; not a remark that could wound or offend was ever addressed to me. I wish I might have that last paragraph engraved in golden capitals and set to the everlasting credit of that Ideal Parish! To this hour, I turn instinctively in times of joy and of sorrow, as to members of the true household of faith, to the comparatively small band of the once lai^ congregation who are left aUve upon the earth. For eighteen years I walked up the central aisle of the church, as I might tread the halls and chambers of my father's house in that far Southern town, with the conscious- ness that we were surrounded by an atmosphere of affec- tionate appreciation, at once comforting and invigorating. All this— and I understate, rather than exaggerate, the real state of circumstance and feeling I am trying to de- pict— was the more surprising, because I went to this peo- ple young, and with Uttle experience as a clergyman's wife. In Charlotte, I had, as we have seen, done no "church work." I was petted and made much of, in consideration of my position as the wife of the idolized pastor, and my newness to the duties of country housekeeping and the nursery. In Newark, I was gradually to discover that I could not shirk certain obligations connected with parish and city charities. The logic of events — never the moni- tions of friends and parishioners — opened my eyes to the truth. When, at length, I took chaige of a girls' Bible 357 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Class, and, some years after, woAed up the Infant Qass from tens to hundreds, there was much expression of un- feigned gratification and eager rallying to my help, not an intimation of relief that I ''had, at last, seen my way clear to the performance of what everybody else had expected of a minister's wife." I have never had a higher compliment than was paid me by the invitation, a dosen years back, to address the Alumni of Union Theological Seminary in New York City upon the subject of "Biinisteis' Wives." I took occasion, in the presence of that grave and rev- erend assembly of distinguished thedogues, to pay a brief tribute, as strong as words could make it, to that Ideal Parish. I could not withlndd it ibeiL I cannot keep it back now. I believe my exp^ence in this regard to be hi^ily exceptionaL More's the {xty and the shame! Five children were bom to us in those happy, busy years. Each was adopted lovin^y by the peq[Je, so far as pckkful affection and generous deeds impikd adoption. We were an of one family. Reluming to the direct fine of my narratiTe — the s^mng of IStW found us wdl. at work, and coniented. I had gxd ^Tv^Mits. kindly neighbors, and a growing host of con- genial aequadntanoesL Our pro3dniity to Xew York was an important laetor in the live^ of both oc U5. brr.-g::rg us, as it did, within e^sv neach of the best Ebnurie? and ^:k>os in the cvxin:?y. aad pu:tii^ nuziberte^ nie^riis oc ec; bftbio? bv r>ow — heahhv. harov. rf^!r — 'in er^rr w^jiv ;ho:vvicilv fsiiiKactorr sr^viriitecfc? ci iziiz.i L" Ir. ^ise n^An^rr o< ^ill-ir^fi '< ![:".I:^'!^w I have "rietfc >i:rsjirl^' ries?i:xi Azioni: .Vnit-r^rAn wvrc^tii- In ibf r ecsr vf?k;r? >*?oir:i:in£: ibi rtni oc ccr ryi-:ir rcT free ibe ^iiv wtnT. ibe vo-^jTiTir ^^^1*5 :\it:icei free: zjz^rr szTtsz^ PRINCE OF WALES IN NEW YORK Two married after years of faithful service; the third retired upon an invalid's pension. All were Irish by birth. After much experience in, and more observation of, the Domestic Service of these United States, I incline to be- lieve that, as a rule, we draw our best material from Celtic emigrant stock. So smoothly ran the sands of life that I recall but one striking incident in the early part of 1860. That was the visit of the Prince of Wales to this country. We witnessed the passage of the long procession that received and es- corted him up-town, to his quarters at the, then, new and fashionable hostelry — the Fifth Avenue Hotel. My hus- band went down to the Battery to see the princeling's review of the regiments drawn up in line before him, as he rode from end to end of the parade-ground. Joining us at the window, from which we had a splendid view of the pageant, the critic, who was an accomplished horseman, reported disdainfully that "the boy was ex- ceedingly awkward. He had no seat to speak of, leaning forward, until his weak chin was nearly on a line with the horse's ears, and sticking his feet out stiffly on each side." Our impression of the imperial youth was not more agree- able. He sat back in the open coach, "hunched" together in an imgainly heap, looking neither to the right nor the left, evincing no consciousness of the existence of the shouting throngs that Uncd the pavements ten deep, other than by raising, with the Ufeless precision of a mechanical toy, the cocked hat he wore as part of the uniform of a British colonel. There was a big ball the next night, at which gowns of fabulous prices were sported, and reported by the news- papers, and Albert Edward flitted on to his mother's do- minions of Canada, leaving not a ripple in the ocean of local and national happenings. That ocean was stilling and darkening with the brood- 359 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ing of a threatening stonn. Newspapers bristled with portents and denunciations; demagogues bellowed them- selves hoarse in parks and from stumps; torchlight pro- cessions displayed new and startling features. "So much for so Uttle!" sighed I, upon our return from a lookout at the nearest comer, commanding long miles of marching men. "It was ingenious and amusing; but what a deal of driUing those embryo patriots must have gone through to do it so well ! And for what ? The Presi- dent will be elected, as other Presidents have been, and as maybe a hundred others will be, and there the farce will end. Does it pay to amuse themselves so very hard?" "If we could be sure that it vxnUd end there!" an- swered my husband, with unexpected gravity. "The sky is red and lowering in the South. Between poUticians, and the freedom of the press to play with all sorts of explosives, there is no teUing what the rabble may do." I looked up, startled. "You are not in earnest? The good Ship of State has been driving straight on to the rocks ever since I can recol- lect, and she has not struck yet. Think of the Clay and Polk campaign!" "Child's play compared with the fight that is on now!" was the curt retort. Something — I know not what — in his manner moved me to put a leading question. "Have you made up your mind how you will vote?" "Yes." "A month ago, you said you had not." "A good deal has happened in that month." It was not Uke him to be sententious with me, but I pushed the subject. "I have never interfered with your poUtical opinions, as you know, and I don't care to vote, myself; but if I had a vote, I should be in no doubt where to cast it. Lovers 360 POLITICAL PORTENTS • of peace and concord should unite upon Bell and Everett* That party seems to me to represent the sanest element in this mammoth muddle." He smiled. "To say nothing of your fondness for Mr. Everett. A charming gentleman, I grant. But the helm of state is not to be in his hands. Even, supposing" — ^grave again, and sighing slightly — "that they are strong enough to hold it in a storm." There was a boding pause. Then I spoke, and unad- visedly: " I ask no questions that I think you would not care to answer. But I do hope you are not thinking of voting for Abraham Lincoln? Think of him in the White House! Mr. Buchanan may be weak — ^and a Democrat. I heard father say, as the one drop of comfort he could express from his election: 'At any rate, he is a gentleman by birth and breeding.' Mr. Lincoln is low-bom, and has no pretensions to breeding." "Then, if I should be so far lost to the proprieties as to vote for him, I would better not let either of you know." And he glanced teasingly at Alice, who had just entered the room. " I could never respect you if you did!" she said, spirited- ly. "I am persuaded better things of you." A teasing rejoinder was all she got out of him. The matter was never brought up again by any of us. When Election Day came, I was too proud to seem inquisitive. But in my inmost soul I was assured that reticence boded no good to my hope of one gallant gentleman's vote for Bell and Everett. Months afterward, when we were once again of one mind with respect to the nation's peril and the nation's need, he told me that he had kept his own counsel, not only because the truth might grieve me, but that party feeling 361 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ran so high in his church he thought it best not to intimate to any one how he meant to vote. "And, like Harry Percy's wife, I could be trusted not to tell what I did not know?" said I. " You might have been catechised," he admitted. "There are times when the Know-nothing policy is the safest." xxxvn THE PANIC OP '61 — A VIRGINIA VACATION— MUTTBRINGB OP COMING STORM Bayard Taylor said to me once of a publishing house, ''An honest firm, but one that has an incorrigible habit of failing r The habit was epidemic in the first half of 1861. Among others who caught the trick were my publishers. like a thunderbolt came the announcement, when I was expect- ing my February semi-annual remittance of fat royalties: "We regret to inform you that we have been compelled to succumb to the stringency of the times." The political heavens were black with storm-clouds, and, as was inevitable then, and is now, the monetary market shut its jaws tightly upon everything within reach. We could not reasonably have expected immunity, but we had. We had never known the pinch of financial "diflS- culties." Prudent salaried men are the last to feel hard times, if their wage is paid regularly. I had three books in the hands of the " failing " firm. All were " good sellers," and I had come to look upon royalties as my husband re- garded his salary, as a sure and certain source of revenue. We had other and what appeared to us graver anxieties. My sister Alice had passed the winter with us, and the climate had told unhappily upon her throat. My husband had not escaped injury from the pernicious sea-fogs and the malarial marshes, over which the breath of the Atlantic flowed in upon us. He had a bronchial cough that defied 363 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY medical treatment; and March, the worst month of the twelve for tender throats and susceptible lungs, would soon be upon us. His physician, a warm personal friend, or- dered him South, and the church seconded the advice by a formal grant of an out-of-season vacation. We did not change our main plan in consequence of the disappoint- ment as to funds. Nor did we noise our loss abroad. Somehow, the truth leaked out. Not a word of condolence was breathed to us. But on the afternoon of the day but one before that set for our departure, the daughter of a neigh- borly parishioner dropped in to leave a basket of flowers, and to say that her father and mother ''would Uke to call that evening, if we were to be at home." I answered that we should be glad to see them, and notified my husband of the impending call. The expected couple appeared at eight o'clock, and by nine the parlors were thronged with guests who ''dropped in, in passing, to say 'Good-bye.'" None stayed late, and before any took leave, there was the presentation of a parcel, through the hands of Edgar Farmer, a member of the Consistory, who, in days to come, was to be to my husband as David to Jonathan. He was young then, and of a goodly presence, with bright, kind eyes and a happy gift of speech. Neither Mr. Terhune nor I had any misgivings of what was in prospect, when he was asked to step forward and face the spokesman deputed to wish us Bon voyage and recovery of health in our old home. Mr. Farmer said this felicitously, and with genuine feeling. Then he asked the pastor's acceptance of a parcel "containing reading-matter for the journey." The reading-matter was bank-bills, the amount of which made us open our eyes wide when the company had dis- persed and we undid the ribbons binding the "literature." That was their way of doing things in the "Old First." A way they never lost. In a dozen-and-a-half years we should have become used to it, but we never did. Each 364 A VIRGINIA VACATION new manifestation of the esteem in which they held their leader, and of the royally generous spirit that interfused the whole church, as it might the body and soul of one man, remained to the last a fresh and deUcious surprise. Ten days out of the six weeks of our vacation were spent in Charlotte. Mr. Terhune's successor was Rev. Henry C. Alexander, one of a family of notable divines whose praise is in all the Presbyterian churches. He was a bachelor, and the "nest among the oaks" was rented to an acquaintance. I did not enter it then, or ever again. I even looked the other way when we drove or walked past the gate and grove. To let this weakness be seen would have been ungracious, in the face of the hospitalities enlapping us during every hour of our stay. We dined with one family, supped with another, spent the night and breakfasted with a third, and there was ever a houseful of old friends to meet us. My husband wrote to his father: "Swinging around the circle at a rate that would turn steadier heads. And talk of the fat of the land and groaning tables! These tables fairly shriek, and the fat flows like a river. Heaven send we may live through it! We like it, all the samel" And enjoyed every hour, albeit senses less agreeably preoccupied might have detected the smell of gunpowder in the air. I am often asked if we were not uneasy for the safety of the Union, while in the thick of sectional wordy strife, and how it was possible to enjoy visits when much of the talk must have jarred upon the sensibilities of loyal lovers of that Union. The truth is that I had been used to poUtical wrangling from my youth up. The fact that South Carolina and six other States had seceded in name from the control of the 365 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Federal government; that, in every county and "Cfobb- Roads" hamlet, from the Gulf of Mexico to Chesapeake Bay, bands of volunteers were drilling daily and nightly, and that cargoes of arms were arriving from the North and in distribution among the enlisted militiamen; that the Southern papers sounded the tocsin of war to the death, and "Death in the last ditch!" and "Down with the Yankees!" with every red-hot issue; that a convention had been solemnly summoned to meet in Richmond to decide upon the action of the Old Dominion at the supreme moment of the nation's destiny — weighed marvellously little against the settled conviction, well-nigh sublime in its fatuousness, that the right must prevail, and that such furious folly must die ignominiously before the steadfast front maintained by the Union men of the in- fected section. To my apprehension, so much that we heard was sheer gasconade, amusing for a time from its very unreason and illogical conclusions, and often indicative of such blatant ignorance of the spirit and the resources of the Federal government, that I failed to attach to it the importance the magnitude of the mischief deserved to have. I refused stubbornly to let the clear joy of my holiday be clouded by the smoke from blank cartridges. So Ught was my spirit that I made capital for fun of bombastic threats and gloomy predictions, touching the stabUng of Confederate cavalry in Faneuil Hall inside of three months from the day of the inauguration of the "Springfield Ape" at Washington. The Vice-President was a full-blooded negro, or, at the least, a mulatto, I was assured over and over. Wasn't his name damning evidence of the disgrace- ful fact? What white man ever called his child " Hannibal" ? I supplied other confirmation to one fiery orator: "'ffam-lin' sounds suspicious, too. I wonder you have not thought of the color that gives to your theory." 366 MUTTERINGS OF COMING STORM The youth foamed at the mouth. He wore a Secession cockade on his breast, and proved, to a demonstration, that any Southerner over fourteen years old was equal, on the battle-field, to five Yankees. Why not seven, I could never ascertain. Such funny things were happening hourly, and such fun- nier things were said every minute, that I was in what we used to call, when I was a child, "a continual gale." Let one bit of nonsense illustrate the frivolity that, in the retrospect, resembles the pas sevl of a child on the edge of a reeking crater. I was summoned to the drawing-room, one forenoon, to receive a call from the son of an old friend who had prom- ised his mother to look me up, in passing through the city on his way to the **RepubUc of South Carolina." That was the letter-head of epistles received from the Palmetto State. In descending the stairs, I heard the scamper of small boots over the floor of the square, central hall, and caught the flash of golden curls through the arched doorway leading into the narrower passage at the rear of the house. Knowing the infinite capacity of my son for ingenious mischief, I stayed my progress to the parlor, and looked about for some hint as to the nature of the present ad- venture. Sofa and chairs were in place, as was the ma- hogany table at the far comer. On this was a silver tray, and on the tray the pitcher of iced water, which was a fixture the year through. Two tumblers flanked it on one side, and my visitor had set on the other the sleekest tall silk hat I had ever seen outside of a shop window. There was absolutely no rational association of ideas between the iced water-pitcher and that stunning specimen of head- gear. Yet I glanced into the depths of both. One was half-full ; the other was empty. Clutching the desecrated hat wildly, I sped to the sitting-room. "Oh, mother, 367 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY what is to be done? Eddie has emptied the water-pitcher into William M.'s hat!" Whereupon, that gentlest, yet finest, of disciplinarians, who would have sent one of her own bairns to bed in the middle of the day, for an ofifence one-tenth as flagrant, dropped her sewing on her lap and went off into a speech- less convulsion of laughter. A chuckle of intense delight from behind her rocking-chair, and a glimpse of dancing blue eyes under her elbow, put the finishing touches to a scene so discreditable to grandmotherly ideas of domestic management, that the family refused to believe the story told at the supper-table, when the culprit was safe in his crib. Leaving the dishonored "tUe" to the merciful manipu- lations of the laundress, who begged me to ''keep the pore young gentleman a-taUdn' 'tell she could dry it at the fire," I went to meet the unsuspecting victim. It was not difficult to keep him talking, when once he was launched upon the topic paramount in the mind of what he denominated as "every truly loyal and chivalrous Son of the South." He had a plan of campaign so well concerted and so thoroughly digested, that it could have but one culmination. " But why Faneuil Hall ?" I demurred, plaintively. " You are the sixth man who has informed me that your cavalry are to tie and feed their horses there. Why not the City Hall in New York ? There must be stable-room short of Boston." He flushed brick-red. "It is no laughing matter to us who have been ground down so long under the iron heels of Yankee mud-sills!" I found his mixed metaphors so diverting that I was near forgetting the ruined head-piece, and the inexorable necessity of confession. Sobering under the thought, I let him go on, lending but half an ear, yet, in seeming, bowed by the weight of his dis- course. Moved by my mournful silence, he stopped midway. dds MUTTERINGS OF COMING STORM "I beg your pardon if my feelings and patriotism have carried me too far. I own that I am hot-headed — " Another such chance would not come in a life-time. I broke his sentence short. **0h, I am glad to know that! For my boy has fiUed your hat with iced water!" Eheu! That night's supper was the last merry meal the old home was to know for many a long month and year. For, by breakfast-time next day, the news had come of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and men's hearts were hot within them, and women's hearts were failing them for fear of battle, murder, and sudden death to sons, husbands, and brothere. One might have fancied that a visible pall hung over the city, so universal and deep was the agony of suspense. While the recollection of suspense and agony was fresh in my mind, I wrote of the awful awakening from my fool's paradise of incredulity and levity: "For two days, the air was thick with rumors of war and bloodshed. For two days, the eyes and thoughts of the nation were fixed upon that fire-girt Southern island, with its brave but feeble garrison — ^the representative of that nation's majesty — testifying, in the defiant boom of every cannon's answer to the rebel bombardment, that resistance to armed treason is henceforward to be learned as one of the nation's laws. For two days, thousands and hundreds of thousands of loyal hearts sM over this broad land, cried mightily unto our eountry's God to avert this last and direst trial — ^the humiliation of our Flag by hands that once helped to rear it in the sight of the world, as the ensign of national faith. And under the whole expanse of heaven, there was no answer to those prayers, except the reverberation of the cruel guns. " On Saturday, April 14th, the End came!" XXXVIII THE FOURTEENTH OP APRIL, 1861, IN RICHMOND We had planned to leave Richmond for home on Tues- day afternoon. At noon on Saturday, my husband asked me if I would not like to prolong my stay with my rela- tives, adding significantly: **We do not know how long it may be before you can get South again. There is thunder in the air." I looked up from the letter I was writing to Newark : "Thunder — alone— is harmless. I take no stock in gas- conade that is only thunder. And if trouble is coming, it is clear that our place is not here." The letter-writing went on not uncheerfully. Far down in my soul was the beUef that a peaceful issue must be in store for the land beloved of the Lord. Were we not brethren? When brought, face to face, with the fact that brothers' hands must be dipped in brothers' blood, re- action was inevitable. So foolish was I, and ignorant of the excesses to which sectional fury can carry individuals and nations. I was in my room, getting ready for our last walk among scenes endeared to us by thousands of associations, my husband standing by, hat in hand, when a terrific report split the brooding air and rent the very heavens. Another and anotiier followed. We stood transfixed, without motion or speech, until we counted, silently, seven. It was the number of the seceding States! As if pan- demonium had waited for the seventh boom to die sullenly 370 THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL, 1861 away among the hills, the pause succeeding the echo was ended by an outburst of yells, cheers, and screams that beggars description. The streets in our quiet quarter were alive with men, women, and children. Fire-crackers, pistols, and guns were discharged into the throbbing air. "The fort has fallen!" broke in one breath from our lips. And simultaneously: "The Lord have mercy upon the country!" We ran down-stairs and into the street. My sister "Mea" was upon the front porch, and the steps were thronged by children and servants, wild with curiosity. I hflve not mentioned that my sister had married, two years before, Mr. John Miller, a Scotchman by birth. He was much Uked and respected by us all, and it spoke volumes for his breeding and the genuine good feeling prevailing among us, that although he was the only "original secessionist" in our household band, our cordial relations remained unbroken in spite of the many political arguments we had had with him. His wife was holding aloft her baby boy, a pretty year- old, in her arms. A Secession cockade was pinned upon his breast; in his chubby hand he flourished a rebel flag, and he laughed down into her radiant face. We feigned not to see them as we hurried past. But a gulf seemed to open at my feet. As in a baleful dream, I comprehended, in the sick whirl of conflicting sensations, what Rebellion, active and in arms, would mean in hun- dreds of homes on both sides of the border. "Is the world going mad?" muttered my husband, be- tween his teeth, and I knew that the same horror was present with him. Secession flags blossomed in windows and from roofs; were waved from doors and porches by girls and women; were shaken in mad exultation by boys on the sidewalks; hung upon lamp-posts, and were stretched from side to 25 371 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY side of the street. It was like the ma^cal upspringing of baneful fungi. Where had they all come from? And at what infernal behest had they leaped into being? The living stream poured toward the Capitol Square, and it swept us with it. The grounds were filled with a tumultuous crowd. Upon the southern terrace was the park of artillery that had fired the salute of seven guns. As we entered the upper gate a long procession of men issued from the western door of the Capitol, and descended the steps. "The convention has adjourned for the day," remarked Mr. Terhune. We were at the base of the Washington monument, and he drew me up on the lower step of the base to avoid the press. The del^ates streamed by us in groups; some striding in excited haste; talking gleefully, and gesticulating wildly. Others were grave and slow, silent, or deep in low-toned conversation; others yet — and these were marked men already — walked with bent heads, and faces set in wordless sadness. One of these, recognizing Mr. Terhune, approached us, and with a brief apology to me, drew him a few paces apart. Three years before, I had seen the ceremonies by which this monument — Crawford's finest work in marble — was uncovered and dedicated. On the next day, Mr. Everett had repeated his oration on Washington in the Richmond theatre. The silver-tongued orator had joined hands, then and there, with Tyler, Wise, and Yancey, in proclaiming the unity of the nation. General Scott had sat in the centre of the stage, like a hoary keystone in the semi-circle of honorable men and counsellors. Was it all a farce, even then, this talk of brotherhood and patriotism? And of what avail were wisdom and diplo- macy and the multitude of counsels, if this were to be the end? 372 THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL, 1861 I was saying it to myself in disgustful bewilderment, when the crowd cheered itself mad over a fresh demon- stration of popular passion. The rebel flag had been run up from the peak of the Capitol roof! My husband came back to me instantly. He was pale, and the Unes of his mouth were tense. "Let us get out of this!'' he said. "I cannot breathe 1" On the way to Gamble's Hill — ^a long-loved walk with us — I heard how Sumter had fallen. We were not hope- less, yet, as to the final outcome of the tragical complica- tion that had turned the heads of the populace. The out- rage offered the Flag of our common country must open the eyes of true men, and all who had one spark of pa- triotism left in their souls. We could have no longer any doubt as to the real animus of the RebeUion. One thing was certain: To-day's work would decide the question for Virginia. She could not hang back now. Thus reasoning, we took our last look of the lovely panorama of river, islets, and hills ; of the city of the dead — beautiful in wooded heights and streams and peaceful valleys, on our right — while on the left was the city of the living, noble and fair, and, in the distance, now as silent as Hollywood. My companion Ufted his arm abruptly and pointed north- ward. A long, low line of cloud hung on the horizon — dun, with brassy edges — sullen and dense, save where a rain- bow, vivid with emerald, rose-color, and gold, spanned the murky vapor. '*Fair weather cometh out of the North," uttered the resolute optimist. "With the Lord is terrible majesty. After all, He is omnipotent. We will hope onl" We were measurably cheered on our way back to the heart of the city by the sight of the Flag of Viiiginia flying serenely from the staff where had flaunted the Stars and 373 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Bars, an hour ago. At supper, my father related with gusto how a deputation of Secessionists had waited on the Governor to offer congratulations upon the Confeder- ate victory. How he had received them but sourly, being, as the deputation should have known, an '' inveterate Unionist." When felicitated upon the result of the siege, he returned that he "did not consider it a matter for any compliments." At that instant he caught sight of the flag hoisted to the roof of the Capitol, demanded by whose order it was done, and straightway commanded it to be hauled down and the State flag, usually sported when the Legislature was in session, to be run up in its stead. "Grovemor Letcher has a rough tongue when he chooses to use it," commented my father. "He is honest, through and through." The talk of the evening could run in but one channel. Our nerves were keyed up to the highest tension, and the day's events had gone deep into mind and heart. Two or three visitors dropped in, and both sides of the Gn^at Controversy were brought forward, temperately, but with force bom of conviction. If I go somewhat into the de- tails of the conversiition, it is because I would make clear the truth that e^ch party in th(» struggle we feanxi might be imminent, believed honestly that justice and right wen* at the foundation of his faith. I wrote down the sul)stance of the memorable discussion, as I n^'onled and publishenl other incidents of the ev(T-to-lx^r(MnemlKTc»d era, while the history of it was still in the making. I am, then, sure that I give the story correctly. John Miller opened the ball by "hoping that the North was now convinccnl that the South was in earnest in maintaining h(»r rights." 1 liked my Scotch l)n)thcr-in-law, and we bandiinl jt^ts safely and often. But it irked me that we should have a 374 THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL, 1861 Secessionist in a loyal family, and I retorted flippantly, lest I should betray the underlying feeling: ''There has been no madness equal to Secession since the swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea. The choking in the waves will come later." "Let wise men stand from under!" he retorted, smiUng good-humoredly. "As to the choking, that may not be such an easy job as you think." A visitor took up the word, and seriously: "The dissatisfaction of the South is no new thing. It is as old as the Constitution itself. John Randolph said of it: 'I saw what Washington did not see. Two other men in Virginia saw it — the poison under its mngs.* Grajrson, another far-sighted statesman, prophesied just what has come to pass. He said of the consolidation poUcy taught in the Constitution: *It will, in operation, be found un- equal, grievous, and oppressive.' He foresaw that the manufacturer of the North would dominate the agri- culturist of the South; that there would be burdensome taxation without adequate representation; in short, that there would be numberless encroachments of the North upon the prerogatives of the Southern slaveholder." "He said nothing of the manifest injustice in a repubUc, of the election of a candidate by the votes of a petty fac- tion, dominant for the time, because the other party split and ran several men?" This was said by a young man who had not spoken until then. My father replied: "Suppose Breckenridge had been elected? Would that have been the triumph of a faction?" "Circumstances alter cases," said my brother Horace, dryly. Everybody laughed, except the man who had quoted Grayson and Randolph. " It is not easy for the Mother of Presidents to submit 375 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY to the rule of those whom, as Job says, they would have scorned to put with their cattle," he said, with temper. I saw the blue fire in my husband's eyes before he spoke; but his voice was even and full; every sentence was studiedly cahn. " For more than seventy years, the South has prospered under the Constitution, which, according to the renowned authorities cited just now, had poison under its wings. Hers have been the chief places in our national councils, and the most lucrative oflSces in the gift of the government. It is her boast, if we are to believe what this one of your leading papers says" — imfolding and reading from the editorial page — "that 'since the organization of the Union, she has held the balance of power — as it is her right to do — her citizens being socially, morally, and intellectually, superior to those of the North.'" My father filliped his cigar ash into the fire. "Now you are improvising?" "Not a word! Our editor goes on to say further: 'Our whilom servants have lately strangely foi^tten their places. They now aspire to an equal share in the admin- istration of the government. They have presumed to elect from their own ranks an illiterate, base-born, sectional tool, whom they rely upon to do their foul work of sub- verting our sovereignty. It is high time the real masters awoke from their fatal lethargy, and forced their insub- ordinate hinds to stand once more, cap in hand, at their behest.'" The stump of my father's cigar followed the ash. "C!ome, come, my dear boy! it isn't fair to take the ravings of one fool as the sentiment of the section in which that stuff is printed. I could quote talk, as intemperate and incendiary, from your Northern papers. You wouldn't have us suppose that you and other sane voters indorse them?" 376 THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL, 1861 " I grant what you say, sir. And, as I long ago affirmed, the shortest and best way to put out the fire that threatens the integrity of the government, would be to muzzle every political ranter in the country, and suppress every news- paper for six months. The conflagration would die for want of fuel." My mother interposed here: "Good people, don't you think there is 'somewhat too much of this' ? I, for one, refuse to beheve that anything but smoke will come of the alarm that is frightening weak brothers out of their wits. The good Ship of State will 'sail on, strong and great,' when our children's children are in their graves." She changed the current of talk, but not of thought. After the rest had gone, there Ungered a young fellow whose case was so striking an example of a host of others, who were forced into the forefront of the battle, that I take leave to relate it. He still lives, an honored citizen of the State he loved as a son loves the mother who bore and nursed him. There- fore I shall not use his real name. Eric S., as I shall call him, was an intimate friend of my brother Herbert, and as much at home in our house as if he were, in very deed, one of the blood and name. He had visited us in Newark, and made warm friends there, during the past year. Mr. Terhune had had long and serious consultations with him since we came to Virginia, and, within a few days, as the war-cloud took form, had urged him to accompany us to New Jersey, or, at least, to promise to come to us should hostilities actually begin between the two sections. The lad (scarcely twenty-one) was an ardent Unionist, and, al- though a member of a crack volunteer company in Rich- mond, had declared to us that nothing would ever induce him to bear arms under the Rebel government. Mea and her spouse went up-stairs early, and the rest of us were in 377 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY hearty sympathy with our guest. He had not taken an active share in the discussion, and his distrait manner and sober face prepared us, in part, for the disclosure that fol- lowed the departure of the others. He had been credibly and confidentially informed that a mighty pressure would be brought to bear upon the con- vention, at their next sitting, to force the Ordinance of Secession. If it were carried, by fair means or foiil, every man who could bear arms would be called into the field. While he talked, the boy stood against the mantel — erect, lithe, and handsome — the typical mother's and sister's darling, yet manly in every look and lineament. The thought tore through my imagination while I looked at him: "And it is material like this that will go to feed the maw of War! — such flesh and blood as his that will be mangled by bullet and shell!" I had never had the ghastly reality brought so near to me until that moment. "Oh-h!" I shuddered. "You won't stay to be shot at like a mad dog!" The first bright smile that had lighted his face was on it. "It isn't being shot at that I am thinking of." The gleam faded suddenly. "I don't think I am a coward. It doesn't run in the blood. But" — flinging out his arm with a passionate gesture that said more than his words — "I think that would be paralyzed if I were to lift it against the dear old flag!" Before he left it was agreed privately, between him and my husband, that he would try his fortune on the other side of Mason and Dixon's line, should the axe fall that would sever Virginia from the Union her sons had been mainly instrumental in creating. Sunday came and went. Such a strange, sad Sunday as it was! with the marked omission, in every pulpit, of 378 THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL, 1861 the prayer for the President of the United States and others in authority; with scanty congregations in the churches, and growing throngs of excited talkers at the street comers, and knots of dark-browed men in hotel lobbies, and the porches of private houses. In the length and breadth of the town but one Union flag was visible. Nicholas Mills, a wealthy citizen of high character and fearless temper, defied pubUc opinion and risked popular wrath, by keeping a superb flag flying at the head of a tall staff in his garden on Leigh Street. We went out of our way, in returning from afternoon service, to refresh eyes and spirits with the sight. On Monday, the mutterings of rebellion waxed into a roar of angry revolt over the published proclamation of the President, calling for an army of seventy-five thousand men to quell the insurrection. The quota from Virginia was, I think, five thousand. *'A fatal blunder!" said my father, in stem disapproval. My husband's answer was prompt: "To omit her name from the roll would be an accusation of disloyalty." The senior shook his head. "It may have been a choice of evils. I hope he has chosen the less! But I doubt it! I doubt it!" So might Eli have looked and spoken when his heart trembled for the ark of the Lord. That afternoon, the flagstaff in the Mills garden was empty. The Stars and Stripes were banned as an unholy ensign. Eric S. paid us a flying visit that evening. His parents urged his going. The father was especially anxious that he should not risk the probability of impressment, and, should he refuse to serve, of imprisonment. Already Union men were regarded with suspicion. The exodus of the dis- affected could not be long delayed. He had influential 370 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY family connectionB at the North who would see to it that he found occupation. When we parted that night, it was with a definite understanding that he would be our travel- ling companion. Tuesday noon, he appeared, haggard and well-nigh des- perate. Going, Uke the honorable gentleman he was, to the Colonel of his raiment early in the day, to tender his resignation and declare his intentions, he was stricken by the news that the State had seceded in secret session Monday night. Whereupon the Colonel had offered the services of his regiment to the authorities of the Confederate States. They were accepted. "You are now in the Confederate army," added the superior officer, "and, from present indications, we will not be idle long." "But," stammered the stunned subaltern, "I am going North tliis very afternoon with friends, and I shall not consent to serve." "If you attempt to leave, you will be reckoned as a deserter from the regular army, and dealt with accord- ingly." I do not attempt to estimate what proportion of men, who would have remained loyal to flag and government if they could, were coerced, or cajoled, into bearing amis under a government they abhorred. I tell the plain facts in the instance before me. Eric S. fought in fifteen general engagements, and came out with his life when the cruel war was over. He told with deep satisfaction, in after-years, that he had never worn the Confederate uniform, but always that of his own regiment. It is easy for us to prate, at this distance from those times of trial to brave men's souls, of the high and sacred duty of living and, if need be, of dying for the right. From our 380 THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL, 1861 standpoint, it is as clear as the noonday sun, that all^iance to the general government should outrank allegiance to the State in which one has chanced to be bom and to live. We have had an awful object-lesson in the study of that creed since the day when the Virginian, who saw his native State invaded, believed that he had no alternative but to "strike for his altars and his fires." Upon the gallant fellows who, seeing this, and no fiuliher, risked their lives imto the death, fell the penalty of the demagogues' sin. We may surely lay the blame where it belongs. "the last through train for pour years" I COPY in substance, and sometimes verbatim, the ac- count written in 1861, and published later, of our journey northward in the last train that went through to Wash- ington before the outbreak of hostilities. I preface the narrative by saying that, by the merciful provision of the Divine Father, Who will not try us beyond our strength, we, one and all, kept up to our own hearts the sanguine incredulity in the possibility of the worst coming to pass, which was characteristic of Union lovers at the South, up to the battle of Manassas. After that, the scales fell from all eyes. Had not my mother hoped confidently that the war-cloud would blow over, and that, before long, she would not have allowed Alice to go back to Newark with us? My place was with my husband, but this young daughter she had the right to keep with her. Had I not hoped for a peaceful solution of the national problem, if only through the awakening of the fraternal love of those whose fathers had fought, shoulder to shoulder, to wrest their country from a common oppressor, I could not have said "Good-bye" smilingly to home and kindred. When I said to my mother: "We shall have you with us at the seashore, this summer," it was not in bravado, to cheat her into belief in my cheerfulness. Our party of Mr. Terhune, Alice, our boy and baby Christine, with their nurse and myself, was comfortably 382 "LAST THROUGH TRAIN FOR FOUR YEARS" bestowed in the train that was to meet the boat at Acquia Creek. Luggage and luncheon were looked after as sed- ulously as if there were no superior interest in our minds. The very commonplaceness of the details of getting ready and sending us off, exactly as had been done, time and time again, were in themselves heartening. What had been, would be. To-morrow should be as to-day. When we and our appurtenances were comfortably be- stowed in the ladies' car (there were no parlor cars or sleepers, as yet), I had leisure to note what was passing without. The scene should be that which always attends the departure of a passenger train from a provincial city. Yet I felt, at once, that there was a difference. I noticed, and not without an imdefined sense of un- easiness, the unusual number of strollers that lounged up and down the sidewalks, and loitered about the train, and that some of these were evidently listening to the guarded subtones to which the voices of all — even the rudest of the loungers — were modulated. With this shade of uneasi- ness there stole upon me a strange, indescribable sense of the unreality of all that I saw and heard. The familiar streets and houses were seen, as through the bewildering vapors of a dream; men and women gUded by Uke phan- toms, and there was a shimmer of red-and-orange light in the air — the reflection of the glowing west — that was vague and dazing, not dazzling. The train slid away from the station. My father and my brother Horace lifted their hats to us from the pave- ment; we held the children up to the open window to kiss their hands to them; I leaned forward for one last, fond look into the dear eyes, and our journey had begun. Not a word was exchanged between the members of our party, while we rumbled slowly up Broad Street toward the open country. 383 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY I was unaccountably indisposed to talk, and this feeling seemed to pervade the company of passengers. The dreamy haze enveloped me again. The car was very full and very quiet. The languorous hues of the west swooned into twi- Ught, and here and there a star peeped through the gray veil of the sky. We had cleared the city limits, and the blending of day- light and the falling darkness were most confusing to the eye, when I became aware that the train was slowing up where there was no sign of a switch or *' turn-out." If it actually halted, it v^as but for a second, just long enough to enable two men, standing close to the track, to board the train. They entered our car, and my husband pressed my arm as they passed down the aisle to seats diagonally opposite to us. Under cover of the rattle and roar of the speeding train, he told me presently — after cautioning me not to glance in their direction — that they were Messrs. Carlisle and Dent — well known to visitors to the convention as most prominent among the leaders of the Union party. On through the gathering gloom rolled the ponderous train — the only moving thing abroad, on that enchanted night. Within it there was none of the hum of social intercourse one might have expected in the circumstances. Adult passengers were not drowsy, for every figure was up- right, and the few faces, dimly visible in the low light of the lamps overhead, were wakeful — one might have im- agined, watchful. I learned subsequently that the in- suflScient light was purposely contrived by conductor and brakemen, and why. But for the touch of my husband's hand, laid in sympathy or reassurance upon mine, and the sight of my babies, sleeping peacefully — one in the nurse's arms, the other on the seat beside her, his head in her lap^I might have believed the weird Ught within, the 884 ^'LAST THROUGH TRAIN FOR FOUR YEARS*' darkness without, and the motionless shapes and saddened faces about me, accessories to Utie fantasy that gained steadily upon me. The spell was broken rudely — ^terribly — ^at Fredericks- burg. We steamed right into the heart of a crowd, assem- bled to await the arrival of the train, which halted there for wood and water. It was a tumultuous throng, and evidently drawn thither with a purpose understood by all. The babel of queries and exclamations smote the breezeless night-air Uke a hail-storm. It was apparent that the railway oflBcials returned curt and unsatisfactory replies, for the noise gathered volume, and uncompliment- ary expletives flew freely. All at once, a rush was made in the direction of the ladies' car. Eiager and angry visages, dusky in shadow, or ruddied by torch-light, were pressed against closed windows, and thrust impudently into the few that were open. "Three cheers for the Southern Confederacy!" yelled stentorian tones. Three-times-three roars of triumph deafened us. ''Three cheers for Jeflferson Davis — the savior of South- em Uberties!" shouted the fugleman. Again a burst of frenzied acclamation that made the windows rattle. I could see the leader of the riot — a big fellow who stood close to our window. He was bareheaded, and he rested one hand on the side of the car, swinging his hat with the other, far above his head. ''TTiree groans for Carlisle!" Nothing else that has ever pained my ears has given me the impression of brute ferocity that stopped the beat- ing of my heart for one awful moment. From the mob went up a responsive bellow of execration and derision. "AH aboard!" shouted conductor and trainmen. 885 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY The hoarse call and the shriek of the engine were wel- come music to the travellers. My husband's eyes met mine. "What Eric S. told us was then true," he said, without forming the words with his Ups. "Virginia has joined her sisters. And the people have got hold of the news. Are they blind, not to see that their State will be the battle- ground, if war should be declared?" How dearly and for how long she was to pay for her blindness, let the history of the next four years say ! Leaving the boat at Washington, we were conveyed by stages across the city to the Baltimore station. It was two o'clock in the spring morning, when we passed the Capitol. It was lighted from basement to roof, but, to passers-by, as still as a tomb. Nothing had brought home to us the fact and the imminence of the peril to our national existence, as did the sight of that lighted pile. For, as we had been informed, it was filled with armed men, on guard against surprise or open attack. On the train, we heard how troops had been hurried from all quarters of the still loyal States into Washington. The war was on! Full appreciation of what the Great Awakening was, and what it portended, came to us in Philadelphia. I had not known there was so much bunting on this side of the At- lantic as fluttered in the breeze in the city of staid homes and brotherly loves. It was a veritable bourgeoning of patriotism. From church - spires ; from shop -windows; from stately dwellings, and from the lowliest house in the meanest street — they "All uttered forth a glorious voice." Successful rebellion seemed an impossibility in the face of the demonstration. Every village, town, and farm-house along the route proclaimed the same thing. So convinced were we that 386 ''LAST THROUGH TRAIN FOR FOUR YEARS" the mere knowledge of the strength and unity of the North, East, and West would carry conviction to the minds of the led, and strike terror to the hearts of the leaders in the gigantic Treason, that we rallied marvellously the spirits which had flagged last night. The train ran into Newark at eight o'clock that evening. By the time it stopped, we had a glimpse of familiar and anxious faces. We stepped off into the arms of four of our parishioners, all on the alert for the first sight of the man of their hour. They received us as they might wel- come friends rescued from great and sore perils. Carriage and baggage-wagon were waiting. We were tucked into our seats tenderly, and with what would have been exaggerated soUcitude in men less single of heart and motive. "But you knew that we would surely come back?" I said to Mr. Farmer, at the third repetition of his — "Thank Heaven you are here!" The quartette of heads wagged gravely. "We knew you would, if you could get here. But there is no teUing what may not happen in these times." Their thanksgivings were echoed by ourselves, when, that very week, a Massachusetts regiment, en roiUe for Washington, was assailed by a Baltimore mob, several killed and more wounded, and the railway tracks torn up, to prevent the progress of troops to the national capital. We laughed a Uttle, and were much moved to see a handsome flag projecting from a second-story window of our house, as we alighted at the door. It was a mute token of confidence in our loyalty. Smiles and softness chased each other when the proud cook, left in charge during our absence, related how the "beautiful supper," smoking hot, and redolent of all manner of appetizing viands, was the gift of two neighbors, and that pantry and larder 26 387 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY were "just packed full" of useful and dainty edibles, sent and brought by ladies who had forbidden her to tell their names. Thus b^an the four years of separation from my early home and those who had hallowed it for all time. That eventful journey was the dividing line between the Old Time and the New. With it, also dawned apprehension of the gracious dealings of the All-wise and All-merciful with us — ^His ignorant, and ofttimes captious, children. It would have been impossible for my husband, with his staunch principles of fidelity to the government, and un- ccHnpmmising adherence to what he believed to be the right in the lamentable sectional strife, to remain in the seceding State. Dearly as he loved Virginia — and ro- mantic and tender as was his attachment to the brave old days that were to him the poetry of domestic and social life — ^he must have severed his connection with a parish in which he would have been accoimted a "suspect." Before the storm broke, we were gently lifted out of the "ne%t among the oaks" and established, as tenderly, in the "pleasant places" the Father — not we — had chosen. XL DOMESTIC SORROWS AND NATIONAL STORM AND STRESS — FRIENDS, TRIED AND TRUE We were to need all the fulness of consolation that cjould be expressed from divine grace and* human friend- ships, in the years immediately succeeding the events re- corded in the last chapter. The Muse of American History has set a bloody and fire- blackened cross against 1861. To us, it was darkened, through three-quarters of its weary length, by the shadows of graves. One death after another among the friends to whom we clung the more gratefully, because of the gulf — fast filling with blood — ^that parted us from kindred and early companions, followed our home-coming. In the last week of August, my husband recorded, in his pastor's note- book, that he had stood, in fourteen weeks, at the open graves of as many parishioners, among them some who had been most forward in welcoming him to his new field, and most faithful in their support of him in it. ''It is literally walking in the valley of the shadow of death!" he sighed, closing the melancholy pages. ''I ask myself tremblingly, after each funeral — ^Who next?'* At noon on September second — ^the fifth anniveisary of our wedding-day — our boy came home from a drive with his father, feverish and drowsy, and fell asleep in my arms. On the fourteenth of the same month, he was folded in an embrace, yet more fond and safe, beyond the touch of mortal sorrow. 889 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY My bonnie, bonnie boy! who had never had a day's iUness until he was stricken by that from which there was no recovery I Diphtheria was comparatively new at that time, even to the able physician who was our devoted personal friend. The boy faded before it, as a lily in drought. Four days before he left us, his baby sister was smitten by the same disease. Two da3rs after the funeral, their father fell ill with it. Why neither Alice, I, nor the faithful nurse who assisted us in the care of the three patients, did not take the infection is a mystery. There were no quarantine regulations to prevent the spread of what is now recognized as one of the most virulent of epidemics. We took absolutely no precautions; friends flocked to us as freely as if there were no danger. Our fearlessness may have been a catholicon. We nursed the sufferers back to health, and, looking to God for strength, took our places again in the ranks. Such a trite, every-day story as it is! To the soul for which the task is set, it is as novel and crucial as death itself. It is not the yoimg mother who finds comfort and tonic in the inspired assurance: "For while we bear it, we can bear; Past that — we lay it down I" For four months, we had not a letter from Richmond. The cordon was drawn closely about the chief seat of the Rebellion — now the capital of the Confederacy. It was hard to smuggle private letters through the lines. We wrote by every possible opportunity, and .were certain that my family were as watchful of chances, Hkely and im- probable. At Christmas, wc had a packet that had been run through by way of Kentucky, by a man who wrote to say that he had been ill in a Richmond hospital and re- ceived great kindness from my mother. When he was well enough to rejoin his regiment, he had offered to get 390 DOMESTIC SORROWS her letters to me, if it were in the power of man to do it. His plan, he said, was to entrust the parcel to a trusty negro, who would swim the Ohio River on horseback at a point where the stream was narrow, and post letters on the other side. If I should receive them, I might know that he had fulfilled his pledge to my mother. If I did not get them, I would never know how hard he had tried to keep his word. I have often wondered if he received the answers we dispatched to the post-oflSce from which our precious letters were maUed. I never heard from him again. Home-bulletins brought the news of the death of my stem old grandmother at the advanced age of eighty-four. She had never given her sanction to the war, disapprov- ing of military operations with the whole might of her rugged nature. On a certain Sunday in June, news was brought by fast express, while the people were in church, that the war- vessel Pawnee was on its way up the river to bombard the town. Owing to the old lady's deafness, she did not fully comprehend why the services were closed summarily, and the streets were too full of people hurrying to and fro, for my father to explain the state of affairs on the way home. On the front steps they met my brother Horace in the uniform of the Richmond Howitzers, to which he belonged. They had been ordered summarily to repair to the point from which the expected attack was to be repelled. A few hasty sentences put her into pos- session of leading facts; the boy kissed her; shook hands with his father, and ran down the street. The old Massachusetts dame, whose father and husband had fought in the Revolutionary War, stood still and looked after him until he was out of sight. He was her favorite of the boys — we fancied because he resembled the Edwin she had wished to adopt, and who died in her arms. 391 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY The lad she followed with puzzled and griefful eyes was of a goodly presence, and never goodlier than in his uni- form. Did she bethink herself of the probability that 8)ie might never see him again? What she thought, and what she felt, will never be known. When my father addressed her, she gazed at him with uncomprehending eyes, turned, and walked feebly up the stairs. "I am afraid mother is not well," said my father to my mother, after they had talked a few minutes of the alarm and Horace's departure. "She looked shaken by the boy's going. Will you go up and look after her?" She had undressed and gone to bed. She had taken her seat in church that morning, a fine-looking dame of the old school; erect and strong; alert of wits and firm of pur- pose. My mother looked into the face of a shrunken, dull- eyed crone, who asked, in quavering accents, "Who she was, and what was her business?" Then she be^gan to moan and beg to be taken "home." That was her cry, whenever she spoke at all, all summer long. But once did she quit her bed. That was when the nurse left her, as they supposed, sleeping, and discovered her half an hour later, fumbling at the lock of the front door, and in her nightgown. She "wanted to go home! she would go home!" She went on September 5th, while we, hundreds of miles away, were watching over our sick boy. "The war killed off most of our old people," said an ex- Confederate officer once to me. "Almost as many died of sheer brokenheartedness, as on the battle-field I That's an account somebody has got to settle some day, if there is any justice in heaven." In the autumn of 1862, the state of my sister Alice's health demanded a change of climate so imperatively that we had no option in the consideration of the emergency. Her throat was seriously affected; she had not spoken above a whisper for six months. To keep her in Newark 392 DOMESTIC SORROWS for another winter was not to be thought of. Our parents were writing by every available flag of truce strenuous orders that she should "come home." In early October, Mr. Terhune took her down to an obscure village in Mary- land directly upon Chesapeake Bay. It was, in fact, a smuggling-station, from which merchandise of various sorts was ferried into Virginia, in direct violation of embargo laws. Southern sympathizers, whom loyalists were be- ginning to brand as ''Copperheads" — a name that stuck fast to them throughout the war — ran the enterprise and profited by it. Through one of these, information sifted to us of which we made use. When necessity drives, it will not do to be fastidious as to instruments that will save us. At dead of night my young sister was put into a boat, warmly wrapped from the river-fogs, and, in charge of a Richmond gentleman who was returning home, sent across the imlicensed ferry. Her father awaited her on the other shore. A mile above and a mile below, lurid gleams, Uke the eyes of river-monsters watching for their prey, showed where United States gunboats lay in mid- stream to intercept unlawful commerce and to arrest offenders. My husband did not impart to me the details of the adventure imtil we had heard of the child's restora- tion to her father's arms. Then he told of the fearful anxiety with which he waited on the Maryland shore, under starless skies, scanning the menacing Ughts up and down the river, and straining his ears for the ripple against the sides of the boat making its way, cautiously, with muffled oaiB, across the watery track. To deflect from the viewless course would be to awaken the sleeping dogs of war. The lonely watcher feared every minute to see from either of the gunboats a flash of fire, followed by the boom of a cannon, signalling the discovery of the attempt to evade the embargo. "The dreariest vigil imaginable!" he said. "I stayed 393 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY there for two hours, until I was sure the boat must have made the landing. Had it been intercepted, I should have seen some change in the position of those red eyes and heard a shot." Before she embarked he had given the fugitive a self- addressed envelope enclosing a card, on which was written: "Arrived safely." She pencilled below — *' Alice," and sent it back by the boatman. It was a week old when he got it, and creased and soiled by much handling. Then fell silence, that was felt every waking hour, and lasted for four long months. On the first day of February, my husband being absent from home, I walked down to the city post-oflBce with Mrs. Greenleaf, my eldest sister-in- law, who was visiting us, and took from our box a thin letter addressed in my mother's hand, and stamped ''Fl^g OP Truce." It was but one page in length. Flag-of-truce communi- cations were limited to that. The first line branded itself upon my brain: "/ have written to you several times since ovr precious Alice's deathr She had rallied finely in her native air, and was, appar- ently, on the highroad to health when smallpox broke out in Richmond military hospitals. It spread to the citizens. The town was crowded, and quarantine laws were lax. Dr. Haxall called and insisted that the entire family be re- vaccinated. He had his way with all save one. Alice put him ofif with a jest, and my mother bade him "call again, when she may be more reasonable." I fancy none of them put much faith in the honest physician's assertion that the precautionary measure was a necessity. In those days a "good vaccination scar" was supposed to last a lifetime. My sister fell ill a fortnight afterward, and the seizure was pronounced to be "varioloid." 394 NATIONAL STORM AND STRESS A girl's wilful whim! A mother's indulgence! These may, or may not, have been the opening acts of the tragedy. God knows! Alice was in her twenty-second year, and in mind the most brilliant of the family. She was an ardent student for learning's sake, and an accomplished English scholar; wrote and spoke French fluently, and was proficient in the Latin classics. The one sketch from her pen ever published appeared in The Sovlhem Literary Messenger while she was ill. It proved what we had known already, that her talent for composition was of a high order. Had she lived, the reading world would have ratified our judgment. On March 7th of that dark and bloody year, the low tide of hope with the nation, our home was brightened by the birth of a second daughter — our first brunette baimie. Her brother and sister had the Terhune blue eyes and sunny hair. She came on a wild, snowy day, and brought such wealth of balm and blessing with her as seldom en- dows parents and home by reason of a single birth. From the hour of her advent. Baby Alice was her father's idol. Why, we could not say then. The fact — amusing at times — always patent — of the peculiar tenderness binding to- gether the hearts of the father and the girl-child — remained, and was gradually accepted, without comment, by us all. It was an unspeakable comfort to be able once more to talk of "the children." One never divines the depth of sweetness and significance in the term until one has been robbed of the right to use it, through months of missing what has been. Other, if minor, distractions from personal sorrow and public solicitudes were not wanting that year. I had been drawn into charitable organizations bom of the times. Our noble church was forward in co-operation with muni- cipal and State authorities in relieving the distress of the 395 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY thousands who were reduced to poverty by the loss of the Southern trade and the stagnation of home industries. Prices went up, and wages went down; soldiers' widows and orphans must be cared for; the soldiers in camps and hospitals were but ill-provided with the comforts they had a right to expect from the government and their fellow-citizens. We bad Soldiers' Relief Societies, and Auxiliary Societies to the Sanitary and Christian Com- missions, and by-and-by, as the monetary situation told fiercely upon the women and children of unemployed operatives, associations that supplied their wives with sewing. But for active participation in each of these benevolent organizations, I do not see how I could have kept my rea- son while the fratricidal conflict gathered force and heat. My situation was peculiar, and, among my daily asso- ciates, unique. Loving the Union with a passion of pa- triotism inconceivable by those who have never had what they call by that name put to such test of rack and flame as the martyrs of old endured, I yet had no personal interest in one soldier who fought for the Cause as dear to me as life itself. My prayers and hopes went out to the Federal army as a glorious engine, consecrated to a sublime and holy purpose — even the salvation of the nation by the preservation of the Union. And all the while, my best-beloved brother was in the fiercest of the fight down there, in the State dearer to me than any other could ever be. Cousins by the score, and friends and valued acquaintances by the hundred, were with Lee and Jackson, Early, Stuart, and Hill, exposed to shot and shell and sword. My brother Herbert had gone home in '61, after he was graduated from the Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, and received a license to preach. Shortly after his installation in a country parish, he had married a girl he had fallen in love with while studying 396 FRIENDS, TRIED AND TRUE with my husband in Charlotte. Although a non-com- batant, he might be forced by circumstances to take up arms, as many of the profession were doing. His home was raided more than once by predatory bands of strag- glers from the Federal army, and twice by cavalry dashes under leaders whose names were a terror throughout southern and central Virginia. My brother Percy, at fourteen, enlisted, and quickly gained reputation as a courier under Lee's own eye, being a daring rider, court- ing, instead of shunning, danger, and, like his father and brothers, an utter stranger to physical fear in any shape whatsoever. When — as happened almost daily — our papers published lists of the killed and wounded in Lee's army, my hand shook so violently in holding the sheet, that I had to lay it on the table to steady the lines into legibility, my heart rolling over with sick thuds, while my eyes ran down the line of names. Add to this ceaseless horror of suspense the long, awful spaces of silence between the flag-of-truce letters — and is it to be wondered at that I plunged into routine work — domestic, literary, religious, charitable, and patriotic — with feverish eneiigy, as the only hope of maintaining a tolerable degree of sanity? And how good **our people" were to me through it all! The simple act of setting the fiag above our door-steps when we returned from Rebeldom, was emblematic of the position taken and held by them, as a body, during that trial-period. They trusted us without reservation. More- over, never, howsoever high might run the tide of popular feeling at the tidings of defeat or victory to the national Cause, was one of them ever betrayed into a word of vituperation of my native South, or ungenerous exultation over her downfall. The tact and delicacy in this respect displayed by them, without an exception, deserves higher praise than I can award in this humble chronicle. 397 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Loving loyalty of this type was a panoply and a stimu- lant to my sorely-taxed spirit. Sheer gratitude should have bound me to them as a co-worker. When men Uke Peter and John BaUantine — ^than whom God never made a nobler pair of brothers — and Edgar Farmer — all the busiest of men — ^would go out of their way, in business hours, to make a special call upon me, after the news of a battle had set the town on fire with excitement, to "hope," in brotherly soUcitude, that '*this does not mean a heartache for you?" — when the safety of my brothers, and the welfare of my parents, was the sub- ject of affectionate inquiry, whenever we met friend or acquaintance connected with church or parish, I used to say to my husband and myself, that the world had never seen more truly chivalrous natures than those of these practical Middle States men, who never thought of them- selves as knightly. XLI FORT DELAWARE — "OLD GLORY" — ^LINCOLN'S ASSASSINA- TION—THE RELEASED PRISONER OP WAR In the last week of May, 1864, I had a letter from my brother Horace, dow a Lieutenant in the Richmond Howitzers, C.S.A. It bore the heading: " Under the vxJls of Fort Delaware,^* and was scribbled upon the deck of a United States trans- port. With the gay courage that was his characteristic, and without waste of words in preliminaries, directness in action and speech being another prominent trait with him, he informed me that "General Hancock, by making an ungenerously early start at Spottsylvania Court-House — before breakfast, in fact — on the morning of May 21st, captured part of our division." The letter wound up with: "We are now approaching Fort Delaware, which is, we are told, our destination. I am well. Don't take this to heart. / don't!" I was so far from taking it to heart that I called upon my soul, and all that was within me, to return thanks to Him who had delivered my darling boy from the battle that was against him. He was now out of the reach of bullet and bayonet. If I did not summon neighbors and friends to rejoice with me over my brother's capture, the news spread fast, and congratulatory calls were the order of the next few days. Not satisfied with words of good-will, every bit of 399 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY political machinery at the command of our friends was put in motion to secure for me the great joy of visiting him. One of these plans so nearly succeeded that I went, imder the escort of the plotter, as far as Delaware City, within sight of the gloomy fortress, to be turned back by a new order — ^incited by a rumored attempt at escape of the prisoners — prohibiting any visitors from entering the fort. In the tranquil assurance of the captive s security from the chances of war, I bore up under the failure better than could have been expected, solacing myself by writ- ing, regularly, long letters, and the preparation of boxes of books and provisions, which I was allowed to forward weekly. It was "abnost as good," I wrote to him, glee- fully, ''as having a son at school, for whom I could get up boxes of goodies'." Twice I had direct intelligence of him from army officers^ who sought him out and talked to him of us. One wrote: "Fine-looking fellow — ^hearty as a buck I In good heart, and in good looks." Another: "Never met a nicer fellow. I wish he had been on our side!" While I was comforting myself with these mitigating in- cidents, the line of communication was abruptly severed by the transfer of prisoners from Fort Delaware to Hilton, South Carolina. I had no letter for a month, and began to think — I might say, to fear — that an exchange of pris- oners had returned him to Virginia. He gave the reason for his silence finally: "In pursuance of the retaliatory policy determined upon by the Federal authorities, we were brought here and placed, for three weeks, under the fire of our own guns from the shore. Our fare was pickles and corn-meal, for the same time. I did not write while this state of things prevailed. It would have distressed you uselessly." 400 FORT DELAWARE He went on to say that the order of retaliation for the cruelties inflicted upon Federal captives in Confederate prisons, had been rescinded. The Confederates, now at Hilton Head, could hardly be said to be lodged luxuriously; but they were no longer animated targets. Through the intercession of a friend with Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, then in command in South Carolina, I gained permission to supply my brother with "plain clothing, books, papers, food, and small sums of money." The latter went to him by the kind and safe hand of Richard Ryerson, a young Jerseyman, holding office in the Com- missary Department at Hilton Head. My letters were forwarded under cover to the same generous intermediary. Thus was another crooked way made straight. The news of the evacuation; of my brother's removal back to Fort Delaware, and a letter from my father, sent by private hand to Mr. Terhune, came simultaneously. My husband had had a verbal message through a trusty "refugee,*' as long ago as January, to the effect that the fall of the city could not, in my father's judgment, be long delayed. Since confiscation was sure to follow the col- lapse of the Confederacy, he instructed my husband to repair to Richmond, at the earUest possible moment after the way was cut open by the victorious army, and claim the family estate in the name of his wife, our loyalty being unquestionable. In the fight of what really happened when the city was occupied by the invaders, the precaution seems absurdly useless. Then, it was prudent in the estimation of those best acquainted with the current of pubfic affairs. Every dollar belonging, in fact, or constructively, to Northern citizens, that the Confederate authorities could reach, had been confiscated early in the action. My husband was a non-combatant in the eye of the law, by reason of his pro- fession. Yet the few thousands we had invested in vari- 401 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ous ways in Virginia had gone the way of all the rest. It was but fair to suppose that the rebels would be stripped of houses, lands, and money. On New- Year's day, we had a call from Dr. J. J. Craven, Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, a warm per- sonal friend of Mr. Terhune. He was stationed at Fort Monroe, the key to the James River. Him, my husband took into confidence, and it was arranged between them that the latter was to be notified of the practicability of entering the city in the track of the troops, when the in- evitable hour should arrive. On one and the same day in April, Mr. Terhune had a telegram from Fort Monroe, containing three words : "Come at once," and I a letter from my faithful ally, Ossian Ash- ley, enclosing an introductory note from General Butter- field to the Commandant at Fort Delaware, requesting him to permit me to see my brother. Mr. Farmer, my husband's companion in many expedi- tions and joumeyings, consented gladly to go with him now. We three left next morning for Philadelphia, and the two gentlemen accompanied me in the afternoon to Fort Delaware. We were courteously received by the officials, the Com- mandant voluntarily relaxing the rules at our parting, to let my brother walk across the drawbridge and down to the wharf with me. High good -humor reigned in all branches of the service. The war was virtually over. As we sailed out into the bay, and I threw a last salute to the soldierly figure standing on the pier, it was with a bound of hope at ray heart to which it had been long a stranger. ''My boy" would join us in our home before many days. He had never been a rebel, indeed; he had gone reluctantly into the service, as had thousands of others. The chance to take the oath of allegiance to the Federal government would be readily embraced by him and his 402 ^'OLD GLORY"— LINCOLN'S ASSASSINATION comrades. And my husband had engaged to see to it that the opportunity should not be long delayed. We parted in Philadelphia, I passing the night with friends there, the two men going on to Fort Monroe. By Doctor Craven's kindly management, they found a transport awaiting their arrival. They were, thus, the first civil- ians to enter Richmond after the military took pos- session. A hasty note from Fort Monroe apprised me of the suc- cess of the expedition, up to that point. Beyond that place there were no postal or tel^raphic facilities. I must wait patiently until they touched Old Point on the return journey. With a thankful spirit and busy hands, I fell to work, making ready for the home-coming of husband and brother. It was as if the world and the house were swept and gar- nished together. In the early dawn of April 15th, too happily excited to sleep, I arose and looked from my dressing-room window over intervening buildings and streets, to the spire of Old Trinity Church. Church's picture, Our Banner in the Sky, was painted during the Rebellion, and every print-shop window dis- played a copy of it. Some of my older readers may rec- ollect it. A tall, and at the sununit, leafless, pine stood up, stark and gaunt, against a sky barred with crimson-and- white. Above, a cluster of stars gUmmered faintly in the dusky blue. It was a weird "impressionist" picture, that fired the imagination and thrilled the heart of the lover of our glorious Union. From my window, I saw it now in fulness of detail. I had heard the story of "Old Glory," a little while before. The words leaped from my lips at the sight of the splendid flag on the staff towering from the church-spire. Straight and strong, it streamed over the sleeping city in the fresh 27 403 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY breeze from the sea, emblem of the triumphant right — of a saved nation! "Old Glory!" I cried aloud, and fell upon my knees to thank God for what it meant. Had another woman in the land — now, more than ever and forever, "God's Country" — such cause as I to return thanks for what had been in the last month? The glow of exultation still warmed my inmost being, when I halted on the upper stair on my way down to breakfast. Hearing a ring at the door-bell, with the thought of a telegram, as probable explanation of the untimely call, I leaned breathlessly over the balustrade as the maid opened the door. It was a parishioner, and a neighbor. He spoke hur- riedly: "Will you say to Mrs. Terhune that the President was assassinated in Ford's Theatre in Washington last night?" When, hours and hours afterward, I looked, with eyes dimmed by weeping, upon " Old Glory," it hung limp at half-mast, and the background was dull with rain-clouds. I had many visitors that day. My nearest neighbor, and, to this hour, one of my closest friends, ran in to "see how I was bearing it. I must not get overexcited!" Then she broke down, and wept stormily, as for a murdered father. "We never knew how we loved him until now!" she sobbed. That was the cry of every torn heart. At last, we knew the patient, tender-hearted, magnificent patriot-hero for what he was — the second Father of his Country. At least a dozen men dropped in to "talk over" the bereavement. One, as rugged of feature and as soft of heart as our martyred head, said, huskily, holding my hand in our "good-bye": "Somehow, it does me good to hear you talk, in your 404 THE RELEASED PRISONER OF WAR Southern accent, of our common grief. I can't exactly ex- press what it means to me. Words come hard to-day. But it may be a sign that this awful sorrow may, in God's hands, be the means of bringing us brothers together again. He always felt kindly toward them. Some day, they may be brought to see that they have lost their best friend. God knows!" I thank Him that, in the fulness of time, the old man's hope has been fulfilled. My husband brought home with him my youngest sis- ter. Myrtle. One of the incongruities that strike oddly across our moments of intensest emotion was, that, in the excite- ment of welcome and surprise (for I had had no intima- tion of her coming), I bethought myself that I had never known, until I heard her call my name, that girls' voices change as boys' do, in passing from childhood into youth. I left her a little giri in short dresses. In four years she had passed the delta "Where the brook and river meet." Girls and boys matured fast under the influences that had ripened her character. It was a rare and lovely product which linked itself into the chain of my life, for the score of years beyond our reunion. To say that her companionship was a comfort and joy unspeakable, that summer, would be to describe feebly what her coming brought into my existence. The burden of solicitudes and suspense, of actual bereavement and dreads of the morrow's happenings, slid from my shoulders, as Christian's pack from him at the Cross. I grew young again. My third baby-girl, Virginia Belle, was ten days old when my liberated brother was added, like a beautiful clasp, to the golden circle of our reunited family. He 405 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY came directly to us, and lingered longer than I had dared expect, for recuperation, and for enjoyment of the society from which he had been so long exiled. A pretty love-story, the initial chapters of which had been ruddy broken into by the war, was resumed and continued at this visit. That the girl-friend who had grown into a sister's place in our home and afifections, should marry my dearest brother, was a dream too fair of complexion and too symmetrical in proportions, to be indulged under conditions that had prevailed since his visit to Newark, almost five years ago. Yet this was the vision that began to define itself into a blessed reality, by the time the soldier - returned - from - the - war packed the outfit of civilized and civilian clothing — the getting-to- gether of which had been one ostensible excuse for ex- tending the visit — and took his way southward. It was a divine breathing-spell for us and for the country — ^that summer of peace and plenty. For three years past, we had spent each July and August in a roomy farm-house among the Jersey hills. For the first season, we were the only boarders. Then, perhaps because we boasted somewhat too freely of the healthf ul- ness of the region, and the excellent country fare set be- fore us by good Mrs. Blauvelt, the retreat from malaria and mosquitoes became too popular for our comfort. When there were three babies, a nurse, a visiting sister, our two selves, and a horse, to be accommodated, we found the once ample quarters too strait for us. For baby Belle's sake we migrated late in June of this year. We were discussing the seriousness of the problem consequent upon a growing family, as we drove up a long hill, one July day, Alice on a cricket between us in the foot of the buggy, when an exclamation from my husband stopped a sentence in the middle. He drew the horse to a sudden halt. 406 THE RELEASED PRISONER OF WAR Woodmen were busy with destructive axes upon a body of native trees at the left of our road. They had opened to our sight a view heretofore hidden by the wood. A lake, blue and tranquil as the heavens it mirrored; green slopes, running down to the water; wooded heights, bor- dering the thither banks, and around, as far as the eye could reach, mountains, benignant in outUne and verdant to their summits, billowing, range beyond range, against the horizon — why had we never seen this before? It was like a section of the Delectable Mountains, gently lowered from Bunyan's Beulah Land, and set down within thirty miles of the biggest city in America. The rapt silence was ended by one word from my com- panion : *' Alabama!" He passed the reins into my hands, and leaped over the wheel. Making his way down the hill, he stopped to talk with the workmen for ten minutes. Then he came back, held up a hand to help me out of the carriage, and lifted "Brownie" in his arms. Next, he tied the horse to a tree, and, saying to me — **C!ome!" led the way to the lake. We bought the tract, in imagination, and decided upon the site of our cottage, in the next half-hour. On the way home we called upon the owner of the tract, paid a hun- dred dollars down to bind the bargain, and left orders that not another tree was to be felled until further notice. It would have been expecting too much of human nature had we been required to go back to the farm-house dinner, without driving again by "Our Land." The happy si- lence of the second survey culminated in my declaration and the instant assent of my companion to the same : "And we will name it Sunnybank ' I" XLn A CHRISTMAS REUNION — A MIDNIGHT WARNING — HOW A GOOD MAN CAME TO "THB HAPPIEST DAY OF HIS LIPE" "Skies bright, and brightening!" was the clan watch- word, in passing along the summons for a rally in the old home at Christmas-time, 1866, that should include three generations of the name and blood. On Sunday, December 23d, we attended church in a body, in morning and afternoon. Not one was missing from the band except my brother Herbert, whose pro- fessional duties detained him over Sunday. He was pledged to be with us early on Monday morning. That evening, we grouped about the fire in the par- lor, a wide circle that left room for the babyest of the party to disport themselves upon the rug, in the glow of the grate piled with cannel coal. My father, en- tering last of all, stooped to pick up a granddaughter and kiss her, in remarking: '*I had intended to go down to hear Doctor Moore to- night. I am very fond of him as man and preacher. But" — a comprehensive glance around the room, pointing the demurrer — '*you look so comfortable here that I am tempted to change my mind." A chorus of entreaties broke forth. It had been so long since we had had — *'all of us together — a Sunday evening at home; there was so much to talk of; Christmas was so near; the night was damp and raw; there would be snow by ten o'clock," etc. — all in a breath, until the dear man 408 A CHRISTMAS REUNION put his hands to his ears, ready to promise anything and everything, for the sake of peace. This was before supper, a jolly meal, over which we lingered until the mothers of the company had to hustle the youngUngs off to bed by the time we left the table. Returning to the drawing-room after hearing my girls' prayei^, and assuaging their impatience at the lagging flight of time, by telling them that, in twenty-two hours more, they would be hanging up their stockings, I found my father alone. He stood on the rug, looking down into the scarlet depths of the coals, his hands behind him and his head bent — in thought, not in sadness, for he turned a bright face to me as my voice awoke him from his revery : "'A penny for your thoughts!'" I said it gayly, laying my hand on his shoulder. He turned his cheek to meet it. "My thoughts were running upon what has kept them busy all day. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to con- fess it, but I lost one *head' of Doctor Hoge's sermon this afternoon. I was thinking of — my children T His voice sank into a tender cadence it seldom took. He was reckoned an undemonstrative man, and he had a full strain of the New England Puritan in his blood. I waited to steady my own voice before asking, softly, "And what of them, father?" The query was never answered. The opening door let in a stream of happy humanity — ^mother, brothers, and sisters — Mea and her husband, Horace and Percy, Myrtle and her fianc^y "Will" Robertson, who would, ere long, be one of us in fact, as he was now in heart. They were full of Christmas plans and talk. Among other items one was fixed in my memory by subsequent events. In conse- quence of the intervention of Sunday, the business of decorating the house had to be postponed imtil Monday. 409 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY The evergreens were to be sent in from the country eariy on the morrow. Percy reported that the snow had b^un to fall. If the roads were heavy by mormng, would the countryman who had promised a Ubend store of running cedar, pine, and juniper, in addition to the Christmas-tree, keep his word? " I will see that the evergreens are provided," my father laid the disquiet by saying. "There wiU be no hann in engaging a double supply." Then Mea went to the piano, and we had the olden-time Sunday-evening concert, all the dear old hjnnns we could recall, among them two called for by our father: "God moves in a mysterious way," and, "There is an hour of peaceful rest, To weary wanderers given; There is a joy for souls distressed, A balm for every wounded breast, — Tis found alone in Heaven!" We sang, last of all, The Shining Shore, and talked of the time when the composer set the MS. upon the piano-rack, with the ink hardly dried upon the score, and trial was made of the music in that very room — could it be just eleven years ago? My father left us as the clock struck ten. My mother lingered half an hour later. We all knew, although none of us spoke of it, that he liked to have a little time for devotional reading on Sunday evening, before he went to bed. He had not demitted the habit in fifty-odd years, yet I doubt if he had ever mentioned, even to his wife, why he kept it up and what it meant to him. Our mother told me afterward that when she joined him in their chamber, the Bible was still open on the stand 410 A CHRISTMAS REUNION before him. He closed it at her entrance and glanced around, a smile of serene happiness lighting up his face. **We have had a deUghtful Sunday!" he observed. "It is like renewing my youth to have all the children about us once more." He had had his breakfast and gone down-town, when we came into the dining-room next morning. At my ex- clamation of regretful surprise, our mother told us how he had hurried the meal for himself, pleading that he had much to attend to that forenoon. The snow was not deep, but it was sodden by the fine rain that had succeeded it toward the dawn of the gray December day, and he feared the evergreens might not be forthcoming. "I shall send a couple of carts into the country at once," were his parting words. "I would not have the children disappointed for ten times the worth of the evergreens." It was to be a busy morning with us all. As soon as breakfast was dispatched, the long table — pulled out to its utmost Umit to accommodate the tribe — was cleared of dishes, plates, and cloth, and we fell to tying up parcels for the tree, sorting bonbons, and other light tasks. Mince- pics, concocted according to the incomparable recipe handed down from mother to daughter, in the Montrose and Olney families, for a century-and-a-half, had been baked last week, and loaded the pantry-shelves. My mother's unsurpassable crullers, superintended by herself at Christmas, and at no other season, were packed away in stone jars ; and, that no distinctive feature of Yuletide might be missing from the morrow's dinner, the whitest, plumpest, tenderost sucking pig the market could offer, lay at length in a platter in the store-room. Before he could go into the oven, he would be buttered from nose to toes, and coated with bread-crumbs. When he appeared on the table, he would be adorned with a necklace of sausages, 411 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY cranberries would fill out the sunken eyes, and a lemon be thrust into his mouth. A mammoth gobbler, fattened for the occasion, would support him at the other end of the board. I had offered last Friday to make pumpkin-pies — ^the genuine New England brand, such as my father had eaten at Thanksgiving in the Dorchester homestead. The colored cooks could not compass the delicacy. He had sent home four bouncing pumpkins on Saturday, and two had been pared, eviscerated, and stewed. I sat at th^ far end of the table, beating, seasoning, and tasting. My mother was filling candy-bags at the other, when Myrtle rallied her upon not tasting the confectionery, of which she was extravagantly fond. "Mother is saving up her appetite for the Christmas pig!" she asserted. "I never eat sweets when I have a headache," was the answer. "I did not sleep well last night." This led to her account of a "queer fright" she had had at midnight, or thereabouts. Awakened from her finat sound sleep by the unaccountable thrill of alarm each of us has felt, in the impression that some one or something that has no right to be there, is in the darkened chamber, she lay still with beating heart and listened for further proof of the intrusion. In a few minutes she heard a faint rustle that ran from the farthest window toward her bed, and passed to the door leading into the hall. Thoroughly startled, she shook my father's shoulder and whispered to him that there was some one in the room. He sprang up, lighted the gas, and made a thorough search of the cham- ber and the dressing-room. The door was locked, and, besides themselves, there was no occupant of the apart- ment. He had fallen asleep again, when she heard the same rustling noise, louder and more definite than before. There was no mistaking the direction of the movement. 412 A MIDNIGHT WARNING It b^gan at the window, swept by the bed, and was lost at the door. The terrified wife again awoke her husband, and he made the round a second time, with the same result as before. When the mysterious movement seemed to brush her at the third coming, she aroused her companion in an agony of nervousness: '* I am terribly ashamed of my foolishness," she told him, shivering with nameless fears; ''but there really is some- thing here, now!" He was, as I have said in a former part of my true story, usually so intolerant of nervous whimsies that we forbore to express them in his hearing. He had mellowed and sweetened marvellously within the last few years, as rare vintages are sure to ripen. Arising now, with a good-humored laugh, he made a third exploration of the premises, and with no better result. When he lay down again, he put his hand affectionately upon my moth- er's arm with a soothing word: '' I will hold you fast! You are the most precious thing in the house. Neither burglar nor bogie shaJl get you." *'What was it?" we asked. "Oh, probably the wind blowing the shade, or making free with something else that was loose. It was a stormy night. We agreed, this morning, that it must have been that." She spoke carelessly, and we took the incident as little to heart. Passing through the hall , awhile later, I espied my maid Ellen, who had Uved with me for five yeais, whispering with a mulatto woman in a comer. They fell apart at seeing me, and Ellen followed me to the sitting- room. " Rhoda was saying that the colored people think what happened last night was a wamin\" she observed, with affected lightness. ''They are awful superstitious, ma'am, ain't they?" 413 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY "Very superstitious and very ignorant!" I returned, se- verely. The trifling episode was gone, like a vapor passing from a mirror, before my brother Herbert appeared. He had arisen at daybreak, driven to Petersburg, and taken there the train to Richmond, arriving by nine o'clock. At the same hour our father reached his oflBce. I have heard the story of his walk down-town so minutely de- scribed that I can trace each step. It was more than a mile from his house to the oflBce. There were no street- cars or omnibuses in the city, at that time. Sometimes he drove to his place of business; sometimes he rode on horseback. Generally, he chose to walk. He was a fine horseman and a fearless driver, from his youth up. At sixty-eight he carried himself as erect as at thirty, and made less of tramping miles in all weathers than men of half his age thought of pacing a dozen squares on a sunny day. As he had reminded his wife, in excusing his hurried breakfast, there were errands, many and important, to be looked after. He stopped at Pizzini's, the noted con- fectioner of the town, to interview that dignitary in per- son, anent a cake of noble proportions and brave with ornate icing — Christmas fruit-cake — of Pizzini's own com- position, for which the order was given a week ago. To the man of sweets he said that nothing must hinder the delivery of the cake beyond that evening. *'We are planning a royal, old-fashioned family Christ- mas," he subjoined, "and there must be no disappoint- ments." The evergreens were ordered as stringently. Two cart- loads, as he had said, and two more Christmas-trees, in case one was not satisfactory. "There must be no dis- appointments." Not far from Pizzini's he met Doctor Haxall, also "Christmasing." The two silver-haired men shook hands, 414 n THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HIS LIFE" standing in the damp snow on the comer, and exchanged the compliments of the season. **What has come to you?" queried the doctor, eying his friend curiously. "You are renewing your youth. You have the color, the step, and the eyes of a boy !" "Doctor!" letting his hand drop upon the other's shoul- der, " to-morrow will be the happiest day of my life! After four terrible years of war and separation, I am to have in the old home all my children and grandchildren — a united and loving family. It will be the first time in eight yeans! My cup runneth over!" He strode into his office with the springing step that had brought him all the long mile and a half; spoke cheer- ily to two or three employees who were on hand; remarked upon the weather, and his confidence that we would have a fine day to-morrow, and laid aside his overcoat and hat. Then he stepped to the outer door to issue an order to two colored men standing there, b^an to speak, put his hand to his head, and fell forward. The men caught him, saved him from faUing, and supported him to a chair. He pointed to the door, and spoke one word: "Horace!" My brother was his partner in business, and he could not be far away. The messenger met him within a short distance of the door. The duUing eyes brightened at sight of him ; with an inarticulate murmur, the stricken man raised his hand to his head, to indicate the seat of pain, leaned back upon the strong young arms that held him, and closed his eyes. He was still breathing when they brought him home. I>octor Haxall had galloped on ahead of the carriage containing him and the attendants, to prepare us meas- urably for what was coming. The unconscious master of the home was brought through the hall between banks of evei^greens, delivered in obedience to his order issued 415 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY but three hours earlier. Two tall Christmae^trees and three wagon-loads of running cedar, pine, and spruce heaped the floor, and were pushed aside hastily by the servants to make way for the mournful procession. He did not speak or move after they laid him upon his own bed. One more hour of anguished waiting, and we knew that he had entered upon the ''happiest day of his life." XLin TWO BRIDALS — A BIRTH AND A PASSING — "mY LTTTLB LOVB" — "DRIFTINQ out" — A NONPAREIL PARISH In October, 1867, I had the great happiness of seeing my favorite brother married to the woman he had loved so long and so faithfully that the marriage was the fitting and only sequel the romance of the Civil War could have. From the day of our coming to Newark, she, who was now my sister, then a school-giri, had established hei^elf in our hearts. She was my sister Alice's most intimate friend, and, after Alice left us, glided into the vacant place naturally. With the delicacy and discretion characteristic of a fine and noble nature, she never, during those dreary years of separation and silence, alluded, in her talks with me, to the tacit "understanding'* existing between herself and my brother. When he visited us immediately upon his liberation from Fort Delaware, it was evident that both of the unacknowledged lovers took up the association where it had been severed four years ago. They were wedded on October 5th. The next day Mr. (now "Doctor") Terhune, the three little girls, and my- self, with their nurse, took the train for Richmond to a»- ^sist in the preparations for the marriage of Myrtle and "Will" Robertson. The newly wedded pair returned from their bridal tour in season to witness the second marriage, on October 17th. On February 4, 1869, my little Myrtle opened her beautiful eyes upon the world in which she was to have 417 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY an abiding-place for so short a time that the fast, bright months of her sojourn are as a dream to me at this distance from that spring and summer. She was a splendid baby, finely developed, perfect in feature, as in form, and grew so rapidly in size and strength that my fashionable friends pointed to her as a lively refutation of my theory that "bottle babies" were never so strong as those who had their natural nourishment. A tedious spell of intermittent fever that laid hold of me, when she was but two months old, deprived her of her rightful nutriment. When she was four months old, we removed for the sununer to Simnybank, and set aside one cow expressly for her use. She throve gloriously until, in September, dentition sapped her vitality, and, as I had dreaded might ensue upon the system of artificial feeding, none of the various substitutes for nature's own provision for the young of the human race, were assimilated by the digestive organs. On the last day of the month she passed into safer hands than ours. I have told the story of our Alice's wonderful life in My Little Love, Now that my mind and nerves have regained a more healthful tone than they could claim during the months when I found a sad solace in the portraiture of our lost darling, I cannot trust myself to dwell at length upon the rich endowments of mind and heart that made the ten-year-old girl the idol of her home, and a favorite with playmates and acquaintances. Although thirty-five years have set that beautiful life among the things of a former generation, I still meet those who recollect and speak of her as one might of a round and perfect star. We, her parents, knew her for what she was, while she was spared to glorify our home. Once and again, we congratulated ourselves that we comprehended the value of our treasure wljile we held it — did not wait for the bright- 418 A BIRTH AND A PASSING ening of the fleeting blessing. When He who bestowed the good and perfect gift recalled her to Himself, we thanked Him, from the sincere depths of broken hearts, that He had deemed us worthy to keep it for Him for almost eleven years. She went from us January 1, 1874. By the time the spring opened, repeated hemorrhages from lungs I had been vain enough to believe were ex- ceptionally strong, had reduced me to a pitiable state of weakness. If I have not spoken, at every stage of the narrative of these late years, of the unutterable goodness of Newark friends and parishioners, it is not that this had abated in degree, or weakened in quality. In all our afSictions they bore the part of comforters to whom our losses were theirs. Strong arms and hearts in our hours of weakness were ever at our call. When it became apparent that my health was seriously impaired, the "people," with one voice, insisted that Doctor Terhune should take a vacation of uncertain length, and go with me to the Adirondacks for as long a time as might be needed to restore me to health and vigor. I had worked hard for the past five or six years. Be- sides my literary engagements, which were many, includ- ing the arrangement of material for, and publication of. Common Sense in the Household, I was deep in church and charitable work, and had a large visiting-list. Little ac- count was made, at that date, of nervous prostration. I should have laughed that little to scorn had it been in- timated by physician or friend that I was a victim to the disorder. I know now, to a certainty, that I was so near the "verge" that a touch would have toppled me over. My very ignorance of the peril may have saved me from the fall. We were four months in the Adirondacks. Except that 28 419 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY the sore lungs drew in the resinous airs more freely than they had taken in the fog-laden salt air of the lowlands, and that I slept better, I could not discern any improve- ment in my condition when the shortening and cooling days called us southward. In July, a telegram from Richmond had informed me of my mother's death. So battered and worn was I that the fuU import of the tidings did not reach my mind and heart, until my brother Herbert sought in the balsam forests relief from the cares of home and parish, and we talked together of our common loss in the quiet woods fringing the lake. I shall never forget the strange chill that froze my heart during one of these talks, when I bethought myself that I now belonged to the '^ passing generation." My mother's going had struck down a bar- rier which kept off the cold blast from the boundless Sea of Eternity. I could not shake off the fancy for many weeks. It recurred to me in wakeful midnights, and in the enforced rest succeeding toilful days, until it threat- ened to become an obsession. Instead of accepting this and other, to me, novel and distressing sensations, as feat- ures of confirmed invalidism, I fought them with all the might of a will that was not used to submission. The next winter was one of ceaseless conflict. I grew insanely sensitive on the subject of my failing health. When, after walking quickly up the stairs, or cUmbing the hill from the lower town to our home, a fit of coughing brought the blood to my lips, I stanched it with my handkerchief and kept the incident to myself. I went into a shop, or turned a corner, to avoid meeting any one who would be likely to question me as to my health, or re- mark upon my pallor. At home, the routine of work knew no break; I attended and presided at charitable and parish meetings, as if nervous prostration were a figment of the hypochondriacal imagination. 420 '^DRIFTING OUT" So well did I play the part to the members of my own household, that my husband himself beUeved me to be on the low, if not the high, road to recovery. He was as busy in his line as I pretended to be in mine, and certain projects affecting the future welfare of his parish were on foot, enlisting his Hvely interest. How far the pious de- ception may have gone, was not to be tested. The active intervention of one plain-spoken woman was the pivotal point of our two hves. I mentioned, some chapters back, the call of one of my best friends and the best neighbor I ever had, on the day of Mr. Lincoln's death. Although we had removed, by medical advice, to the higher part of the city, and a full mile away from her home, she never relaxed her neigh- borly kindness. I had not been aware of her close sur- veillance of myself; still less did I suspect at what con- clusion she had arrived. She had reasons, cogent and sad, for surveillance and conclusions. Several members of her own family had died of consumption, and she was familiar with the indications of the Great White Plague. When she came, day after day, to take me to drive at noon, when, as she phrased it, **the world was properly aired," and, when she could not come, sent carriage and coachman with the request that I would use the conveyance at pleas- ure— I was touched and a Uttle amused at what was, I conceived, exaggerated solicitude for me, whose indisposi- tion was only temporary. Meanwhile, her quick eyes and keen wits were busy. Not a change of color, not a flutter of the breath escaped her, and in the fulness of time she opened her mouth and spoke. My husband had a habit, of many years' standing, of winding up a busy, harassing day by dropping into the home of our whilom neighbors, and having a tranquillizing cigar with the husband. I never expected him home be- fore midnight when he did this, and on one particular 421 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY evening, knowing that he was at the B.'s, and feeling more than usually fatigued, I went to bed at ten. Awak- ened, by-and-by, by the glare of a gas-burner full in my face, I unclosed my eyes upon a visage so full of anxiety, so haggard with emotion, that I started up in alarm. "Don't be frightened!" he said, soothingly. "Nothing has happened. But, is it true that you are so iU as Mrs. B. would have me beUeve? And have I been blind?" The energetic Uttle lady had, as she confessed to me when I charged her with it, freed her burdened mind with- out reserve or fear: " It was time somebody opened his eyes, and I felt my- self called to do it." Within twenty-four hours a consultation of physicians was held. They, too, made no secret of their verdict. The apex of the right lung was gone, and it was doubtful whether any- thing could prevent the rapid waste of both. When Doctor Terhune, ever a stanch beUever in the efficacy of change of air and place, declared his determination to take me abroad, without the delay of a month, two of the Galens affirmed that it would be of no use. I "had not three months of life left to me, under the most favorable circum- stances." The ghastly truth was withheld from me at the time. I was told that I must not spend another winter in Newark, and that we would, if possible, go to the south of Europe for the winter. "To go abroad" had been the dream of my life. Yet, under the anticipation of the labor and bustle of closing the house, perhaps breaking up our home for good, and going forth into a new world, my strength failed utterly. Now that my husband knew the worst, there was no more need of keeping up appearances. I became aware that I had, all along, been holding on to life with will-power that had no physical underpinning. Each day 422 "DRIFTING OUT" found me weaker and more spiritless. The idea that I was clinging to a shred of existence by a thinning thread, seized upon me like a nightmare. And I was tired! tired I TIRED I There came a day when I resolved to let go and drift out. That was the way I put it to my husband when he ap- proached my bed, from which I never arose until nine or ten o'clock, and inquired how I felt. " I am worn out, holding on!" I informed him. " I shall not get up to-day. All that is needed to end the useless fight is to let go and drift out. I shall drift!" He sat down on the side of the bed and looked at me. Not gloomily, but thoughtfully. There was not a sus- picion of sentimentality in the gaze, or in the tone in which he remarked, reflectively: "I appreciate fully what you mean, and how hard it is for you to keep on living. And I say nothing of the in- convenience it would cause your girls and myself were you to die. It is asking a great deal of you—" (bringing out the words slowly and with seeming reluctance). "But if you could bring yourself to live imtil Bert is through col- lege, it would be a great kindness all around. The boy will go to the devil without his mother. Think of it — won't you? Just hold on until your boy is safely launched in life." With that he left me to "think of it." My boy! My baby! Just four years old, on my last birthday! The man-child, of whom I was wont to say proudly that he was the handsomest birthday gift I ever had, and that no young man could ever pay his mother a more delicate and gracious compliment than he had paid me in timing his advent upon December 21st. The baby that had Alice's eyes and brunette coloring! I lay still, staring up at the ceiling, and doing the fastest thinking I 423 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY had ever accomplished. I saw the motherless boy, sensi- tive and high-spirited, affectionate and clever, the butt of rude lads, and misinterpreted by brutish teachers; ex- posed to fiery temptations at school and in college, and yielding to them for the lack of a mother's training and the SBgis of a mother's love. "The boy wiU go to the devil without his mother T' Hard words those, and curtly uttered, but they struck home as coaxings and arguments and pettings could not have done. In half an hour my husband looked in upon me again. I intercepted remark or query by saying: "Will you ring the bell for Rose to help me dress? I have made up my mind to hold on for a while longer." The tactful ruse had given me a new lease of life. One more circumstance connected with our first foreign trip may be worth mentioning here. During the sunmier of 1855, which I spent in Boston and the vicinity, I consulted Ossian Ashley with r^ard to a project that had engaged my mind for some months — viz., indulging my long-cherished desire to visit Europe, and to spend a year there. There was no reason, that I could see, why I should wait longer to put the plan into execution. My parents were living, and were in the prime of healthy maturity; I had plenty of money of my own, and, if I had not, my father would cheerfully defray the expenses of the trip. We discussed the scheme at length, and with growing zest. Then he made the proposition that his wife should accompany me, taking her boy and girl along (she had but two children then), and that he would join us in time to journey with us for a few months, and bring us home. With this well-digested scheme in my mind, I returned to Richmond. There I met with strenuous opposition from an unexpected quarter: 424 A NONPAREIL PARISH ** If you will stay at home and marry me, I guarantee to take you abroad within seven years," was one of the few promises the speaker ever broke to me. Just twenty-one years from the day in which Ossian Ashley and I blocked out the route his wife and I would take on the other side, I looked into his New York office to say that we had engaged passage for Liverpool for October 15th, and that we expected to be absent for two years at the least. His look was something to be remembered. His son was in a Berlin University, and Mrs. Ashley and her two young daughters would sail on September 15th for Liverpool, intending to go thence to Germany^ They would remain there for two years. On the morrow, we had a letter from him, notifying us that they had exchanged the date of sailing for October 15th, and the boat for the City ofBerliUj in which we were to sail. "A trifling delay of twenty-one years!" observed my hus- band, philosophically. "If all human projects came as near prompt fulfilment as that, there would be fewer grumblers." We took with us our three children and my maid, who had been the boy's nurse. In Lciterings in Pleasant PcUhs, written in part while we sojourned abroad, she figures as "The Invaluable." Never was title more justly earned. In that book the events of the next two years are recorded at greater length than they could be set down here. I made no note there of the pain that seemed to pluck out our heartstrings, consequent upon our parting with our Newark parish and fellow-citizens. We had grown with the place, which was a mere village, eighteen years ago, by comparison with the large city we left. Her in- terests were ours. Doctor Terhune was identified with her public and private enterprises, and known by sight and by reputation throughout the town and its environs. His church stubbornly refused to consider his resignation 425 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY as final. He might have an indefinite leave of abeence — two, four, six years — provided he would engage to conoie to them when he could bring me back well. He wisely refused to listen to the proposal. The business quarter of the thriving city was encroaching upon the nei^borhood of the church. It was Ukely to be abandoned as "a resi- dential locaUty" within a few years. In which event, the removal of building and congregation would be a neces- sity. The history of such changes in the character of sec- tions of fast-enlarging cities is familiar to all urbanites. It was essential, in the opinion of the retiring incumbent, that the church should select another pastor speedily, if it would retain its integrity and identity. The love and loyalty that had enveloped us, Uke a vitaliz- ing atmosphere, for almost a score of wmters and summers, wrapped us warmly to the last. There were public re-* ceptions and private house-parties, by the dozen, and "Partings such as press The life from out the heart," — and a gathering on the steamer on sailing-day that made us homesick in anticipation of the actual rending of ties that were living flesh and blood — and we were afloat. As one of the leading men in the church shook my hus- band's hand, in leaving the deck, he pressed into it an envelope. We were well down the bay when it was opened. It contained a supplementary letter of credit of three thousand dollars — ^the farewell gift of a few men whose names accompanied the token. ** Faithful to the end!" murmured the recipient, reading the short list through mists that thickened between his eyes and the paper. ''Had ever another man such a parish?" I answered ''No!" then, emphatically. My response would be the same to-day. 426 XLIV TWO YEARS OVERSEAS — LIFE IN ROME AND GENEVA The main events of the two years spent abroad by our small family, including ''The Invaluable/' as we soon came to call Rose O'Neill, are set down in Loiterings in Pleasant Paths, a chatty volume of travel and sojourn, published soon after our return to America. The private record of those two dozen months would far surpass the book in bulk. It will never be written except as it is stamped upon "the fleshly tables of the hearts" of those who lived and loved, studied, and revelled with us. We had meant to pass the first winter in Paris, but the most beautiful city of the world was unfriendly to my sore and aching lung. After an experiment of six weeks, we broke camp and sped southward. Ten days in the fair Florence I was to learn in after years to love as a second home, repeated the doleful tale of fog, rain, and chill that pierced our bones. An old Richmond friend, with whom I had had many a jolly frolic in my early girlhood, was now Reverend Doctor Taylor, a resident of Rome. After the ex- change of several letters, we adopted his friendly advice that we should give the Eternal City a trial as the refuge we sought — so much less hopefully than at first, that I entreated my husband, on the rainy evening of our arrival in Rome, not to push inquiries further, but to let me go home, and die in comfort there. Doctor Taylor had ordered rooms for us in a family 427 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY hotel well spoken of by Americans, and was at the station to conduct us to our quarters. I was deposited upon a sofa, when my wraps were re- moved, and lay there, fairly wearied out by the railway journey. The room was fireless and carpetless. I could feel the chill of the stone flooring and the bare walls through the blankets in which I was swathed by distressful Rose, who "guessed these Eyetalians hadn't the first notion of what American comfort is!" Three long French casements afforded a full view of leaden, lownstooping skies and straight sheets of rain. When a fire of sticks, besmeared with resin, was coaxed into a spiteful flare, the smoke puffed as spitefully into the room, and drifted up to the ceiUng twenty feet overhead. Invited by my ever- hospitable husband to seat himself near an apology for a cheery hearthstone — less pitiful to him after his ten years' residence in Italy than to us, the new arrivals — our friend fell into social chat of ways and means. The carpet would be down to-morrow; the sun would shine to-morrow; I would be rested to-morrow. He broke off with a genial laugh there, to impart a bit of information we were to prove true to the utmost during the next year: "Everything is ^domano' with Italians. I think the babies are born with it in their mouths. One falls into the habit with mortifying ease." I am afraid I dozed for a few minutes, lulled by the pat- ter of rain and the low-toned talk going on at the far (lit- erally) side of the apartment. A lively visitor used to wonder if we "could see across it on cloudy days without an opera-glass." This was the next sentence that reached me: "Thus far, we have met with discouragement. March is the most trying month to weak lungs in America. And ever since we landed in Liverpool we have had nothing but 428 LIFE IN ROME AND GENEVA March weather. I thmk now we shall push on to Algiers" — glancing ruefully at the murky windows. "Upon one thing I am determined — to find a land where there is no March, as we know the month. For one year I want to secure that for my wife's breathing apparatus." "I know of but one such region." The answer was in the slight drawl natural to the George Taylor I used to know; the speaker stared sombrely into the peevish fire. "And that?" interrogated the other, eagerly. The drawl had now a nasal touch befitting the question : " ' No chilling winds, no poisonous breath Can reach that healthful shore!'" "Heavens and earth, man! ThcU is just where I don't want her to go yet! Nor for many a long year!" The laugh I could not suppress helped to warm and brighten us all. Do any of us suspect how much we owe to the funny side of Ufe? Thus began my Roman winter. With ^'domano'^ came the sunshine and the carpet, and the first of the hundred drives in and about the storied city, that were to bring heaUng and vigor, such as even my optimistic husband had scarcely dared to anticipate. That I am aUve upon this wonderful, beautiful earth at this good hour, I owe, under God, to those divine four months among the Seven Hills. Doctor Terhune had received the appointment to the Chaplaincy of the American Chapel in Rome before we left Paris. He decided to accept it within a week after our arrival in the Eternal City. It was a cosey comer for pastor and flock — that Uttle church in Piazza PoU, belong- ing to an Italian Protestant corporation, and occupied by them for half of each Sunday, by American tourists and transient residents of Rome for the other half. All my memories of the wonderful and bewitching winter are happy. None have a gentler charm than those which re- 429 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY new the scenes of quiet Sunday forenoons when visitors from the dear home-land, who had never before looked upon the faces of their fellow-worshippers, gathered by common consent in the place "where prayer was wont to be made" in their own tongue. There were no strangers in the assembly that Ungered in the tiny vestibule and blocked the aisle when the service was over. The spirit of mutual helpfulness spoke in eye and speech. It should not have been considered singular that those thus con- vened were, almost without exception, refined and edu- cated, and so unlike the commonly accepted type of travel- hng American, that we often commented upon the fact in conferences with famiUar friends. We fehcitated our- selves that we caught the cream of the flow of tourists, that season. "It is a breath of the dear old home-life!" said more than one attendant upon the simple services, where the congregation was kaleidoscopic in outward seeming, the same in spirit. I cannot pass over this period of our foreign Hfe without a tribute to one whose friendship and able co-operation in the work laid to Doctor Terhune's hand, did more than any other one influence to make for him a home in Rome. Dr. Leroy M. Vernon, who subsequently became Dean of the University of Syracuse, in New York State, was the rar^t combination of strength and gentleness I have ever seen. He had been for some years resident in Rome; was an en- thusiastic archaeologist and art-student, speaking Italian with fluency and grace, and thoroughly au fait to the best Uterature of that tongue. From the beginning of their acquaintanceship, the two men fraternized heartily. In the ripening of liking into intimacy, they walked, rode, talked, and studied together. What the association was to the younger of the two, may be imagined by one who has had the privilege of close communion with a beloved 430 LIFE IN ROME AND GENEVA comrade who held the key to the treasure-house one has longed all his life to enter. "The winter in Italy with Vernon was worth more to me than a course in the Academy of Fine Arts, combined with ten years of archaeological lectures from experts," was the testimony of the survivor, twenty years later, when the news of the dean's death was brought to us. They loved each other tenderly to the end of mortal companionship. Who can doubt that it has been renewed in the CSty where eager minds are never checked by physical weak- ness, and aspiration is identical with fulfilment? In mid-May, when the Pincio put on its beautiful gar- ments in the purple flowering of the Judas-trees, and the tawny Tiber rolled between hills of living green, we turned our backs upon what those marvellous months had wrought into our own familiar dwelling-place, and took our sad, reluctant way to Florence. Five weeks there were varied by excursions to Fiesole, Bologna, and Venice. Our next move was to Lucerne. Leaving the children in care of "The Invaluable," we ran up to Heidelberg, joining there our kinspeople, the Ashleys, and travelUng with them leisurely over mountain and through pass, until we brought up in Geneva. We were hardly settled, as we supposed for the season, in the bright little town of Calvin and Voltaire, when a summons came from the American Chapel in Paris for Doctor Terhune's services, pending the absence of the regu- lar incumbent in America, whither he had been summoned by the illness of his mother. We had no thought that the separation of the head from our transplanted family would be a matter of even a few weeks, whereas it lasted for four months. There was visiting back and fro; a reunion at Christmas under the massive crowns of mistletoe, such as grow nowhere else — not even in the Britain of the Druids 431 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY — ^and a memorable New- Year's dmner at the Hotel Metropole, arranged under American auspices, the chief pride of the feast being mince-pies, concocted by Yankee housewives, and misspelled among the French dishes on the gorgeously illuminated menus. In February, my eld- est daughter and myself went to Paris for a fortnight — a tentative trip which proved beyond a question that the air of the city on the Seine was rank poison to the healing lungs. We hurried back to jolly, friendly Geneva, where I could walk five miles per diem in air that was the very elixir of Ufe to my system, physical, mental, and moral. Even the lusty winds from Mont Blanc, and the rough gales that lashed Lake Leman into yeasty ridges for a week at a time, wrought strength, instead of harm. That bodily strength grew apace was but one element in the fulness of content in which we basked throughout the eight months we spent in the lakeside city, behind which the Alps stood in sublime calmness that was in itself tonic and inspiration. We had a pleasant appartement in the Pension Magnenaty directly upon the quay. From our drawing-room windows we looked across the lake upon the Juras, capped with snow, and made beautiful exceedingly all day long, by changeful lights and shadows, reflected in the watere in opaline, prismatic hues we had never seen surpassed, even in Italy. The American colony in Geneva has a stable reputation for intelligence and good-breeding. One expects to find these in university towns abroad, as at home. It may not have been unusually delightful that winter. Perhaps climate and health combined with our peaceful domestic Hfe, to incline us to be more than satisfied with our social environment. Certain it is that the circle of congenial associates, that had widened to take us in, as a part of a harmonious corporate whole, was, to our apprehension, ideally charming. Everybody had some specific work or 432 LIFE IN ROME AND GENEVA pursuit to explain his, or her residence in Geneva. The younger men were in the university, or in preparation for it, with "coaches"; the girls were studying French, Ger- man, and Italian, or painting from nature under such in- structors as Madame Vouga, whose renown as a painter of wild flowera was international. We matrons had a reading- class, enlivened by the membership of our daughters, that met weekly at the house of some one of the party. To it we brought our easels, boards, and paint-boxes, our embroidery, or other fancy-work. One of the girls read aloud for two hours — history, biography, or essay — and at five o'clock what had been read was discussed freely over afternoon tea. A club of young people of both sexes read German, alternately with Italian and French plays, on Wednesday night, in my saloUy I playing chaperon at my embroidery-frame at a side-table, and admitted to the merry chat that went around with coffee and cake, when the reading was concluded. Some of the members of that informal "Club" have made their mark in the large outer world since that care-free, all-satisfying sojourn in what we forgot to call an aUen land, so happily did we blend with the classic influences, lapping us about so softly that we were never conscious of the acclimating process. The tall youth, who submitted meekly (or gallantly) to correction of lingual lapses in his rendering of MoliSre or Wallenstein or Ariosto, from the girl at his elbow — reveng- ing himself by a brisk fire of badinage in honest English after the books were closed — is an eminent metropolitan lawyer, whose income runs up well into the tens of thou- sands; another, a Berlin graduate, is the dignified dean of a law school attached to an American university; another is a collie professor; another, a Genevan graduate, is rising in fame and fortune in an English city ; one, beloved by all, completed a brilliant course at Harvard, and when hope and life were in their prime, laid his noble head down 433 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY for his last sleep in Mount Auburn. The gay girls are staid matrons and mothers now, with sons and daughters of their own, as old as themselves were in that far-off, care- free time. I have written "care-free" twice upon one page, and because I can conjure up no other phrase that so aptly describes what that veritable arbor on the Hill EHflSculty we call "Life,'* was to me. Household cares were an un- known quantity in the well-conducted pension. Our breakfast of French rolls, coffee, tea, boiled ^gs, honey, and, for the younger children, creamy milk, was brought to our saUm every morning. A substantial luncheon (the dijeuner ii la fowrcheUe) was served in the pension saUe h manger at one, and a dinner of six or seven coiuses, at seven. Our fellow-guests were, for the most part, un- objectionable; a fair proportion were agreeable and de- sirable acquaintances. About one-third were Americans; another tUrd were Enghsh; the rest were Italians, Ger- mans, Russians, and French. A table at one end of the room was assigned to ErigUsh-speaking boarders, and we soon made up a pleasant clique that did not, however, exclude several foreigners. Thus we persisted in calling them to ourselves. There were excursions every few days to places of interest within easy reach. Coppet, the home and burial-place of Madame de Stael; the Villa Diodati, where Byron and Shelley lived and wrote; Femey the chateau from which Voltaire wrote letters to the magnates of the world, and within the walls of which he entertained all the famous wits and many of the beauties of his stir- ring times; Chillon, immortalized by Bonnivard and the poem founded upon his captivity — were some of the mem- orable haunts with which frequent visits made us familiar. Exercise was a luxury in the ozone-fraught air, fresh every morning, and work was the natural result of the abounding vitality thus engendered. In no other quarter 434 LIFE IN ROME AND GENEVA of the globe have I found such sustained vigor of mental and physical forces as during our residence in Switzerland. I record the fact gratefully, and as a possible helpful sug- gestion to other sufferera from the overstimukting cU- mate and prevalent energy of American life. Rome was a gracious rest; Geneva was upbuilding. It was a positive wrench to the heartstrings to leave her in May, and take our course leisurely northward. The summer was given, and happily, to England, our headquarters being, successively, the Isle of Wight, Leam- ington, and Brighton. Late in September, we sailed for New York. 29 XLV 8UNNTBANK — A NEW ENGLAND PARISH — "MT BOYS*' — TWO "stakred" names With no more idea as to our permanent abiding-place than had the Father of the Faithful, wheii he turned his back upon Ur of the Chaldees, and his face toward a land he knew not of, "still joume)dng toward the south," in obedience to daily marching orders — we sought, upon reaching our native shores, the one pied-h^erre left to us on the continent. Sunnybank had been left in charge of the gardener, who, with his comely English wife and four children, had now occupied the lodge at the gate of our domain for ten years. He was Pompton-bom and bred, and so unro- mantic in sentiment and undemonstrative in demeanor, that we were not prepared to behold a triumphal wreath on the gate when we drove into the grounds. No human creature was visible until, winding through the grove that hides the house from the highway, we saw the whole fam- ily collected about the door. All were in holiday garb; wreaths of goldenrod hung in the windows, and above the porch was tacked a scroll with the word *' Welcome" wrought upon it in the same flowers. Yet more amazed were we when, as Doctor Tcrhune stepped from the car- riage, Conrad knelt suddenly and embraced the knees of his employer, with an inarticulate shout of joy, tears raining down his tanned cheeks. *'Just Uke a scene in an English play!" commented 436 SUNNYBANK Christine, afterward. " But not a bit like what one would expect in Pompton, New Jersey, U. S. A." The unexpectedness of it all, especially the mvoluntary outbreak in a man who had never seen a play in his Ufe, and despised "'foolishness" of whatsoever description, moved us to answering softness, and brought the first rush of home-gladness we had felt since landing. For, to be honest, I confess that none of us were as yet reconciled to exchanging the life we had luxuriated in for the past two years — ^full, rich, and varied — ^for a toilful routine of parish duties, we knew not where. Without confiding the weakness to the others, each of us, as we owned subse- quently with a twinge of shame, had been wofully dashed in spirit by the circumstances attending our arrival. Clarence Ai^ey had met us upon the wharf, his mother and sisters being at their country-place; the day was un- seasonably warm for late September, and New York was in its least attractive out-of-season dress and mood. The docks were dirty, and littered with trunks, crates, and boxes; the custom-house officers were slow, and most of them sulky. We parted on the wharf with a dear friend from Virginia, who had travelled with us for nearly a year, and had taken return passage in the same ship. She had a home to which to go. We felt Uke pilgrims and strangers in a foreign land. As the carriage into which we had packed ourselves threaded its way through the grimy purUeus of the lower city, I fotmd myself saying over mentally the unpatriotic doggerel I used to declare was unworthy of any true American: ''The streets are narrow and the buildings mean — Did I, or fancy, leave them broad and clean?" Then, the fields and roads past which the train (yclept "an accommodation") bumped and swung, were ragged and dusty; the hedge-rows were unkempt, the trees un- 437 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY trimmed. Fresh as we were from the verdure of Englkh parks, the shaven lawns, and blossoming hedges that make a garden-spot of the tight little island we proudly recog- nized as our Old Home, the effect of that sultry afternoon was distinctly depressing. Our lakeside cottage, the one nook in all the broad land we could call ''Home," on this side of the water, was another disappointment. Mrs. Hay- cock and her girls had wrought zealously to make it com- fortable, and even festive. The wee rooms (as they looked to us) were shining clean; flowers were set here and there, white curtains, white bedspreads, and bright brasses be- tokened loving soUcitude for our welfare and contentment, and the good woman had ready a hot supper, enriched wiHi such Pompton dainties as she knew we loved. "The In- valuable" bustled over luggage, and added finishing touches to bedrooms and nursery. I am siu^ she was the only one of the returned exiles who was really happy that night. I am thus frank in relating our experiences, because I believe them to be identical with those of a majority of tourists, upon resuming home-habits in their native country. After excitement and novelty comes the ebb-tide of re- action for the bravest and the most loving. Home is home, but readjustment precedes real enjoyment of the old scenes and ways. We were hardly settled in the nest before we paid a promised visit to Richmond. There were resident there, now, three families of the clan. My brother Horace and the noble wife with whom my intimacy continued un- shadowed by a cloud of distrust until her death in 1894; my sister Myrtle, more my daughter than sister, her husband, and the boy who was my husband's namesake; and Percy, the youngling of the brood, with a dainty little spouse and their first-bom son — made up the group that welcomed us to dear old Richmond in early December. To this was added, a week or so later, our eldest sister, 438 A NEW ENGLAND PARISH who journeyed all the way from her Missouri home to join in the greetings to the whilom wanderers. We had one more Christmas-week together — ^the last that was to col- lect the imbroken band under one roof-tree. Then Mea went westward, and we took our way toward the north, leaving Christine to make her d^but in society under the auspices of her imdes and aimts, and where her mother had first tasted the pleasures of young-ladyhood. It was, as I wrote to her, history repeating itself, and that I felt as if I had taken root again in my native soil, and was budding anew into a second springtime. In May I wrote to the girl whose first winter "out" had, thanks to the affectionate adoption of imdes and aunts, fulfilled her rosiest dreams: "Do you recollect that I quoted to you at oiu: parting in January, what a quaint old lady said to me in my girlhood: 'My dear, you may be an angel some day! You will never be yoimg again. Therefore, make the most of youth.' "I paraphrase her counsel now, and to you: Make the most of your present freedom, for you are going to be a pastor's daughter again. As you know, your father has been preach- ing hither and yon all winter, and has had four calls to as many different churches: two in New Jersey, one in New Haven, and, lastly, in Springfield, Massachusetts. For rea- sons that seem good and sufficient to him, he has accepted the last-named invitation, and he will enter upon the duties connected therewith, this month. "The 'Old First' is the most ancient church in Springfield, if not the oldest in the Connecticut Valley. It has had an honorable history, in more than two hundred years of exist- ence. If you have read Doctor Holland's Bay Path, you will recollect Mr. Moxon, the then pastor of this church. Per- haps because I have read the book, and maybe because my old Massachusetts grandmother (a Puritan of the Puritans, and preciously uncomfortable to live with, she wasO talked to me of the straitlaced notions, works, and wajrs of the 439 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 'orthodox' New-Englander. whieh she thought 'blazed' the only road to heaven — I have an idea that we will find the atmosphere of Springfield very different from any other in which we have lived. If I am right, it will be a change even from Presbyterian Richmond. However this may be, I counsel you to enjoy the remaining weeks of your stay there to the utmost." If I were called upon to describe what was the real "atmosphere" of the loveliest of New England towns, in which we lived for five busy years, I should say that it was ''stratified," and that in a fashion that puzzled us griev- ously up to the latest day of our sojourn. Public spirit of the best and most enlightened sort; refinement and taste in art and literature ; social manners and usages that were metropolitan, and neighborliness which made the stranger and sojourner welcome and at ease — all this was *'shot," if I may so express it, with strata of bigotry; with stubborn convictions that the holders thereof were right, and the insignificant residue of the world utterly wrong, and with primitive modes of daily life and speech, that never ceased to surprise and baffle us. Yet we flattered ourselves that we knew something of the world and the inhabitants thereof! In the process of acclimation we had occasion, if we had never had it before, to be thankful for the unfailing and robust sense of humor that had stood our friend in many straits which would else have been annoyances. Before long, we recognized that certain contradictory phases of conduct and language, hard to comprehend and hard to endure, had their keynote in what one of the best of my new friends once aptly defined to me as *'an agony of in- communicableness,'* inherent in the New-Englander's com- position. He may have drawn the strain through nearly three centuries from his early English ancestry. I have seen the same paradox in the Briton of this generation. 440 "MY BOYS" Of one such man I said^ later in life, when I was alone with my sick son, thoussmds of miles from home: "The ice was slow in breaking up ; but it gave way all at once, and there was warm water under it.'' "Agony of incommunicableness !" Over and over, dur- ing those five years, I blessed the man who put that key into my hand. I cannot better illustrate what I am trying to explain than by relating what is, to me, one of the most precious and altogether satisfactory memories connected with our Springfield experiences. Pour months after our removal to the beautiful city, I received a formal request (everything up to that time had a smack of formality to my apprehension) that I would take charge of a young men's Bible-class, the teacher of which had left the town. The application was startUng, for not one of the young fellows had ever called on me, or evinced other consciousness of the insignificant fact of my exist- ence than was implied in a grave salutation at the church- door and on the street. After consultation with my hus- band I accepted the position, and on the next Sabbath was duly inducted into office by the superintendent. That is, he took me to the door of the class-room and announced : "Mrs. Terhune, young gentlemen, who will conduct your class in the place of Mr. L., resigned." I walked up the room to face eight bearded men, the youngest twenty - two years of age, drawn up in line of battle at the far end. I bowed and said *• Good-afternoon," in taking the seat and table set for me in front of the Une. They bowed in silence. I began the attack by dis- claiming the idea of "teaching" them, concealing as best I could my consternation at finding men where I had looked for lads. I asked "the privilege of stud)ang with them," and thanked them for the compliment of the in- vitation to do this. Then I opened the Bible and delivered 441 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY a familiar running lecture upon the lesson for the day. Not a question was asked by one of the dumb eight, and not a comment was made at the close of the ''exercises" upon what had been said. I went through the miserable form of shaking hands with them all as we separated, and carried home a thoroughly discouraged spirit. By the fol- lowing Sunday I hit upon the idea of calling upon each student to read a reference text, as it occurred in the course of the lecture, and I took care there should be plenty of them. That was the first crack in the ice. Encouraged by the sound of their own voices, the young fellows put a query or two, and I used these as nails upon which to hang observations not indicated in the "lesson-papers.'' Next week there were sixteen in line. Before the first year was out there were forty, and they gave a dramatic entertain- ment in a neighboring hall, which netted a sum lai^e enough to enlarge the class-room to double the original size. They decorated it with their own hands, and I was with them every evening thus employed. Still, there was never a syllable to indicate that this was anything but a business venture. I love boys with my whole heart, and I had said this and more in their hearing, eliciting no response. At the end of the second year, when there were fifty members in the class, one of the eldest of the number re- moved from Springfield to a distant city. One of the great- est surprises of my life was in the form of a letter I had the week after he had bidden me good-bye as coolly as if he had expected to see me* next Sunday as usual. He began by telling me how often he had wished he could express what those Sunday afternoons had been in his life. He ''feared that I might have thought him unre- sponsive and ungrateful." *'If indeed you ever troubled yourself to bestow more than a passing thought upon this one of the many to whom 442 • < MY BOYS" you have ministered," he went on, **I don't believe you ever noticed that I let nobody else take the seat next to you on the left? I used to go very early to make sure of it. I shall unite with the church here next Sunday. You have a right to know of a purpose, formed weeks ago, in that class-room— the most sacred spot to me on earth." He wrote to me of his marriage two years later, then of the coming of his first-bom son. About once a year I heard from him, and that he was prospering in business and happy in his home. Ten years ago I had a paper con- taining a marked obituary-notice bearing his name. The same story, with variations that do not affect the general purport of the class-history, might be repeated here. I hear of *'my boys" from all parts of the world. All are gray-haired now who have not preceded their grate- ful leader to the Changeless Home. There were sixty-six of them when I told them, one Sun- day afternoon, five years after our first meeting, that Doc- tor Terhune had accepted a pressing call to a Brooklyn church, and that I must leave them. The news was abso- lutely unexpected, and a dead silence ensued. Then one fellow, who had been received into the church with ten others of our class, at the preceding communion season, arose in his place: "Is there anything we could do to keep him — and you?" he asked, huskily. "Has anybody done anything to make your residence here unpleasant? If so " — stammer- ing now, and a defiant scowl gathering upon his hand- some face — "Say! can't we fellows just clean them oiUy and keep you and the Doctor?" It was impossible not to laugh. It was as impossible to hold back the tears at the odd demonstration of the " boys' " claim to membership in the Church Militant. He may have forgotten the upgushing of the warm water under the ice. I shall never lose the memory. 443 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Nor yet of the farewell reception to which the boys rallied in force, excluding all other guests from the pleasant class-room we had built, and in which I spent some of the happiest hours vouchsafed to me in the city I had called "a cold-storage vault," before I got under the ice of English reserve and Puritanical self-consciousness — en- gendered, as I am fain to beUeve, by the rigid self- examination enjoined by the founders of State and Church. In those rude and strenuous days, self-examination took the place, with tortured, naked souls, of the penances prescribed in the communion they had left to find "Freedom to worship God," and "A church without a bishop, A §tate without a king." The class-room was wreathed with flowers; there was music by the boys, and social chat; a collation of their own devising: then the eldest of the band, a married man for years, goodly of form and feature, and with a nature as lovely as his face, arose to make a farewell "presentation address." He never finished it, although it began bravely enough. The handsome set of brasses he passed over to me were labelled, as he showed me, **From Your Boys." "You will have another class in your new home," the speaker broke into the carefully prepared peroration to say, *' but please let us always call ourselves, * Your Boys!' " They are that still, and they will be evermore! A finer, more loyal body of young men it would be hard to find in New England, or elsewhere. It has happened so often that I have come to look for it, that, on steamer or train, on the street or in hotel, I am accosted by a middle-aged man — invariably highly respectable in appearance — with — "I beg your pardon. Let me recall myself to your memory. I belonged to your Bible-class in Springfield." 444 TWO '^STARRED" NAMES If, as usually happens, he adds to his name, "One of your boys" — ^the ashes are blown away from the embers of long-past acquaintanceship. The talk that ensues invari- ably emphasizes the pleasing fact that, if there were a black sheep in our fold, he has, up to date, escaped detection. God bless each and every one of them ! I cannot close the chapter that has to do with our Springfield days, without paying a brief tribute to two who played important parts in the drama of our family Ufe. Both have passed from mortal vision, and I may, there- fore, name them freely. The house built for us by a parishioner in the pleasantest part of the city, was in the immediate neighborhood of the homestead of the late Samuel Bowles, the well-known pro- prietor of the Springfield Republican. The house was now occupied by his widow and family. To the warm friend- ship that grew up between Mrs. Bowles and myself I owe more than I can trust my pen to express here. From our earliest meeting, the "middle wall of partition " of stranger- hood ceased to be to either of us. Hers, as I often reminded her, was the one and only house in the place into which I could drop, between the lights, unannounced, when the humor seized me, and without putting on hat or coat. The ascent of the half-block of space dividing our doors is ever associated in my mind with the gloaming and moon- light, and slipping away from duties to relax thought and tongue, for one calming and sweetening half-hour, in the society of one "who knew." It was not alone that, as one who had been bom, and had lived out her girlhood in the Middle States, her range of ideas and sympathies was not Umited by the circle of hills binding Springfield into a close corporation. Her great, warm heart took in the homesick stranger that I was, for many a month after transplantation, and gave me a comer of my very own. She was a safe, as well as an appreciative listener, and 446 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY gave me many a hint respecting my new environment that wrought out good to me. Her fine sense of humor was another bond that drew us together. The snug sitting- room, looking upon the quiet street, up which the shadows gathered slowly on summer evenings, and where the sleigh- bells jingled shrilly in the early winter twilight, echoed to bursts of laughter better befitting a pair of school-girls than two matrons who were both on the shady side of fifty. I was in the earthly Jerusalem, with my son, when the gates of the Celestial City opened to receive her faithful, loving spirit. I am sure that, as Bunyan affirmed when another travel-worn pilgrim entered into rest, "All the bells of the city rang for joy." In April, 1884, our eldest daughter became the wife of James PVederick Herrick, one of the Republican's editorial staff. We left her in Springfield when, in the same year, we returned to the Middle States to take up our abode for the next twelve years in Brooklyn. We could not have left her in safer, tenderer keeping. A brother-editor said of him once that he "had a heart of fire in a case of ice." The simile did not do justice to the gentle courtesy and dignity that lent a touch of old -school courtliness to manner and address. In all the intimate association of the next ten years, I never saw in him an act, or heard a word that approximated unkindness or incivility. I wrote him down then, as I do now, as in all respects, the thorough gentleman in what makes the much-abused word a badge of honor. His ideals were high and pure; his life, private and professional, above reproach. "The stuff martyrs and heroes are made of," said one who knew him well and long. He would have died for the truth; he would have laid down his life with a smile for his wife and children. Such harmonious blending of strength and sweetness as were found in the Ufe of this man — modest to a fault, 446 TWO ''STARRED" NAMES and resolute to a proverb — I have never seen in an- other. "/ have fought the good fight'^ is the wording of his epitaph. I could have wished to add, *' Of whom the world was not worthy.^' In 1886 he received an appointment that brought him to New York. There he yielded up a blameless Ufe in 1893. If his last illness were not the direct result of steady, unremitting work, it is yet true that he wrought gallantly after the fatal fever fastened upon him, standing patiently in his lot until prostrated by delirium. I shall part with reason and memory before I forget that his last thought was of the young wife kneeling at his pil- low, and that the dying eyes, in losing their hold upon earth, committed her to me. XLVI RETURN TO MIDDLE STATES — THE HOLY LAND — MY FRIENDS THE MISSIONARIES — TWO CONSULS IN JERUSALEM In the sketch of my husband's life-work, written by a faithful co-laborer in the vineyard which is the world, and appended to this story, his reasons for returning to the Middle States are briefly given. As I near the latter chapters of my record, I am hampered by the necessity of treating cautiously of persons and incidents too near the present day to be spoken of with the freedom time made justifiable in earlier reminiscences. Those twelve years in the City of Churches were crowded with events of more or less moment. They were busy, and not unhappy years. Our home-group, reduced to four by the marriage of our eldest daughter, was made still smaller by the marriage of her sister on March 5, 1889, to Frederic Van de Water, of Brooklyn. The choice was wise, and the union has been one of rare blessedness. "In-laws" have no terrors in our circle. No sinister significance attaches to the term •* mother-in-law." The adopted sons were loyal and loving to the parents of their wives. Not a cloud darkens the memory of our inter- course. The only obstacle to Belle's marriage was thus stated in whimsical vexation by her father: '*It is hard that, when there are said to be fifteen hun- dred proper names in the English language, my girls must select men who have the same. It leads to no end of con- fusion!" Our boy, now grown into an athletic six-footer, was 448 RETURN TO MIDDLE STATES graduated from Columbia University in 1893. We three had lived in great peace and contentment during his col- lege course. We talk often, and wistfully, of those four years of church-work, social duties, literary tasks, and aca- demic studies, which fiUed hands and heads. We spent our winters in town. Sunnybank grew to be more and more a home in the summer months. It was Uke a return to the time when our own babies filled house and verandas with merry prattle, and our hearts made music ; for there were, at the date I name, four boys to repeat the history for the proud grandparents. But for the great sorrow that had broken up Christine's happy home in February, and brought her back to us with her two bo3rs, and the birth, a fort- night thereafter, of Belle's second boy, the years slipped by brightly, without other signal event until ** Bert's" graduation at the June Commencement. There was, for me, one notable exception to the gentle flow. It was, I think, in mid-June, that I had a letter from the proprietor of the Christian Herald, a religious paper of wide circulation, asking me to write a serial that should run through six months' issues of that periodical. Just at that time my mind was working upon a projected story (published afterward in book-form under the caption The Royal Road), and this seemed a promising medium for cir- culating it among the classes I wished to reach. Accord- ingly, I called at the Ohristian Herald office to discuss the plan. My brief and satisfactory interview with the man- aging editor over, I arose to go when he invited me to step into the adjoining room, where the proprietor would like to speak with me for a minute. I was courteously received, and final arrangements for the publication of the serial were made. I was again on the point of departure, when the proprietor directed my attention to a new and hand- some map of the city of Jerusalem, spread out upon his desk, inquiring, in an ofThand way: 440 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY "Have you ever visited the Holy Land?" '* Never," I replied, adding involuntarily, " It has been one of my dearest dreams that I might go some day." "It would be a very easy matter for you to fulfil the wish," in the same easy, unpremeditated tone. "Easy?" I repeated. "Yes; in my dreams!" "In the flesh, and in reality. Will you sit down for a moment, please?" He proceeded then, in less time than it will take me to write it, to unfold a plan in which I soon saw, although he did not say it, that the serial story, my call, and the map of Jerusalem, conspicuously disfdayed on his desk, were so many stages of a carefully concerted scheme. He wanted me to go to Syria, with the express purpose of in- vestigating the condition of the women of that land, and getting an insight into their domestic life, and at the same time incidentally gleaning material for sketches of historical localities — ^in short, to gather material for such "familiar talks" as I had held with American women upon household and social topics. These were to be supplied to his paper, week by week. His provision for travelling expenses would include those of my husband, or any other escort I might select. The sum he named as remuneration for the work was handsome, but this circumstance made a slight impression upon me at the time. Our dialogue ended in my promise to take the matter into consideration, and to let him have my decision in a day or two. I hope he never guessed at the whirl of emotions lying back of a sober face and calm demeanor. I recollect walking out into the bustling streets as if I trod upon air, my head ringing as if nerves were taut harpstrings, my heart throbbing tumultuously. I scarcely knew where I was, or whither I was going. Something, somewhere — it seemed in the upper ether, yet so near that I heard words and music — was singing rapturously: 450 THE HOLY LAND '^ Jerusalem the Golden I Methinks each flower that blows, And every bird a-singing Of that sweet secret knows. I know not what the flowers May feel, or singers see, But all these summer raptures Are prophecies of thee I" It was my favorite hymn, but it was nothing in me that sang it then. "One of my dearest dreams I" — ever since, as a child, I had fed a perfervid imagination upon Bible stories, and chanted David's psalms aloud in the Virginia woods, to tunes of my own making. One of them broke into the jubilant Jerusalem the Golden pealing in the ether over- head: ''My feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem!'' Was I, then, so near the fulfilment of the heavenly dream? We sailed for the Holy City in September — ^my big boy and I. Doctor Terhune could not go, and we had always promised that our son should have a foreign trip when his university work was done. The opportunity was auspi- cious. Each of us told as much of the story of the memorable seven months abroad as we were willing the public should read — I, in the letters published first in the Christian Her- aid, subsequently in book-form, under the title. The Home of the Bible; Bert, in a smaller volume, Syria from the Saddle, a breezy chronicle of a young man's impressions of what he saw and heard while in Syria. I considered it then, and I think it now, a remarkable book, coming, as it did, from the pen of a boy of twenty-one. He celebrated 30 451 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY his majority in the desert-places between Damascus and Jerusalem. Two or three incidents, eventful forever to us, may be mentioned briefly in this personal narrative. I am not a believer in dreams. I do attach importance to ''coincidences/' holding some that have fallen into my life in reverence the more sincere because I cannot explain them away. One night in Paris, where we spent a fortnight on the way to Syria via Egjrpt, I had a long and distressing dream of canying a poor ailing baby along dark streets and over fences and fields. My arms ached under the weight of the limp body ; my heart and ears ached with the piteous waiUng of the sufferer, for whom I could do nothing. I awoke in the morning, utterly worn out in nerve, and de- pressed unreasonably in spirit. That forenoon I wrote my daughter: "It was an ugly, gruesome dream. Your aunt Myrtle would see in it an omen of evil. She says that a death in the family has always followed her dream of the sick baby she cannot put out of her arms. It is an old superstition. You may recollect that Charlotte Bronte alludes to it in Jane Eyre, I have so such dreads. Yet I find myself wishing that I had not had that 'visitation.' It has left a very un- pleasant impression on my mind — a sort of bad taste in my mental mouth. I am thankful that it came to me, and not to Myrtle." My sister had been ill before we left home, but was con- valescent when we sailed, and a letter from her husband awaited us in Paris, conveying the cheerful assurance of her confirmed improvement in health and strength, and bidding me have no further anxiety on her account. It was, therefore, a terrible shock when a letter, forward- ed from place to place, overtook us in Northern Syria, in- 452 THE HOLY LAND forming us that my dear little ''sister -daughter/' as she loved to call herself, had died on the night of November 3, 1893 — the very night through whioh the "gruesome'* dream had pursued me from midnight until dawn* Chris- tine wrote in reply: "When we read your letter of that date, Belle's eyes met mine in silent, awesome questioning. Merely a coincidence? Perhaps, but strange!" I can add no other comment. My second eventful incident hinges upon a short severe illness that prostrated mc, the third day after we landed in Beirut from the steamer we had taken at Port Said, I had already made acquaintance with President Bliss and some of the professors in the American College, crowning one of the heights of the beautiful town, and I sent at once for Doctor Schaufflcr, whom I had known slightly in Springfield, Massachusetts. On the fourth day of my illness I asked him, plaintively: "Do you know there is not a woman-servant in tUs hotel? The person who 'does' my room has a long white beard and wears a skull-cap. Bert calls the photograph he has made of the nondescript: *Lefemme de chawbrel' It is very funny — and rather dreadful I" "The belov^ physician" eyed me in thoughtful com- passion. "We are so used to that sort of thing here that we rarely think of it as out of the way. No decent woman would take a position in a house where she must work with men. She would lose caste and reputation, forthwith. Hence, 'lefemme de chambreJ I can see that it must be intensely disagreeable to you." There the matter dropped. I was still in bed when, at four o'clock that afternoon, he paid his second visit. He wasted no time in apology or solicitation. His carriagie 4fi3 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY was at the door, packed with cushions. I must be taken out of bed, rolled up in rugs and shawls, carried down- staiiB by my son and my dragoman, deposited in the car- riage and driven up to his house. "Where there are women-servants," he added, laugh- ingly, "and where a cordial American welcome awaits you. Doctor and Mrs. Webster, of Haifa, are visiting us, and you will be well looked after. And Mrs. Bliss is coining over to drink afternoon tea with you. So, we have no time to lose." That was the beginning of ten days of such luxurious rest and continuous petting as I had never expected to find out of my native land and my own home. I rallied fast under the new conditions of invalidism. In two days, I left my bed and lay, for most of the forenoon and all the latter part of the day, upon a luxurious lounge in the square central hall, from which doors led on all sides to the other parts of the house. The ceilings were twenty feet above me; the casements opened down to the tiled floors; palms, and other tall plants rounded the comers of the hall, and vases of cut flowers filled the cooled air with fragrance. As I lay, I could see trees laden with oranges and tangerines in the gardens below; hedges of cactus and geraniums, the latter in the fulness of scarlet bloom, intersecting the grounds of the college and the neighboring dwellings. The colony of President and pro- fessors was one united family, and they took me — sick, and a stranger — into the heart of the household. I recall, with pride, that not a day passed that did not bring me a call from Doctor Bliss, the genial and honored head of the noble institution, while Mrs. Bliss's neighborly attentions were maternally tender. I had not been at the hotel in the lower town for an hour before she appeared, laden with flowers and an offering of ** American apples, such as one cannot buy in the East." The next day, and for every 454 MY FRIENDS THE MISSIONARIES day following, before I>octor SchaufBer carried me off with benevolent violence, she sent to me home-made bread, having heard (as was true) that the hotel bread was gen- erally sour. I looked forward with especial pleasure to the afternoon- tea hour. The gathering about my lounge would have graced any sedan where wits do congregate. The silver- haired President never failed to put in an appearance; Doctor Post, the distinguished senior of the medical pro- fessors, and his charming daughter, afterward my cicerone in the visits I paid to Syrian women in their own homes; Doctor and Mrs. Eddy, whose daughter was just then sur- prising the social world of Constantinople by taking her degree in medicine, and with honor; the Jessup brothers and their families, known to all readers of church and charitable Uterature by their achievements in the mission- field; Doctor and Mrs. Porter, in whose house we had celebrated Thanksgiving Day the evening succeeding our arrival in Beirut, singing, at the close of the joyous festivities, "My country, 'tis of thee,** with all the might of our lungs, and with hearts aglow with patriotism distance and expatriation could not abate — these, with a group of younger professors, tutors, and winsome girls, were the ministering genii that buoyed me speedily back to robust health. They gave me a concert, a night or two before our parting. The Ught in the great hall was a pleasant chiaro-oscuro, the music-room opening out of it being brilliantly iUumi- nated for the performere upon piano, vioUn, violonceUo, guitar, and flute. From my sofa I had a full view of them all, and through one long window a moon, but four days old, looked at us through the orange-trees. Is it strange that the chapter in my Home of the Bible, headed "My Friends the Missionaries/' was penned with grateful memories too tender for speech? 466 MARION fiARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY We had in Jerusalem another true, hearty, and aflFeo- tionate home-weloome. Dr. Selah Merrill, the well-known archseologist and Oriental soholat*, had then been United States Consul at Jerusalem for nine years. The change of administration in Washington had put in his place Rev. Edwin Wallace, and we found both consuls still in residence upon our arrival. It was a happy combination for us. The consuls and their wives were settled in the one good hotel in the city — ^the "Grand New" — to which our incompar- able dragoman, David Jamal, conducted us. We frater- nised at sight. Doctor Merrill and his successor were upon most amicable terms, the senior and late incumbent doing all in his power to lessen the labors of the novice. The fatherly kindness of one, and the gentle deference of the junior, were beautiful to behold. We two travellers shared the advantages enjoyed by Mr. Wallace in his first visits to memorable places in the new home, of which he has written eloquently in his book — Jerusalem the Holy. I shall always esteem as one of the rarest bits of good-fortime which befell us in our wanderings in storied lands, that Doctor Merrill was emphatically our *' guide, philosopher, and friend," during our stay in Southern Syria. He, it was, who made out our itinerary when he could not con- duct us personally, as he did in our expeditions in and about Jerusalem. I reckon the four, who made the City of the Great King home to us, among the friends to whom my obligations are not to be described in* words. And what royally "good times'* we had together! Had it been in the power of Mrs. Merrill and Mrs. Wallace to spare me every possible inconvenience of tent-life and Eastern transit, I should have been lapped in luxury throughout our tour of village and desert. Of these I have written elsewhere, and at length. XLVII LUCERNE — GOOD SAMARITANS AND AN ENGLISHMAN — A LECTURE TOUR — OHIOAN HOSPrTALITY — ^MR. AND MRS. MCKINLEY Our homeward journey was performed in a delicious, leisurely fashion. We had worked hard for three months, collecting material for our prospective books. Once and again, when we would fain have had heart and imagination free to take in, at their full value, associations connected with, and emotions excited by, this or that sacred spot — did we remiiid ourselves of the plaint of the poet, who could never give himself up to the enjoyment of nature, because he saw, stamped upon sea and sky, mountain and river, in huge capitals — "material.*' Neither of us meant to write up Egypt, Rome, Florence, Switzerland, and the British Isles. With very much the joyous sense of relief with which children scamper home, when school is out, we roamed and lingered to our hearts' content for the ten weeks that were left of our vacation. We fell in with congenial travelling companions in Egypt, joining parties for the run through Greece and Lower Italy. In Florence, we were reunited to friends with whom we had crossed the ocean, and did not part from them until, in Lucerne, they were summoned to Paris, while we planned a stay of some days in romantic regions endeared to us by former experiences, when the **Boy" of Loitering in Pleas- ant Paths was too young to appreciate the grandeur of mountain passes, snow-capped heights, aaure lakes^ and historic cantons. 457 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Anticipation received a cruel blow in the beautiful lake- side city in which we had passed the heart of a memorable summer, fifteen years before. My son was stricken down with appendicitis in Lucerne, and I knew not a human creature beside himself in all Switzerland I By rare good- fortune, I recalled the name of a physician with whom my husband had become acquainted in our former stay here, and sent for him at once. He had retired from the active duties of his profession, resigning his practice to his son, who was, I learned, at the head of the hospital in Lucerne. To my infinite relief, he informed me that there would be no need of an operation unless more serious symptoms should intervene. I subjoin the addenda to the verdict for the benefit of those whom it may concern: "You Americans are too fond of the knife! It is not alwajrs necessary to cut out an infiamed appendix. In my hospital we have had four hundred cases of appendi- citis within the last ten years, and have operated just forty times! The patients recovered without the use of the knife." If I had ever leaned, never so slightly, to misanthropic judgment of my fellow-mortals, I must have been shamed out of them by the incidents of the next fortnight of cruel anxiety, and what would have been unutterable loneliness but for the exceeding and abounding charity of the strangers by whom I was surrounded. "It is my opinion," pronounced the patient, when, on Easter morning, his chamber was fragrant with flowers and brightened by cards and messages of cheer and sym- pathy— "my decided and well-grounded conviction — that this Canton is peopled by the posterity of the Grood Samari- tan. Even the innkeeper has taken a hand in the mission to the traveller on the Jericho Road!" The last remark was drawn out by the opening of a great box of violets, richly purple, and so freshly gathered 458 GOOD SAMARITANS AND AN ENGLISHMAN that the odor floated into the air, like clouds of incense, with the lifting of the cover. And, as a sudden thought struck him: ''Have the blasted Britishers spoken yet?" "No I Their conversation is confined to their own party." I had brought the like report every day for a week. "The blasted Britishers," for whom he had no milder name, were a young man, his wife, and sister, who were at the end of my table and my nearest neighbors. The hotel was very full. A fair sprinkling of Americans, a few English, and a mixture of French, Swiss, Germans, and Italians made up a crowd that changed daily in some of its features. From the proprietor down to the porter, there was not an employ^ or official connected with the house who did not inquire, whenever I showed myself in hall or salle h manger, "how the young gentleman was getting on?" and express the hope of his early recovery. The entire working-stafif of the Hotel de Cygne was at our feet, and the guests in the house were assiduous in offers of assistance and assurances of sympathy. Strangers inquired across the table as to the patient's condition, and if there were any way in which they could be of service. The "B. B/s" — as the object of this kindly solicitude contemptuously abbreviated the appellation — held aloof, apparently ignorant of my existence, much less of the cause of inquiry and response. They chatted together pleasantly, in subdued, refined tones betokening the gentle- folk they were, but, for all the sign they gave of conscious- ness of the existence of the afflicted Americans, they might have been — ^to quote again from the indignant youth above-stairs — "priest and Levite, rolled into one mass of incarnate selfishness." So matters went on until next to the last day we spent in Lucerne. My patient was on his feet in his room, and 459 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY had been down-stairs twice to drive for an hour, and test his strength for the journey to Paris, which he was im- patient to begin. I had heard that there was a sleeping- car — a ^^wagon-au lit/' as the Swiss put it — upon one train each day. This I wished to take, if possible, and to break the journey by stopping overnight at least once, in the transit of fifteen hours that separated us from the French capital. It so chanced that the talk of the ''B. B.'s" at luncheon that day turned upon this train, and, forgetful, for the moment, of their discourteous reserve, I addressed the man of the party with — "Pardon me! but can you tell me at what hour that train leaves Lucerne, and when it reaches Basle?" "With great pleasure!" turning an eager face' upon me. "But may I ask, first, how your son is to-day? We have inquired constantly of the proprietor, and of the doctor, when we could see him, how he was getting on. We were delighted to hear that he is improving, etc., etc., etcetera" — while I was getting my breath, and rallying my fluttered wits. With this preamble, he proceeded to tell me all he knew of trains that were likely to be of service, volunteer- ing to make direct inquiries at the station that after- noon, and begging to know in what way he could forward my purpose. When I could escape, I carried a bewildered face and soul up to the convalescent. Then it was that I made the remark I quoted in a former chapter, apropos of New England " incommunicableness" : **The ice is broken, and there is warm water under it!" We had not finished discussing the idiosyncrasies of Old and New England when, half an hour later, there came a gentle tap at the door. I opened it, and nearly swooned with an access of amazement when I saw the yovmg Englishman. He had a paper in his hand, and began without preface: 460 GOOD SAMARITANS AND AN ENGLISHMAN ''I have made so bold as to look up the trains, don't you know? And — oh, I say" — breaking off as he espied the figure on the lounge through the half-opened door— " mayn't I come in and see him ? We are both young men, you know!" He was at the sofa by this time, and shaking hands with the occupant. "Awfully glad to see you are doing so well! Oh, by Jove!" interrupting himself anew, with the frank boyishness that had marked his entrance. "I believe you are taller than I !" He surveyed the recumbent figure with undisguised admiration. "Six feet, two-and-a-half, gymnasium measure!" rejomed the other, laughing. It was impossible to resist the cordial bonhommie of the self-invited guest. "And I six, three!" complacently. "But a fellow looks longer when he is on his back. May I sit down?" drawing up a chair for me, and one for himself. "And would it tire you to talk a bit about routes and so on? Do you think you are really fit for the jaunt?" The "bit" of talk lasted an hour, and the invalid bright- ened with every minute. The "Britisher" was an army man, at home on leave, after ten years in India. He had travelled far and used all his senses while en route. He was eloquent in praise of India, and so diligently was the time improved by both the young men that, in leaving, the elder exacted a promise that, when the other should visit India, he would apply to him— the "B. B."— for letters of introduction to •*some fellows" who might be of use to him. He gave us his card, lest he might not see us again. It bore the name of a fashionable London hotel, at which he *' hoped to see" his new acquaintance, since he was going to London within the month. He did see us again, calling on the morrow to ask if there were any- 461 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY thing he could do to facilitate our departure. He brought, also^ the compliments and good wishes of his wife and sister for our safe journey. The schedule of travel he had arranged for us was so carefully drawn up that a fool could not err therein. We never saw or neard from him again. It was not con- venient for Bert to call during the brief stay we made in London, on the very eve of sailing for home. And we have never yet been to India. The " B. B." seemed not to be able to conceive the possibility that any one who could get to that end of the earth coidd refrain from going. I have seen enough of the English since to comprehend that this was not a phenomenal illustration of native re- serve, that waits for the initiative from the other party to the meeting, and, like the traveller in the fable of the con- test between the wind and sun, throws away the cloak of strangerhood as soon as the first step is taken by another. I have heard other anecdotes descriptive of a characteristic which belies the depth and warmth of the underlying heart, but none that bring it more prominently into view. It is strange — and interesting — to us of a more emotional race, to see the sudden leap of the unsealed fountain. During the summer and autumn succeeding our return to America, I utilized much of the "material'' collected in the East in a series of lectures delivered in seven different States. For two summers preceding my tour abroad, I had, in conjunction with Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster, con- ducted what we called ''Women's Councils", in various Summer Schools modelled upon the famous Chautauquan Assemblies. I had hardly settled in the peaceful home-nest when applications from similar organizations began to arrive. Upon former expeditions, my husband, and some- times our son, and Mrs. Sangster's nephew, Bert's class- mate and chum, had accompanied us, and when the '* Coun- cil" adjourned, we made up a jolly party to Mackinac 462 A LECTURE TOUR Island (in which beautiful spot I laid the scene of With the Best Intentions), to Niagara Falls, the Adirondacks, and divers other summer resorts. Mrs. Sangster had no share in my present lecture engagements, and neither my hus- band nor son could spare the time to accompany me. In the comparatively secluded and carefully sheltered life of to-day, I marvel at the courage that enabled me to journey for thousands of miles, unattended, and to face audiences that numbered from one to two thousand women, with never a misgiving as to my reception, and perfect security from annoyance. Wherever I went, doors and hearts were opened to me. But once, in a series that comprised twenty towns and villages, was I ever allowed to stay at a hotel, and that was for a single night. The friends made then are cherished to this hour. Time would fail me and the patience of the reader be exhausted, were I to attempt even a catalogue of the localities in which I talked, as woman to woman, of what I had seen and heard in those seven months of wandering and study. If I had never loved women before, and held in especial and tender regard those of my own country, I must have learned the sweet lesson in the unescorted itineraries from Syracuse, N.Y., to Chicago; from Vermont to Michigan; from Richmond, Va., to Cincinnati. And in all the thousands of miles, and in the intercourse with tens of thousands of people whose faces I had never seen before, I had, in the three lecture seasons in which I took part, not one unidnd word — received nothing but kindness, and that continually. Hospitality and brotherly (and sisterly) love have had new and deeper meaning to me, ever since. I permit myself the recital of two " happen- ings" in Ohio, that have historic interest in consideration of subsequent events. After fulfilling a delightful engagement at Monona Lake — near Madison, Wisconsin — I set out for Lakeview, Ohio, 463 MARION HARLANto'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY where I was to hold a Women's Council for the neJct week, beginning Monday. This was Saturday noon^ and I was to travel all night. Dr. T. De Witt Tdlmage, whom I had seen at Monona Lake, had told me of a branch road con- necting the station, at which I was to leave the main line, early Sunday morning, with Lakeview. I would reach that place, he said, by seven o'clock, and have a quiet Sunday to myself. This was preferable to passing it in Chicagp or any other large town. In the Madison station I was so fortunate as to meet Mr. Hamilton W. Mahie and Dr. Francis Maurice Egan, at that time Professor of Rngllfth Literatm^ in the Georgetown (R. C.) University, and, sub- sequently. United States Minister to Denmark. Both of these distinguished men had been lecturing at Monona Lake Assembly. The rest of the day passed swiftly and brightly. Mr. Mabie left us in Chicago, where we were detained until midnight, on account of some delay in incoming ttains. Doctor Egan, whose spirits never flagged, proposed a walk through the illuminated streets, and a supper together, which **lark" we enjoyed with the zest of two school- children. Then we returned to the waiting train, and bade each other ** Good-bye." The journey had begun so auspiciously that I alighted from the sleeper in the early dawn, feeling, what the sport- ing Englishman would call ** uncommonly fit,'' and with no prevision of what lay before me. For not a symptom of the promised branch line was to be seen, as far as eye could reach. There were two houses at the terminus of my railway journey. One was the usual station and freight-house; the other, a neat cottage a stone's-throw away, was, I found, the dwelling of the station-agent. He was the one and only human thing in sight. Beyond lay woods and cultivated fields. The man was very civil, but positive in the declaration that the branch line connecting with the Assembly grounds 464 OHIOAN HOSPITALITY was ten miles further on ; also, that no trains ran over it on Sunday. As at Monona Lake, admission was denied to the public on that day. Otherwise, the ground would be overrun by the rabtde of curious sight-seers. There was no hotel within five miles, and no conveyance to take me to it, or to Lakeview. The predicament was serious, yet it provoked me to mirth. Doctor Talmage's directions to alight at this par- ticular point (as he '' had done not a week ago'O ; niy cheer- ful confidence that the day would be as yesterday, if not more abundant in enjoyment; the immediate prospect of starvation and discomfort, since all the accommodations I could command were that one room of the country sta- tion— ^made up a picture at which any woman must laugh — or cry. The station-master looked relieved that I did not weep, or whine. When I laughed, he smiled sympatheti- cally: ''If you will sit here for a few minutes," leading the way into the room behind us, '' I'll step over and talk to my wife." From that moment I had no apprehension of further misadventures. If I had indulged a fleeting misgiving, it would have been dissipated by the sight of the woman to whom I was introduced when I had accepted the invitation to ''step over " to the neat cottage a few rods down the road. It was a veritable cottage — ^low-browed and cosey, vine- draped, and simply but comfortably furnished. The mis- tress met me in the door with a cordial welcome, and took me into her bedroom to wash away the dust of travel and lay of! my hat. For I was to breakfast with them, after which her husband would get up the horse and buggy, and she would drive me over to the Assembly grounds. She looked, moved, and spoke like a gentlewoman. Against the background of my late predicament, she wore the guise 405 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY of a ministering angel. The breakfast was just what she had prepared for her husband. She proved the quality of her breeding there, too, in not lisping a syllable of apology. None was required for a meal so well-cooked and served, but few women would have let the occasion pass of in- forming the stranger within their gates how much better they might have done had they been notified of the com- ing of '' company." On the road she told me that she had a season-ticket for the Summer School, and that she had attended the sessions regularly during the week that had passed since it opened. She was a pretty little body, becom- ingly attired, and intelligent beyond her apparent station. I was to learn more in time of the minds and manners of the average Ohio woman and man, and to be moved to wonder- ing admiration thereby. The road, level as a floor for most of the way, lay between fields, orchards and vineyards so well cultivated that they recalled the husbandry of older lands. My companion was au fait to the agricultural in- terests of her native State, and^descanted upon the resources of the region with modest complacency. The weather was delicious, the drive a pleasure. Not until we were in sight of the lake, on the shores of which the camp was. located, did she suggest the possible difficulty of gaining admission to the grounds. She had her ticket, which would pass her on Sunday, as on week-days. Perhaps I had one? I said, **No," frankly. Were the rules very strict? She was ** afraid they were." It was evident that she had whole- some respect for the regulation barring out unlicensed in- truders. My credentials, in the form of letters and con- tract, were in the trunk the station-master had engaged to send over on Monday. Up to this moment I was an anonymous wayfarer to my hosts, and I did not care to owe their hospitality to any prestige that might attach to an advertised name. So I said we would postpone un- easiness until I was actually refused admittance by the 466 MR. AND MRS. McKINLEY gate-keeper. When he halted us, my companion produced her passport, and I oflfered, as warrant of my eligibUity, to send for Doctor Lewis, the superintendent of the Assembly, to vouch for me. He gave me a searching glance, and stood back to let us pass. I recognized my guardian angel in my audience on Mon- day, and made it my business and pleasure to seek her out at the conclusion of the lecture. " We made up our minds last night, as we were talking it over, who you were," she remarked, quietly. "I had my list of the speakers, and you were set down for to-day. I wished, then, that I had guessed the truth before." I did not echo the wish. My first taste of Ohio hospi- tality would have lost the fine flavor that lingers in my memory, like the aroma of old Falemian wine. A duchess of high degree might have taken lessons in breeding and Christian charity from the station-keeper's wife. Daring the week spent at Lakeview I had an opportu- nity, which I prize now beyond expression, of meeting Mr. McKinley, then the Governor of Ohio. He passed a day at the principal hotel of the place with his wife, and visited the Assembly. I was invited, with other visitors, to dine with him, and afterward to drive into the country with himself and Mrs. McKinley. "The future President of the United States!" a friend had said to me when I told her of the projected drive. "I don't think so," was my answer. "But a good man and an honest politician." As he lifted his invalid wife into the carriage, a packet of letters was handed to me. In taking his place on the front seat he begged me to open them: "Home letters should never be kept waiting." " I will avail myself of your kind permission so far as to look into one," I answered. " It is the daily bulletin from 31 467 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY my husband. A glance at the first paragraph will tell me how matters are at home." "A daily bulletin!" repeated Mr. McKinley, as I refolded the epistle after the satisfactory glance. "Yes — and we have been married nearly forty years!" "A commendable example — " he b^an, when his wife caught him up: "Which he does not need! He never fails to write to me every day when he is away ; but when he was in Wash- ington, some years ago, and I was not well enough to gp with him, he telegraphed every morning to know how I was, besides writing a long letter to me in the afternoon." Laughingly putting the remark aside, he leaned forward to direct my attention to a row of hills on the horizon, and to talk of certain historical associations connected with that part of the State. She resumed the topic, awhile later, descanting in a low tone upon his unwearied r^ard for her health, his tender soUcitude, his skill as a nurse, and similar themes, drawn on by my unfeigned interest in the story, until he checked her, with the same light laugh: "Ida, my dear! you are making Mrs. Terhune lose the finest points in the landscape we brought her out to admire." " Permit me to remind you that there are moral beauties better worth my attention," retorted I. He lifted his hat, with a bright look that went from my face to dwell upon that of the fragile woman opposite him, with affectionate appreciation, and full confidence that I would comprehend the feeling that led her to praise him — a flashing smile, I despair of describing as it deserves. It transfigured his face into beauty I can never forget. In all my thoughts of the man who became the idol of his compatriots, dying, like a martyr -hero, with a plea for mercy for the insane assassin upon his lips, I recur to that incident in my brief personal acquaintanceship with him, 468 MR. AND MRS. McKINLEY as a revelation of what was purest and sweetest in a nature singularly strong and gentle. In relating the little by-play to my dear friend, Mrs, Waite, the widow of the Chief -Justice, then living in Wash- ington, I said that it was a pity to see a man in Mr. McKinley's exalted and responsible position tied to the arm-chair of a hopeless invalid, who could contribute noth- ing to his usefulness in any relation of life. "He owes more to her than the pubUc will ever sus- pect," was the reply. "We knew him from a boy, and watched his early struggles upward. His wife was his guiding star, his right hand. She was, then, a woman of unusual personal and mental gifts, more ambitious for him than he was for himself. My husband often said that she was Mr. McKinley's inspiration. Those who have never known her except as the fragile, nerveless creature she is DOW, cannot imagine what she was before the deaths of her children and her terrible illness left her the wreck you see. But he does not foi^et what she was, and what she did for him." I treasured the tribute gratefully, and I never failed to quote it when I heard — as was frequent during Mr. McKin- ley's administration — contemptuous criticism of the help- less, sickly woman — ^the poor shade of the First Lady of the Land — whose demands upon his time and care were unremittent and heavy. He was held up to the world by his eulogists as a Model Husband, a Knight of To-day, whose devotion never wavered. As my now sainted mentor said, few of the admiring multitude guessed at his debt of gratitude and at his chivalrous remembrance of the same. XLvin THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN — ABROAD AGAIN — HEALING AND HEALTH — IDTLUC WINTER IN FIjORENCE What one of Doctor Terhune's biographers has alluded to as his "splendid vitality/' had been cruelly taxed by his professional labors in his first charge in Brcx>klyn. With a strong man's aversion to the acknowledgment of physical weakness, he had fought, with heroic courage and reserve, the inroads of a disease that was steadily sapping his constitution and vigor. None except his physician and myself dreamed of the gnawing pain that was never quiet during his waking hours, and robbed the nights of rest. The services of Simday left him as weak as a child, and stretched him upon the rack all of that night. When, the work he had assigned to himself soon after accepting the pastorate of the Bedford Avenue Church having been ac- complished, he resigned the position, and quoted his physi- cian's advice that he should take a few months of rest and change of scene — the information was couched in terms so light that, with the exception of two or three of his chosen and most faithful friends, his parishioners had no suspicion of his real condition. The public press hazarded the wild- est and most absurd guesses at the causes that had stirred the nest he had builded wisely and weU during the last seven years. Perhaps the theory that amused us most, and flew most widely from the mark, was "that his wife — known to the public as * Marion Harland ' — took no interest in church- 470 THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN work — ^in fact, never attended church at all." My class of forty-four splendid " boys" — ^the youngest being twenty- one years of age — ^begged to be dlowed to look up the imaginative reporter and, as the Springfield member of the Church Militant had proposed, "fire him out." Calmer coimter-statements from older heads, and hearts as loyal, met the assertion in print and in private. To me, it weighed less than a grain of dust in the greater solicitude that engrossed my thoughts. For, in a week after the formal resignation of his office, the patient sufferer was under the sui^geon's knife. They called it ''a minor operation," and enjoined com- plete rest, for a month or so, that ought to bring recu- peration of energies so sadly depleted that those who knew him best were uigent in the entreaty that the mandate should be obeyed. He "rested" in the blessed quiet of Sunny bank for a couple of months; then set out for a leisurely jaunt westward. He had been invited to preach in Omaha; and thought that he would ** take a look at the country" which he had never visited. He got no further than Chicago, falling in love with the warm-hearted people of a church which he agreed to supply for "a few weeks." The weeks grew into seven months of active and satisfjdng work among his new parishioners. Our eldest daughter was with him part of the time, and I went to him for a visit of considerable length, returning home with the sad con- viction, deep down in my soul, that to accept the offered "call" to a permanent pastorate would be suicidal. He could never do half-way work, and he loved the duties of his profession with a love that never abated. By the be- ginning of the next summer, he was forced to admit to himself that his physical powers were inadequate to the task laid to his hand. Yet, on the way home, he was lured into agreeing to supply the pulpit of a friend, a St. Louis cleigyman, during the vacation of the latter, preaching 471 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY zealously and eloquently for five weeks, and this in the heat of a Missourian summer. It was but a wreck of his old, buoyant self that he brought back to us. Confident in his ability to rise above "temporary weakness," he insisted that "Sunnybank and home-rest were all he needed to set him up again as good as new." I had said once, jestingly, in his hearing, after his quick recovery from a short and sharp attack of illness: " It is hard to kill a Terhune. Nothing is really effectual except a stroke of lightning, and that will paralyze but one side. None of them die under ninety!" He reminded me of the foolish speech, many and many a time, in the weeks that dragged themselves by us wIm) watched the steady ebb of vital forces and the pitiable failure of all remedial agencies. He was the finest horse- man I have ever known, and, as I have already said, sat his saddle as if he were a part of the spirited animal he be- strode. "Let me once get into the saddle again, and all will be right," had been his hopeful prognostication in every illness prior to this mysterious disorder. He mounted his horse a few times after he got home, and rode for a mile or two, but listlessly and with pain. Then he ceased to ask for the old-time tonic that had acted like a magic potion upon the exhausted body, in answer to the indomitable spirit. The spring of desire and courage was not broken, but it bent more and more visibly daily, until it was a gray wraith of the former man that lay, hour after hour, upon the library sofa, uncomplaining and patient, utterly indifferent to things that once brought light to the eyes and ring to the voice. Even his voice— a marvel up to seventy-five, for sweetness, resonance, and strength — qua- vered and broke when he forced himself to speak. In this, our sore and unprecedented extremity, we who watched him took counsel together and urged him to 472 THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN go to the city and consult Doctor McBumey, the ablest specialist and surgeon in New York, and with no superior in America. The patient offered feeble opposition. It was easier to do as we wished, than to ai^ue the point. Our eldest daughter was living in New York, and not far from the surgeon. We lost no time in securing an appoint- ment, and the surgeon was prompt in decision. *'The minor operation," in which he had had no hand, was well enough as far as scalpel and probe had gone, but the seat of the malady was left untouched. There was a malig- nant internal growth which had already poisoned the blood. To delay a "major operation" a fortnight, would be to for- feit the one and only chance of life. It might already be too late. In three days the almost dying man was in the Pres- byterian Hospital, and under the knife. I hasten past the month that followed. With clean blood, a temperate life, and a superb constitution as his backers, my brave husband stood once more upon his feet, and was apparently upon the highroad to recovery. When he was restored to our home-circle in season for the Christ- mas festivities, we rejoiced without a prevision of possible further ill from the hateful cause, now forever removed, as we fondly believed. Early in January, I had a sudden and violent hemorrhage from the lungs, superinduced, we were told by the eminent specialist summoned immedi- ately, by the long-continued nervous strain and general weakening of the entire system. Doctor Terhune took me to the train when I set out upon the southern trip prescribed strenuously by consulting practitioners. My dearest and faithful brother was to meet me on the last stage of my easy journey. When the late invalid waved his hat to me from the platform as the train b^an to move, I noted with pride and devout grati- tude, how clear were his blue eyes, how healthful his com- 473 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY plexion, and, looking back as far as I could catch sight of him, that his step had the elasticity of a boy of twenty. He wrote daily to me, and in the old, lively fashion, for three weeks. Then a letter dictated by him to Christine told of a boil upon his wrist that hindered pen-work. I ''was not to be uneasy. It was probably a wholesome working out of the virus of original sin. He would be all the better when the system was freed from it." I wrote at once, begging that nothing might be concealed from me, and setting a day for my return. A telegram from my husband forbade me to stir until the time originally named as the limit of my visit. And the daily letters continued to arrive. One, I recollect, began: ''A second rising, farther up the arm, is 'carrying on the work of purification.' So says the poor Pater, with a rueful glance at his bandaged hand and arm. If it were only the left, and not the right hand, he would not have to put up with this unworthy amanuensis." Those six weeks in Richmond stand out in memory like sunlighted peaks seen between clouds that gathered below and all around it. My brother's wife, the cherished girl- friend of our Newark life, was so far from well that we enacted the r61es of semi -invalids in company. Sometimes we breakfasted in her room, sometimes in mine, as the humor seized us. I lounged in one easy-chair, and she in another, all the forenoon, making no pretence of occupa- tion. Had we not been straitly commanded to do nothing but get well? We drove out in company, every moderately fine day. When we tired of talking (which was seldom), we had our books. I sent to a book-store for a copy of Barriers Margaret Ogilvie — the matchless tribute of the brilliant son to the peasant woman from whom he drew all that was noblest and highest in himself — and gave it to 474 THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN my fellow-invalid to read. Then we talked it over — we two mothers — ^tenderly and happily, as befitted the parents of grown children who were fulfilling our best hopes for them. I repeated to her once, in the twilight of a winter afternoon, as we sat before the blazing fire of soft coal that tinted the far comers of the Ubrary a soft, dusky red — a stanza of EUzabeth Akers Allen's Rock Me to Sleep, Mother: "Over my heart in the dayB that have flown, No love like mother-love ever has shone; No other worship abides and endures, Faithful unselfish, and patient like yours.'' "That is one of my husband's favorite songs," I said. "I often sing it to him and to Bert in the twilights at home." And with a Uttle laugh, I added: "My boy asked me once to emphasize 'patient.' He says that is the strongest characteristic of the mother's love." "They repay us for it all!" was the fervent reply. And I returned as feehngly, " Yes, a thousandfold." She was ever the true, unselfish woman, generous in im- pulse and in action, sweet and sound to the very core of her great heart. We' had loved each other without a shadow of changing for over thirty years. In all our intercourse there is nothing upon which I dwell with such fondness as on the days that sUpped by brightly and smoothly, that late January and early February. If I observed with r^ret that I rallied from my sudden seizure more rapidly than she threw off the languor and loss of appe- tite which, she assured us, over and over, "meant next to nothing " — I was not seriously uneasy at what I saw. She had not been strong for the last year. Time would restore her, surely. She had just arisen on the morning of my departure, when I went into her room to say, "Good- 476 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY bye." She smiled brightly as I put my arms about her and bade her, "Hurry up and return my visit." "You will see me before long," she said, confidently. "As soon as I can bear the journey I shall go to Newark. My native air always brings healing on its wings." My beloved friend Mrs. Waite had passed from earth, six months before. The visit I paid at her house, on the way back to New York, was the first I had made there since the beauty of her presence was withdrawn. On the morning after my arrival I had a long letter from Christine. It began ominously: "I have a confession to make. Father has been far more indisposed than I would let you think. Do not blame me. I have acted imder orders from him and from the doctor. Neither would hear of your recall. Not that this relapse is a dangerous matter. The 'boils' were a return of the old trouble. He has not left his bed for a fortnight. I thought it best to prepare you for seeing him there.'' An hour later I had a telegram from my brother : "M. is decidedly worse. We apprehend heart-failure.*' Again I say, I would shorten the recital of how the clouds returned after the rain which we had believed would dear the atmosphere. I was seated at the bedside of my husband, who aroused himself with difficulty to speak to me, as one shakes off a stupor, relapsing into slumber with the murmured welcome on his fevered lips, when a dispatch was brought to me from Richmond. My sister-in-love had died that afternoon. Five months to a day, from the beginning of my hus- band's serious illness, he was brought down-stairs in the arms of a stalwart attendant, and lifted into a carriage for his first ride. We drove to the neighboring Central 476 THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN Park, and were threading the leafy avenues before the con- valescent offered to speak. Then the tone was of one dazed into disbelief of what was before his eyes: "The last time I was out of doors, the ground was cov- ered with snow. I am like those that dream. I never knew until now what a beautiful place the world is!" It was glorious in July verdure when we got him back to Sunnybank. There was no talk now of the saddle, and the briefest of drives fatigued him to faintness. What- ever the doctors might say as to the ultimate elimination of the hidden poison they had found so difficult to drive out, watchers, who had more at stake in the issue of his protracted illness, failed to see the proof that skill had effected what they claimed. After the glow of pleasure at getting home again subsided, he relapsed into the old lassi- tude and sad indifference to what was going on about him; his eyes were dull; his tone was Ufeless; he seemed to h^ve forgotten that he had ever had appetite for food. At last, one day, as I sat fanning him, while he lay on the wicker sofa on the vine-clad veranda, r^arding neither lake nor mountain, and smiUng wanly at my chatter of the seven birds'-nests in the honeysuckle, from which the last fledgling had been coaxed away by their parents that morning — an inspiration came to me. I laid my hand on his to make sure that he would be aroused to listen, and stooped to the ear that shared in the deadening of the rest of the body. "What do you say to going abroad again — and very soon?" He opened his eyes wide, lifting his head to look directly at me. "What did you say?" I repeated the query. He lay back with closed lids for so long I thought he 477 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY was asleep. Then an echo of his own voice, as it was in the olden time, said: '' I think, if I could once more hear the rush of the waves against the keel of the steamer, and feel the salt air on my face, it would bring me back to Ufe. But — where's the use of dreaming of it? I shall never be strong enough to go on board." "You will, and you shall! You saved my Ufe by taking me abroad. We will try the efficacy of your own pre- scription." I think that not one of the crowd of friends who came down to the steamer to see us off, had any hope of seeing again his living face. I heard, afterward, that they said as much among themselves, when the resolutely cheerful farewells had been spoken, and they stood watching the vessel's slow motion out of the dock, the eyes of all fixed upon one figure recumbent in a deck-chair, a thin hand re- sponding to the fluttering handkerchiefs above the throng on the end of the pier. Our son was there with his betrothed, who wrote to me afterward that he was "depressed to despondency." Belle, with her husband and boys, would occupy Sunnybank while we were away. Christine had insisted that it was not kind or safe to leave to me the sole care of the invalid. In the three weeks that elapsed between the ^inspiration" and our embarkation, the brave girl had wound up all affairs that would detain her in America, and made her- self and two sons ready to accompany us. The party was completed by the faithful maid who had nursed her chil- dren from infancy, and who was quite competent to aid me in nursely offices to the patient for whose sake the desperate expedition was undertaken. He averred, in later life, that he felt an impulse of new life with the first revolution of the paddle-wheel. Certain it is that he showed signs of rallying before twenty-four 478 ABROAD AGAIN hours had passed, spending all the daylight hours upon deck, and, before the voyage was half over, joining in our promenades from bow to stem. Always an excellent sailor, he drank in the sea-breeze as he might have quaffed so much nectar. The only complaint that escaped him was that," whereas he had been promised an eleven days' voyage, we steamed up the Clyde on the afternoon of the ninth day." A series of jaimts in Scotland and England was the prel- ude to our settling down in Florence for the winter. Had I no other reason to urge for my deep and abiding love for that fairest and dearest of Italian cities, it would suffice me to recollect the unutterable peace and full con- tent of that memorable half-year. Friends, old and new, clustered about us, and lent the charm of home to the cosey apartment in Via San Giuseppe, where the gentle flow of domestic life was bright with the shining of present happiness and rekindled hope of the future. We learned to know "La Bella" at her best in those halcyon days. The boys were at a day-school ; thanks to our efficient "padrona," there were no household anx- ieties, and we seniors were free to enjoy to the full all that makes up the inestimable riches of the storied city. Doctor Terhime and I claimed the privilege of convales- cent and custodian, in declining to accept invitations to evening functions, thus securing opportunity for what we loved far better than the gayest of "entertainments" — long, quiet hours spent in our sitting-nwm "under the evening lamp," I, busy with needle-work or knitting, while he read aloud, after the dear old fashion, works on Floren- tine history, art, and romance, all tending to enfold us more closely with the charmed atmosphere of the region. It would be laughable to one who has never fallen under the nameless spell of Florence to know how often, that season, we repeated aloud, as the book was laid aside for the night: 479 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY "With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise." Letters from home were frequent and regular. Much was happening across the water while we revelled in our dreams. The Spanish War was on. It was b^un and ended during our peace-fraught exile. In January, our boy took unto himself the young wife to whom he had been troth-plight for a year, and we were the easier in mind for the knowledge that this, the last of our unwedded bairns, was no longer without a home of his own. In the spring we travelled at pleasure through Switzer- land and Belgium, and so to England — ^my husband and I now in the solitude h deux beloved by congenial souls. Christine and her sons were left in Switzerland for a longer tour of that country. Still wandering, lingering, and dreaming, in the long, delicious calm succeeding the darkest and stormiest period our united lives were ever to know, we revisited English villages and towns, and made acquaintance in Scotland with new and enchanting scenes, until the September day when we took passage from Glasgow for New York. We steamed into our harbor on Sunday afternoon, just as the news of peace between the warring nations was acclaimed through the megaphone to incoming craft, and thundered from the mouths of rejoicing cannon. XLIX THE GOING-OUT OF A YOUNG LIFE — PRESENT ACnVITIES — " LITERARY HEARTHSTONES '' — GRATEFUL REMINIS- CENCES As upon our return from foreign lands nearly twenty years before this home-coming, Sunnybank was now our pied d terre. Our daughter, Mrs. Van de Water, and her family had occupied it during our absence. It was, there- fore, not merely swept and garnished for our reception, but the spirit of Home, sweet, radiant, and mdescribable, was in full possession. We were settled in the nest within an hour after we drove up to the open door. A week later, the happy circle was widened by the arrival of our son and his young wife from the Adirondacks. A second attack of appendicitis had made an operation imperatively neces- sary. It was performed in July, and as soon as the patient was strong enough to travel, he was sent to the moimtains for recuperation. The pair were our guests for four weeks. Then they returned to town to prepare for the house- keeping upon which they had planned to enter in October. Happy letters, telling of the preparations going briskly forward, and filled with domestic details, than which noth- ing in the wide world was more fascinating to the little wife, reminded us of the contented cooings of mating pigeons, or, as I told the prospective housewife, of the purring of the kittens she loved to fondle imder the honey- suckles of the veranda, while with us. On October 5th an unexpected tel^ram brought the 481 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY news of the premature birth of a baby daughter, and that "mother and child were doing well." Four days later, a second dispatch sunmioned us to New York. The tiny girl was but four days old when her gentle mother passed quietly out of the life, so rich in love and hope that, up to the hour when she laid herself down cheerfully upon her couch of pain, she was, to use her own words, "almost frightened at her own happiness." She was married on January 10, 1898. We bore her to her last home October 12th of the same year. She sleeps in the quiet "God's Acre," back of the old colonial church in Pompton, in the heart of the fairest of New Jersey valleys. A peaceful spot it is, cradled by the everlasting hills. There were but three graves in our family plot when we took her there. There are five, now. We spent that winter in the city, and our boy was again one of our small household. But for the care and the blessed comfort of the baby daughter, the light and life of hearts and house, we might have fancied the events of the last five years a dream, and that we were once more the busy trio with whom time had sped so swiftly and brightly while "Bert" was in college. We were busy now as then. Doctor Terhune preached wdth tolerable regular- ity in different churches, and he was ever a diligent stu- dent. Bert wrought faithfully in his chosen profession of journalism, and I accepted in, 1901, the charge of a Wom- an's Syndicate page established by The North American, in Philadelphia. I had never been idle. Month after month, work was laid to my hands that pleased my taste, and occu- pied all the time I could devote to literary tasks. WTien I agreed to take on the new burden, it was with no fore- casting of what proportions it might assume. '^What do these women write to you about?" asked the proprietor of the paper under the auspices of which the syndicate was carried on. 482 PRESENT ACTIVITIES I answered; laughingly, "Everything — from Marmalade to Matrimony." When he put the question, I was representing the need of an assistant, since I was getting twenty letters per diem. Four years later, a secretary and a stenographer shared the labor of keeping in touch with writers who poured in upon my desk an average mail of one hundred letters a day. Two years afterward, the average was over a thousand a week. I have been asked often why I expend energies and fill my days in what my critics are pleased to depreciate as "hack-work." Nobody believes my assertion that I heartily enjoy being thus brought into intimate associa- tion with the women of America. The Syndicate has ex- tended its territory into twenty-five States, and it is still growing. Women, boys, and girls, and housefathers — no less than housemothers — tell me of their lives, their suc- cesses, their failures, their trials, and their several prob- lems. From the mighty mass of correspondence I select letters dealing with topics of general interest, or that seem to call for free and friendly discussion, and base upon them daily articles for the Syndicate public. Thousands of let- ters contain stamps for replies by mail. Out of this germ of "hack-work" has grown "The Helping-Hand Club," an informal organization, with no "plant" except my desk and the postal service that transports applications for books, magazines, and such useful articles as correspond- ents know will be welcome to the indigent, the shut-in, the aged, charitable societies and missions in waste places. Quietly, and without parade, our volunteer agents visit the needy, and report to us. We distribute, by cor- respondence, thousands of volumes and periodicals an- nually; we bring together supply and demand, "without money and without price," and in ways that would appear ridiculous to some, and incredible to many. 32 483 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY "For Love's Sake" is our motto, and it is caught up eagerly, from Canada to Califomia. "The Big Fanaily/' they call themselves — ^these dear co-workers of mine whose faces I shall never see on earth. When, as happens daily, I read, "Dear Mother of us all," from those I have been permitted to help in mind, body, or estate, I thank the Master and take courage. After eight years' active service in the field so strangely appointed to me that I cannot but recognize (and with humble gratitude) the direct leading of the Divine Hand^ I say, frankly, that I have never had such fulness of satis- faction in any other sphere of labor. "But it is not Literature!" cried a friend to me, the other day, voicing the sentiment of many. "No," I answered, "but it is Influence, and that of the best kind." I have, with all this, made time — or it has been made for me — ^to write half a dozen books in the last ten years. Where Ghosts Walk (1898) was a joy in the writing, as was the collection of material. It reproduces for me — ^as I turn the pages, in maternal fashion, lingering upon a scene here, and snatching a phrase there — our strayings in storied climes, rambles into enchanted nooks untrodden by the conventional tourist, but full of mystery and charm for us. In those dim paths I still walk with the ghosts that were once visible and sentient things like ourselves. Literary Hearthstones (1899-1902) was, even more em- phatically, a labor of delight. I had made studies of Char- lotte Bronte and Hannah More, of John Knox and Will- iam Cowper, in the homes and haunts they glorified into shrines for the reading and the religious world. Other hallowed names arc yet on my memorandum-book, and in my portfolio are the notes made in other homes and haunts, and pictures collected for the illustrations of four more volumes of the series. 484 "LITERARY HEARTHSTONES'' If I live and hold my strength and health of body and of mind, I shall, please God, complete the tale of worthies I have singled out for study. If not — they are yet mine own brain-children. None may rob me of the pleasure of having and of holding them — until death us do part. I should be ungrateful, and do my own feelings a wrong, were I to fail, in this connection, to acknowledge my obliga- tions to those who kindly seconded my efforts to accumu- late the material for the Hearthstones. Our pilgrimages to Haworth, Olney, Wrington, and Edinburgh, are starred in the reminiscence by hospitable intent and deed, by such real sympathy in my mission, and friendly aid in the prosecution of my design, that I cannot pass them over with casual mention. For Charlotte Bronte I had, since my early girlhood, nourished admiration that ripened into reverence, as I read with avidity every page and line relating to the mar- vellous sisters. I had conned her books until I knew them, from cover to cover. Her dramatis personce were friends more familiar to the dreaming girl than our next-door neighbors. It was a bitter disappointment to me that the unforeseen miscarriage of our plans frustrated my longing to go to Haworth, at our first visit to the Old World. So, when my son and I set out for our Eastern trip, Haworth stood first upon our memorandum of places that nmst be seen in England. I had letters from four men who had engaged to faciUtate my attempts to enter the Parsonage. One and all, they assured me that I would find the door inhospitably closed in my face. Nevertheless, they ad- vised me to go to Haworth, and put up at ''that resort of the thirsty — the Black Bull." Thus one of the quartette, and who had lately published a book on the Brontes: " The present incumbent of the parish is an ogre, a verita- ble dragon!" he went on to say. **He savagely refused to let me set foot upon his threshhold, and he turns hundreds 485 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY of pilgrims away empty every year. But go to Haworth, by all means ! Put up at the ancient hostelry ; walk about the old stone house and tell well its windows, and take pleasure in Emily's moors. The dragon has restored ( ?) the Bronte church, and consigned the remains of the won- derful family to a genteel crypt under the renovated pave- ment. All the same, go to Haworth! The hills and the moors and the heather are unchanged." In my Life of Charlotte Bronte, I have related how I fared in the pilgrimage that stands out clearly in my mem- ory as one of the sunniest spots of that memorable seven months' tour. I have not told how simple and direct were the means by which I gained the fulfilment of my desires. Within an hour after we had registered our names in the shabby book kept for guests and transients at the Black Bull, I wrote a note to Mr. Wade, the rector of Haworth Church, asking permission to "stand, for a few minutes, within the doors of the house that had been the home of Charlotte and Emily Bronte." I added that I should not blame him if he objected to the intrusion of strangers upon domestic privacy. The messenger returned speedily with word that Mr. Wade had that hour returned from London, and that he could not then write a note. He would, however, be happy to see me at the Rectory on the morrow (Sunday), and would write in the morning, naming the hour for our call. His note came while we were at breakfast, to say that he would be at liberty to receive us between services. We attended morning service, but, when it was over, re- frained from making ourseh^es known to the rector, linger- ing, instead, in the church to see the tablet above the Bronte vault, and the fine window, set in the restored wall by an anonymous American, **To the glory of God, and in pleasant memory of Chariotte Bronte." Emerging from the church, with the intention of strolling up to the Parsonage, 486 GRATEFUL REMINISCENCES we were met by Mr. Wade, who had gone home, expecting to find us there, and was on his way to the inn to look us up. His cordial hand-clasp and genial smile were so op- posed to our preconceptions of the ** dragon/' that we ex- changed furtive glances of reUef. He took us back to the Parsonage, and showed us everything we had wished to see, with much we had not thought of, telling us, in the same hospitable way, that, although he was the only mem- ber of the family at home that day, he would be happy to have us partake of a bachelor's luncheon. When we de- clined, gratefully, he accompanied us to the church, and unlocked the case in which is kept the register of Charlotte Bronte's marriage, signed by herself — ^the last time she wrote her maiden name. Several letters passed between us, in the course of the next four years, and he opened to me, on our second visit to Haworth, in 1898, unexpected avenues of information respecting her whose biography I was writing, which were of incalculable value to me. When he retired from the active duties of his profession to Hurley, in another county, he wrote to me a long, interesting letter, enclosing a copy of the resolutions passed by the Yorkshire parish he had served faithfully for forty-seven years. Besides the precious stock of building "material" for the construction of my story of Charlotte, which I could have gained in no other way than through his kindly oflBces, this odd friendship taught me a lesson of faith in my kind, and of distrust of hearsay evidence and of popular disfavor, that will last me forever. I dedicated the biography to ''Rev. J. Wade, for forty-seven years incumbent of Ha- worth, in cordial appreciation of the unfailing courtesy and kindly aid extended by tum to the American stranger within his gates." A dedication that brought me many letters of surprised dissent from English and American tourists, and writers 487 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY whose experience was less pleasant than my own. I teD the tale, in brief, as an act of simple justice to a much- abused man. ''You have been told that I am a vandal and a bear/' he said to me on that Simday. '* I found church and Par- sonage almost in ruins. I was not appointed to this parish as the curator of a museum, but to do my best for the cure of souls. When I tell you that, for ten years after Mr. Bronte's death, the average number of sight-seers who called at the Parsonage was three thousand a year, and that they still mount up to a third of that number, you may be more lenient in judgment than the touring public and the press proved themselves to be.'' From Rev. Mr. Langley — ^incumbent of Olney, and resi- dent in the quaintly beautiful parsonage that was the home of Lady Austin, Cowper's friend and disciple — ^we met with courtesy as fine. And in seeking details of Han- nah More's private life, I found an able and enthusias- tic assistant in Rev. Mr. Wright, of Wrington, in the church-yard of which the " Queen of Barleywood " is buried. Cherished reminiscences are these, which neither the mists of years nor the clouds of sorrow have dimmed. In dwell- ing upon them, as I near the close of my annals of an every-day woman's life, I comprehend what the Psalmist meant when he said, "They have been my song in the house of my pilgrimage." Perhaps I erred in writing, " every-day life." Or, it may be because so few women have recorded the lights and shadows of their lives as frankly and as fully as I am doing, that 1 am asking myself whether it may not be that the chequered scene I survey from the hill-top — which gives me on clear days a fine view of the Delectable Mountains — has been exceptionally eventful, as it has been affluent in God's choicest gifts of home-joys and home-loves, and in oppor- 48S GRATEFUL REMINISCENCES tunities of proving, by word and in deed, my love for fellow- travellers along the King's Highway. The reader who has followed me patiently, because sympatheticaUy, from the beginning of the narrative, will comprehend, tlirough the depth of that sympathy, why I now leave to other pens the recital of what remains to be said. The hands that guided the pen were tender of touch, the hearts were true that dictated the report of the Golden Wedding and the abstract of a noble life, now developing throughout the ages into the stature of the Perfect Man. The voluntary tributes they combined to oflfer are dear beyond expression, to wife and children and to a great host of friends. [ I f APPENDIX THE REV. EDWARD PAYSON TERHUNE, D.D. BT REV. JOSEPH R. DURTEE, D.D. Permit one who has loved Doctor Terhune for fifty years, to pay tribute to his character and outline his attainments. He was bom in New Brunswick, New Jersey, November 22, 1830. It does not seem possible that this was his birth-year, he was so vigorous and his spirit was so youthful to the end. The best things in life were bis rich inheritance. His father. Judge John Terhime, for fifty-four years an elder in the Pres- byterian Church, was a rare man, and for generations the family had led in the moral and material development of New Jersey. He was named for Edward Pa3r8on, his father's friend, a saintly Christian leader still remembered in the American church. Few boys have had a happier childhood. It was partly spent with his grandmother in Princeton. Her house was a centre of influence. Doctors Alexander, Hodge, Miller, and other professors were her intimate friends, and the boy was welcomed at their homes. Members of their families were life-long companions. Entering Rutgers, he was grad- uated in the class of 1850 with Doctors Elmendorf and Shep- erd, Judges Lawrence and Ludlow, and others who became equally distinguished. His heart was set on becoming a physician, and for nearly two years he studied medicine. Then he obeyed the higher call and consecrated himself to the Christian ministry. On graduating from the New Brunswick Seminary, several calls came. He accepted that of the Presb3rterian Church of Charlotte Court-House, Virginia, and in the spring of 1855 491 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY began his pastorate. It was an ideal charge for any man. The best blood of the Old Dominion was in the congregation. No less than eighty-six of the members were college graduates. In 1856 he married Miss Mary Virginia Hawes, of Richmond. Their home became as near the ideal as any this earth has known — beautiful in its comradeship; beneficent in its in- fluence. In 1858, Doctor Terhime was called to the pastorate of the First Reformed Dutch Church, of Newark. To decide as he did, must have been a singular test of faith and coiirage. The claims of material comfort, intellectual fellowship, and family ties on one side, on the other a depleted church, in a com- munity almost entirely dependent for support on manu- facturing interests, most of which were then bankrupt. But Doctor Terhune was a soldier of the cross, and the red fighting blood ran too strong in him to resist the opportunity that called for heroic self-denial, constraint, toil and trials of faith and patience that would, for years, tax to the utmost every power of heart and mind. Few men have possessed as clear a vision of life; for him there were no illusions in the Newark outlook. He knew that, in the modem city life, then just be- ginning, must be fought the main battle of Christianity with the powers of evil. His commission was to lead, and he ac- cepted the detail. For eighteen years Doctor Terhune re- mained at his post. Immediately his work began to tell for blessing, nor was this confined to his parish; — the entire city felt his presence. While his work in all its many parts was of the highest order, the man was always greater than his work. Men, women, and children instinctively loved him. They brought to him their problems, then felt his impression on their hearts. And it was abiding. To-day a great com- pany scattered throughout the earth thank God for what he wrought in them. In 1876, in consequence of the state of Mrs. Terhune's health, Doctor Terhune resigned his Newark charge, and went abroad. His ministry did not lapse, for all the time he la- bored as chaplain, first in Rome and then in Paris, having entire charge of the American churches there. 492 APPENDIX Immediately on his return, in 1878, he received calls from leading churches in Newark, Plainfield, New Haven, and Springfield, Massachusetts. The last named he accepted. There he remained for five years, honored and loved through- out the city. Then came another call. The Williamsburg Reformed Church in Brooklyn had had a remarkable history. At times prosperous, then on the verge of collapse. In the centre of a great population, with a plant capable of accom- modating an enormous congregation, it had never fulfilled its promise. Unless an unusual man, with rare gifts, not merely eloquence and ordinary leadership, but with almost divine tact, patience, and unselfishness, came to save it, the church would disband. Doctor Terhune loved the Old Dutch Church as loyally as any man who has ever served her, but this call must have taxed his sense of proportion. I am sure it was his Master's higher call that decided him to go to Williamsburg. He had never cared for wealth except for its uses, was generous in every direction, and needed all the salary he could win; and the church was $80,000 in debt; its membership was scattered, and its attendants divided into antagonistic groups. More than one friend urged him to re- fuse such a sacrifice. What the seven years' labor there cost him only God knew. He became twenty years older in ap- pearance, and he lost much of the splendid vitality that had never before failed him for any length of time. But he left the church united, entirely free from debt, and with a promise for the future never before so bright. A year abroad was needed to establish his broken health. Since then Doctor Terhune, while refusing another pastor- ate, has been a constant laborer. Large churches in Chicago and St. Louis called him. In these, he became for upward of a year a stated supply, but he knew that his physical strength was waning. A few years ago, he imderwent a serious surgical operation, and for nearly six months lay helpless from its effect. Indeed, his life was despaired of. I talked with his surgeon, who told me that, in his long experience, he had "never known a patient endure greater or more constant suf- fering; I cannot imderstand his marvellous self-control. He 493 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY is always bright, always thinking of others, and never of him- self." It was characteristic. After his recovery Doctor Ter- hnne led an active life. The churches sought his help, and he was a frequent preacher in New York, Newark, and else- where. More than forty years ago, he piu'chased a tract of land on Pompton Lake, New Jersey. It was then a primitive region, to which he was attracted by the scenery and the op- portunity to satisfy his special recreation; for from boyhood he was a great fisherman. As time and means permitted, he made '' Sunnybank" blossom into rare beauty. How he loved this home I There he lived close to nature, and the trees, fiowers, streams, and sky rested and refreshed him. Because a true child of nature, she gave back to him rich treasures that are denied to most; a joy in her commimion; knowledge of her secrets; a vision of God through her revelation. There dear friends gathered about him, and the ideal beauty of a country home was, through his inspiration, revealed to some for the first time. A year ago, Doctor and Mrs. Terhime celebrated their golden wedding. After a day of loving congratulations from friends almost innumerable, who, in body or spirit, gathered about them, they took their wedding journey in their carriage, driv- ing horses born on their place, through the country of his boy- hood and elsewhere. The refreshment of this fortnight of perfect happiness lingered on for all the remaining days of earth. More than forty years ago, while a pastor in Newark, Doc- tor Terhune united with Alpha Delta, an association limited to twelve active members, meeting monthly at their homes. With its founders in 1855, among whom were Drs. G. W. Ber- thune, Robert Davidson, A. R. Van Nest, A. B. Van Zandt, and others, he was intimate. After the death of Doctor Chambers he became the senior member, and in 1900 prepared its history, a copy of which is before me now. In the brief studies of the character of nearly two score friends, there is revealed the secret of his power. He possessed the genius of friendship as few have done. Ten days before the end came, he read to Alpha Delta a 494 APPENDIX paper prepared at our request, ''The Story of the Jamestown, Vbginia, Settlement and the James River Estates." Every monograph of Doctor Terhime had its special value, but into this last he poured the memories of happy years and an esti- mate of values in human life, as never before. All through there ran that subtle charm of style, tender pathos, and gentle humor of which he was master. And there was added a pecul- iar quality impossible to define. I think we all felt that, im- consciously, he had pictured himself, always seeing, knowing, loving, and inspiring the best in men. Not feeling well, he left us suddenly. There was no good-bye. Perhaps it is better so. But Alpha Delta can never be the same to us here. After a week of fever he fell asleep, to awaken in the Father's House, to the vision of the One he loved, and with Him, the children who had passed before. More than once I have been asked to describe the dis- tinctive characteristics of admirable men, and have named them "many-sided," and "standing four square." But as I think of Doctor Terhime, the trite phrases seem in- sufficient. Nor is it easy to differentiate his character. He was a strong man ph3rsically, intellectually, and morally. As few of his generation, he held his course through a long life of trial consistently. He had a definite hatred of sin, and when duty called, never hesitated to particularize the evil of which men were guilty. But in this he always aimed to dis- cover to such the good they were capable of attaining. His fearless courage was balanced by the finest gentleness. His presence wa3 gracious, and the charm of perfect manners was natural in him. Instinctively, men looked up to him and re- membered his sayings. Doctor Terhune was a diligent man; all his life he was a student. He loved his books intelligently. His literary experience was unusual in its range and depth. Even more than books he studied men; their problems were his greatest interest. He thought these out so wisely and sympathetically that he seemed to possess the prophet's vision. In the pulpit, Doctor Terhune was earnest, clear, direct, and simple. His teachers had been rare men in the school of 405 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY eloquence that was the glory of America fifty years ago. On occasion he was equal to the best of these. As I recall his presence in his Newark church, I seem now to hear h is wonderful voice ring out words that moved men to purer thinking, nobler living, and greater loyalty to the Master he loved. As a pastor, he was devoted to every interest of his people; in their homes no guest was as welcome. These, and other traits I ooold name, found their spring in as tender a heart as ever beat; constantly he carried there all God gave him to love. Next to the members of his family, I think his ministerial brethren realized most this supreme value in their friend. They knew he loved them as few men could. I have never heard him speak an unkind word of a clergyman. His presence never failed to hearten and stimulate them in their work. So he honored his manhood and his calling. He has left behind not only a stainless name, but living and blessed power. A GOLDEN WEDDING In her beautiful home at Pompton, New Jersey, surrounded by the flowers she loves so dearly, "Marion Harland," the celebrated writer, held court, Saturday afternoon. More prop- erly speaking, Dr. and Mrs. Edward Payson Terhune were *'at home'' from four to seven o'clock, the occasion being the celebration of their golden- wedding anniversary. In front of the house, upon the prettiest bit of lawn for miles about, was set the present that children and grand- children gave — a sundial made of Pompton granite, inscribed with the same pretty legend as that upon the famous one of Queen Alexandra at Sandringham: " Let others tell of storm or showers, I only mark the sunny hours." The little room, set aside, as upon the occasion of a real wedding, for the presents, revealed plenty of sentiment. There was a cake, made from an old Virginia recipe, baked in the 496 APPENDIX shape that every Virginian bride in "Marion Hariand's" giri- hood days used to have. It had been made by an old friend. A great bowl of water-lilies stood near by — some one had got up at daybreak and scoured their haunts to get fifty of them to present. Gold purses and gold-trimmed piuises — some of them with gold pieces inside — a gold brooch for the wife and a gold scarf- pin for her husband, gold fruit-knives, and Austrian glassware were among the gifts. In the receiving -party were Doctor and Mrs. Terhune's daughters and daughter-in-law — Mrs. Christine Terhune Her- rick, Mrs. Van de Water, and Mrs. Albert Payson Terhune. The men of the family did honors as ushers, and the boys — the grandsons — ^patrolled the porches and lawn with ices and salads and delicious yellow-iced cakes. Golden-rod and golden-glow were everywhere. The porch posts were hidden from sight by them, and the room where the receiving-party stood was banked and massed in a be- wilderment of blooms. And "Marion Harland" herself, in her beautiful gown of black lace, with violet orchids pinned upon her bosom, did honors, much after the manner of that famous hostess of old whose greeting was invariably "At last!" and whose parting word was "Already?" Only (unlike that famous hostess) through her greetings unmistakably rang the note of sincerity. Everybody wandered about in delightfully informal fashion. Doctor Terhime and General Buffington gossiped of old times in one comer; "Marion Harland," Margaret E. Sangster, May Riley Smith, and two or three others made an interesting group in another, and reminiscences were so beautiful and so many — "Do you remember when we used to do this or that?" — the sentence most constantly heard — that unconsciously you be- gan to regret that you, yourself, had not lived in those days, so splendid seemed the sentiment and the honor of the times. Everybody came who could. Some had travelled all day to get there, and must travel all night to get home again. Let- ters— there were himdreds of them, for it seemed that every- 497 MARION HARLAND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY body who even knew her slightly, wanted to send some word of greeting to "Marion Hariand." Among the invited guests were Prof, and Mrs. John W. Bui^gess, Prof, and Mrs. William H. Carpenter, Prof, and Mrs. B. D. Woodward, of Columbia; Miss Laura D. Gill, Dean of Barnard College; Dr. and Mrs. G. H. Fox, Mrs. Henry Villard, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Scribner, Mr. and Mrs. G. H. Putnam, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lauterbach, the Rev. Dr. George Alexander, Mr. and Mrs. Rossiter Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Bigelow Paine, Mr. and Mrs. George Gary £^ggle- ston, the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. James I. Vance, of Newark, New Jersey; Mr. and Mrs. Talcott Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Howard Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Churchill Williams, of Phila- delphia; Gen. and Mrs. A. R. Buf&ngton, Mrs. Margaret £. Sangster, Miss Ida Tarbell, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Smith. — Philadelphia North American, September 2, 1906. THE END 3 2044 019 354 240 iisMJtMl'