CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 arV10845 
 
 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 3 1924 031 295 300 
 olin.anx 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031295300 
 
CYNTHIA WHITAKER TUFTS 
 
 PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION BY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 
 1920 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 My wife wrote the story of her early 
 years for a small group of intimate friends 
 and with no thought of wider publicity. 
 One of that group, Mr. Moore, read selec- 
 tions from it at the memorial services and 
 the expressions of appreciation have indi- 
 cated that a larger group would like to know 
 more of the life they have known in greater 
 or less measure. " The story originally writ- 
 ten by my wife covers only the period before 
 marriage. I have added a note on the later 
 years and this is followed by the apprecia- 
 tions of her friends, Mr. Moore and Mr. 
 Mead. The verses from Clough were read 
 at the memorial services by Mr. Ames. 
 
 James H. Tufts 
 
 Chicago 
 April, 1920 
 
Say not the struggle naught availeth. 
 
 The labour and the wounds are vain. 
 
 The enemy faints not, nor faileth. 
 
 And as things have been they remain. 
 
 If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; 
 
 It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd. 
 Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers. 
 
 And, but for you, possess the field. 
 
 For while the tired waves, vainly breaking. 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain. 
 
 Far back, through creeks and inlets making. 
 Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 
 
 And not by eastern windows only. 
 
 When daylight comes, comes in the light; 
 
 In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly! 
 But westward, look, the land is bright! 
 
 — Arthur Hugh Clough 
 
MY LIFE 
 
 To begin the history of one's life with 
 one's ancestors seems so logical as to be 
 almost inevitable. Practically all my fore- 
 bears belonged to the old Puritan stock in 
 New England and many of them played an 
 active part in those troublesome times when 
 the hand of every man — Indian, French, 
 and English — seemed to be against them. 
 It was in one of those sudden Indian attacks 
 — this time upon the little town of Hatfield, 
 Massachusetts, that one of my ancestors 
 played a gallant part. So sudden and so 
 fierce was the attack that the colonists were 
 able to make almost no defense. The men 
 were at work in the meadows and the women 
 and children had no time to run to the 
 palisades for safety. The Indians burned 
 several houses, killed sixteen colonists — all 
 but five of whom were women and children 
 — and took seventeen prisoners, women, 
 children, and old men. From Hatfield they 
 went on to Deerfield where they made 
 
 7 
 
8 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 another attack and from there went up the 
 Connecticut Valley two hundred miles, then 
 across the mountains to Lake Champlain, 
 where in the French settlement the captives 
 found some temporary relief from cruel cold 
 and hunger. From here they pushed on 
 still farther north. 
 
 News of the attack upon Hatfield spread 
 quickly, and Hartford sent a body of troops, 
 which, with volunteers from the New Eng- 
 land towns, followed the Indians for some 
 forty miles, but could not come upon them, 
 so skilful were they in eluding pursuit. 
 No one knew which tribe of Indians had 
 made the attack, and only one man, Ben- 
 jamin Waite, seemed able to decide upon a 
 plan of action. He had had much to do 
 with the Indians. He had led scouting par- 
 ties against them; he had been with Captain 
 Turner in the ill-fated expedition against 
 them at what is now Turner's Falls, from 
 which only the little band which he led came 
 back in safety. He was a man of energy 
 and resource and he had a big personal stake 
 in the matter, as the Indians had burned his 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 9 
 
 house, and his wife and three children were 
 among the captives. He went to Boston 
 and obtained a commission from the gov- 
 ernor of Massachusetts to act as agent for 
 the release of the captives and a guaranty 
 of funds, and on October 24 left Hatfield 
 with Samuel Jennings, whose wife also was 
 captive. They reached Albany the thir- 
 tieth, but were delayed here till December 10, 
 because, in the urgency of their enterprise, 
 they neglected to pay due deference to 
 Captain SaHsbury; so when they finally 
 started winter was at hand and they faced 
 the dangers of a dreary march through an 
 unknown country buried deep in snow. A 
 Mohawk guide led them to Lake George 
 and left them there after fitting out a canoe 
 and drawing on birch bark a rude sketch of 
 Lake George and Lake Champlain. They 
 made the trip to the i2p|>€£ end of Lake 
 George in three days, made a three-mile 
 portage, and reached the shores of Lake 
 Champlain, the first Englishmen to explore 
 the region. Where Ticonderoga now stands 
 they were detained for six days, unable to 
 
lo Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 make headway against the wind in their 
 frail canoe, and impeded by the ice, which 
 was not strong enough to bear them on foot. 
 Provisions were exhausted and they lived on 
 what they could find, killing some raccoons 
 in a hollow tree and finding a tray of biscuits 
 and some brandy in a deserted wigwam. 
 
 They reached the frontier town of Cham- 
 big about the sixth of January. Here they 
 found Hannah Jennings and a few other 
 captives who had been pawned to the French 
 in exchange for liquor, and heard that the 
 others were with the Indians not far away. 
 They hastened to Quebec and aided by 
 Governor Frontenac negotiated a ransom 
 by promising to pay two hundred pounds. 
 When the winter was over the party set out 
 for home, with an escort of French soldiers, 
 and reached Albany on May 11. From there 
 a messenger with letters was sent to Hat- 
 field, carrying news of the ransom to anxious 
 relatives. Benjamin Waite wrote as follows: 
 
 To MY Loving Friends and Kindred at Hatfield: 
 
 These few lines are to let you understand that we are 
 arrived at Albany now with the captives, and we now 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 1 1 
 
 stand in need of assistance for my charges is very great and 
 heavy and therefore any that have any love to our condition, 
 let it move them to come and help us in this strait. 
 
 I pray you hasten the matter for it requireth great haste. 
 Stay not for the Sabbath nor the shoeing of horses. We 
 shall endeavor to meet you at Canterhook. We must 
 come very softly because of our wives and children. I 
 pray you hasten then, stay not night nor day for the matter 
 requireth great haste. Bring provisions with you for us. 
 Your loving kinsman 
 
 Benj. Waite 
 
 At Albany written from my own hand. As I have 
 been affected to yours, all that were fatherless, be affected 
 to me now and hasten the matter and stay not, and ease me 
 of my charges. You shall not need to be afraid of any 
 
 The ransom money was quickly raised, for 
 this letter was read in every pulpit in the 
 colony within two weeks. It is now set up 
 in bronze in Memorial Hall in Hatfield, tell- 
 ing with pathetic eloquence the gentleness, 
 the heroism, and the victory of this simple 
 man of resolute will and undaunted courage, 
 who, with one steadfast companion, faced 
 the perils of the untrodden wilderness on a 
 
12 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 trip of 1,500 miles, enduring the bitter cold 
 of winter and the cruel pangs of hunger and 
 thirst in the hope of rescuing wife, children, 
 and friends. 
 
 Twenty were rescued from captivity, half 
 of them children, among them little Captiv- 
 ity Jennings, born in March, and Canada 
 Waite, born the twenty-second of January. 
 Small wonder that the father wrote — "we 
 must travel very softly because of our wives 
 and children." It was Canada Waite's 
 daughter, Mary Smith, who married my 
 ancestor, Deacon Joseph Field, so furnishing 
 a connecting link with the heroic Benjamin. 
 
 They all seem to me heroes — these pio- 
 neers. The genealogical record reads like a 
 roll of honor. 
 
 David Whitaker: Marched to Bennington, July, 
 
 1777. 
 
 Joshua Hobart: Enlisted, May 25, 1775, served 
 8 mos. Later joined Independent Company, 
 various services. 
 
 Peter Hobart: Byram Gushing' s Company, assem- 
 bled at Dorchester, for sea coast defence; 
 called out again on 2nd alarm. 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 13 
 
 Deacon Jonathan Field: Marched to Ticonderoga; 
 
 member of Council of Safety. 
 Gideon Lee: Marched to Ticonderoga, and sea 
 
 coast defence. 
 Jeremiah Ballard: I st Lieutenant and Captain of 
 
 Infantry; served in French and Indian Wars; 
 
 also 1776-78. 
 Josiah, his son: At age of fifteen served several 
 
 months in Revolutionary war in place of his 
 
 father. Marched to Ticonderoga '77; again 
 
 marched to join northern army. Various 
 
 service. 
 
 They were good citizens, farmers, dea- 
 cons, justices of the peace, selectmen, mem- 
 bers of the legislature, and, not least, fathers 
 of many children who, though forbidden by 
 their own similar circumstances to call their 
 parents brave, never failed to call them 
 blessed. 
 
 The history might seem too somber col- 
 ored were it not for the high lights in John 
 Lee's career. He was born about 1600 in 
 London and must have come rather early 
 to this country, for in 1634 this extract 
 appears in Massachusetts Colonial Records: 
 "Ordered that John Lee be whipt and fined 
 
1 4 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 for calling Mr. Ludlowe a false hearted 
 knave, a hard hearted knave and a heavy 
 friend." 
 
 Again in 1634, "John Lee fined 4J for 
 speaking reproachfully of the Governor; said 
 he was but a lawyer's clerk and what under- 
 standing had he more than himself." Also, 
 "for abusing a mayde of the Governor's, 
 pretending in the way of marriage when he 
 himself professed he intended none." 
 
 1 64 1. To pay Widow Hatfield 15s for her Bible, and 
 
 I OS for lying about it. 
 1 660. Complained of for intent to wound an ox and kill 
 
 a pig; not proven, held under suspicion. 
 1660. May, fined for railing speeches. 
 1665. Fined for contempt and for non-appearance at 
 
 court. 
 
 1667. Brought before court to answer for working in his 
 swamp on Sunday, but brought witnesses to prove 
 he was putting out a fire; discharged. 
 
 1668. Samuel Younglove deposes in a case of assault and 
 battery against John Lee and his son Joseph. 
 
 This record proves that John Lee's was 
 a free spirit that refused to be bound in the 
 fetters of puritanism. Today he would be 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 15 
 
 living in wealth on the North Side, or speak- 
 ing from the Socialist platform, or even 
 marching under the flag of anarchy. 
 
 I remember only one of my grand- 
 parents, my father's father, Grandfather 
 Whitaker. Grandmother Whitaker's picture 
 always hung in our parlor, a sweet-faced, 
 frail-looking lady, wearing an embroidered 
 muslin cap which framed the face and was 
 tied under the chin. I had always thought 
 of her as an old woman and it was a little 
 shock of surprise to find, in a visit to the 
 cemetery this summer, that she was two 
 years younger than I when she died. Grand- 
 father Whitaker had been in his day select- 
 man and justice of the peace, and had also 
 been sent to the legislature from his dis- 
 trict. His contemporaries always called him 
 "Squire Whitaker." This, with his digni- 
 fied appearance, his tall frame, bright black 
 eyes, and snow-white hair, operated to fill 
 our childish minds with a feeling of awe and 
 respect. I do not remember that he ever 
 showed us affection or seemed to desire affec- 
 tion from us. Such was the New England 
 
1 6 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 reticence. One instance may serve to illus- 
 trate our relation. There was in my youth 
 in the country, as you may imagine, no 
 such flood of children's literature as fills 
 our homes today. The only periodical we 
 had was the Youth's Companion — a little 
 four-page sheet it was then, with one long 
 story on the front page illustrated by one 
 picture in the center of the page. Grand- 
 father Whitaker always had the first reading 
 of this paper. In his seat of honor in the 
 warmest corner of the room he would care- 
 fully and slowly read it from beginning to 
 end, seemingly quite unconscious of our 
 hardly concealed impatience and the hun- 
 gry eyes that followed his progress. We 
 might quarrel among ourselves oyer the 
 paper but there was never any question of 
 Grandfather's right to it. I like to remem- 
 ber what, I heard him say to my mother in 
 his last illness: "Caroline, you have been 
 a good daughter; you have never given me 
 an impatient word." 
 
 As I said I have no recollection of my 
 mother's father and mother. Indeed, I 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 17 
 
 believe it was on the occasion of Grand- 
 father Peter Hobart's death that we moved 
 from Wendell, Massachusetts, my father's 
 birthplace, where I was born, to Leverett, 
 my mother's birthplace, to the farm which 
 Grandfather Hobart gave my mother as 
 her share of the property. There were 
 eight children in my grandfather's family, 
 and from my mother's occasional reminis- 
 cences I could reconstruct in some degree 
 the life on the farm — the men going at 
 daybreak to their work in the fields, and 
 returning late at night; the women often 
 doing the milking as well as the butter- and 
 cheese-making, the weaving and spinning, 
 soap- and candle-making, drying apples and 
 berries before the days of canning; cutting, 
 dyeing, and weaving rags for carpet for the 
 best room, besides preparing food daily for 
 the large family. 
 
 My mother in her turn had thirteen 
 children, eight of whom lived to grow up. I 
 never heard her utter a wish for a wider 
 sphere of usefulness or complain that her life 
 was futile. My mother's early home was 
 
1 8 Cynthia WMtaker Tufts 
 
 one of large hospitality. "Peter's" seems 
 to have been a refuge for the poor and 
 needy of the neighborhood. I have often 
 heard my mother tell the story of the vil- 
 lage half-wit who came to the house one 
 night after long wandering about in the cold 
 and snow. As he seated himself before the 
 fireplace he remarked: "Some told me to 
 go one way and some another, but I thought 
 I'd Hne her for Peter's." At one time the 
 farmhouse sheltered two runaway slaves, and 
 there was usually some boy in the family 
 working as an apprentice at the cooper's 
 trade which my grandfather carried on in 
 the winter in a shop across the road from 
 the house. 
 
 My mother's mother was one of the Field 
 family — as prolific as it proved to be illus- 
 trious. Many of them lived in Leverett; 
 Eugene Field's ancestral homestead is there. 
 In my childhood the larger part of the popu- 
 lation of the town were Fields, and a curi- 
 ous system of nomenclature grew up. Of 
 course there were favorite Christian names, 
 the same one often appearing in different 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 19 
 
 families. So it came about that Cynthia 
 the daughter of Sawyer Field would be 
 called "Cynthia Sawyer," while Cynthia 
 the daughter of Stillman Field would be 
 called " Cynthia Stillman." Susie Field who 
 married Moses Field would be known 
 as "Susie Moses," and Susie Field who 
 married Horace Field would be known as 
 "Susie Horace," while Mary Field, daugh- 
 ter of Asa Field, would be known as "Asa's 
 Mary," and Mary the daughter of Edward 
 Field as "Edward's Mary." In the neigh- 
 boring town there was a similarly large 
 kindred of Roots, and someone achieved 
 undying local fame with the mot, "There 
 are enough Fields in Leverett to set out all 
 the Roots in Montague." 
 
 My father and mother were educated, in 
 accordance with the customs of the time for 
 all but the few adventurous ones who went 
 to college, at the district school. Later my 
 father attended the academy at New Salem, 
 — an institution for which he always felt a 
 strong interest, fostered by annual attend- 
 ance at the reunions, and by the fact that 
 
20 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 many of his kindred lived in the town and 
 were connected with the academy for many 
 years. He taught in district schools and for 
 several years in a private school in New 
 Brunswick, New Jersey. While here he was 
 one night waylaid, sandbagged, and robbed. 
 I have thought that his frequent headaches 
 and not very robust health may have been 
 the result of the blow on the head which 
 so nearly proved fatal. At that time my 
 mother, with an enterprise not so common 
 among young women of that time, went 
 away from home to a private school in Ux- 
 bridge, Massachusetts, for several terms. 
 She too taught for a few terms, but when I 
 first knew my parents they had settled 
 down upon the farm in Leverett where 
 they were to spend the remainder of their 
 lives. 
 
 Leverett was typical of the small remote 
 New England village at that time. Its 
 people were all of New England descent, as 
 the immigrant had not yet found his way 
 so far from the large cities. Families were 
 more or less intimately related. The Fields, 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 21 
 
 my mother's relatives, were, as I have said, 
 numerous and carried most of the responsi- 
 bility of the town. They were all farmers, 
 in fact in my early days farming was the 
 only industry in the town. They held town 
 offices and church offices, and as they were 
 all of them musical they played a large part 
 in the social life of the town. One of my 
 mother's uncles led the choir with his bass 
 viol, and four of her cousins formed the 
 male quartet which was much in demand 
 for funerals as well as less solemn functions. 
 We did not indeed in Leverett have sym- 
 phony concerts and grand opera, but we 
 did have singing schools and Old Folks' 
 concerts. To the latter all the surrounding 
 towns sent their best singers, while those 
 who were not eligible for the stage came in 
 large numbers to swell the audience. The 
 performers came in costume of the olden 
 time and there was a brave display of blue 
 broadcloth swallowtails with brass buttons, 
 powdered hair, changeable and plaid taffe- 
 tas and calashes. How grand it all seemed 
 to my childish imagination, and the music 
 
22 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 how wonderful ! One favorite tune I remem- 
 ber of which the words went: 
 
 The Lord descended from above. 
 And bowed the heavens most high; 
 On cherub and on cherubim 
 Full royally he rode; 
 And on the wings of mighty winds 
 Came flying all abroad. 
 
 How the words chased each other through 
 the fugue, and what weird visions of deity 
 my childish imagination conjured! 
 
 Another annual social event was the dona- 
 tion party. The theory of this was that the 
 minister's salary was eked out by the gifts 
 which people carried. In earlier days these 
 gifts took the form of loads of wood, baskets 
 of vegetables, butter, and cheese, and must 
 have added to the minister's comfort; but 
 in my childhood, though the party was still 
 called "donation," in reality the parsonage 
 became for the evening a sort of banqueting 
 hall where we ate up the greater part of the 
 food we carried with us. I think the min- 
 ister and his family, as on succeeding days 
 they ate the dreary remnants of cakes and 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 23 
 
 pies and bread, must have felt the full force 
 of the Scripture, "It is more blessed to give 
 than to receive. " 
 
 The surprise party was also a favorite 
 social function. Some member of the family- 
 would be warned of the intended visit in 
 order that the party might be let into the 
 house secretly, and it was always a thrilling 
 moment when in the face of a room full of 
 people the host and hostess testified to 
 their complete surprise. This was a popular 
 form of entertainment among the children 
 as well as the parents. We went uninvited 
 and unchaperoned; we went early and 
 stayed late; we played games and paid 
 forfeits which involved much kissing; we 
 had beaux if we could get them — I may as 
 well confess that the getting them was to 
 me the most interesting feature of these 
 social events. Not that I was more senti- 
 mental — I think even then the critical fac- 
 ulty predominated — but I played the game 
 and did not intend to be beaten. 
 
 Besides the normal people who carried on 
 the real life of the town we had our share 
 
24 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 of the kind that is most likely to figure in 
 stories of New England. Across the road 
 from us lived Addison. Addison had an 
 impediment in both gait and speech, but 
 this did not interfere with his life-work of 
 gathering and disseminating news. Every 
 night after supper he limped by the house 
 on his way to the store, where summer and 
 winter the village gossips gathered to dis- 
 cuss affairs of nation and state, and we knew 
 that if anything of interest had happened 
 during the day we should hear it from Addi- 
 son the next morning. He was no less ex- 
 pansive about his own aflFairs than about 
 those of others, so we all knew when he 
 began to be interested in Miss Clark. He 
 got a new buggy and high-spirited horse, 
 for he said he wanted to do some. When 
 someone suggested that the horse was rather 
 too skittish, Addison gloried in the element 
 of danger and guessed he could " tate 'e tints 
 out of her." 
 
 The wooing went well for a time and the 
 frequent reports interested us children, but 
 finally all came to an end in Addison's 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 25 
 
 graphic phrase, "She. said some sins and I 
 said some sins, and we twit it." 
 
 Not far from us Aunt Lyddy lived with 
 her niece and nephew. Edward, the nephew, 
 picked huckleberries and sawed wood for 
 his daily bread, but Aunt Lyddy never 
 doubted that the world owed her a living, 
 and almost daily we saw her and Ella start- 
 ing out with their carpetbag in the middle 
 of the forenoon bound for somebody's din- 
 ner table. Sometimes they would stay to 
 supper in the same place and sometimes 
 move on to pastures new. When in a fit of 
 pique at what she considered the grudging 
 hospitality of the neighbors Aunt Lyddy 
 took to her bed she did not cease to levy 
 tribute on my mother's generosity. Ella 
 appeared every morning with dishes for 
 milk and a "little cream to put on Lyddy's 
 tater," and carried home with her not infre- 
 quently in addition to the cream and milk 
 the tater itself or its equivalent. To the 
 stereotyped question: "How is Aunt Lyddy 
 this morning?" the almost invariable reply 
 was, "She's pretty much down today at the 
 
26 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 heel, she is." Aunt Lyddy used to be at 
 the point of death at intervals, and Ella 
 would be sent out in the middle of the night 
 to summon the neighbors to attend her 
 decease. After several false alarms others 
 refused to go, but my mother could not 
 bring herself to do so. One night when 
 the summons came mother was not able 
 to go, so my father went instead, and Aunt 
 Lyddy was so angry at what she must have 
 considered the final desertion of all her 
 natural audience that she did come nearer 
 to death than in all the years before. 
 
 Mrs. Glenn was another character who 
 seems amusing in the retrospect. She was 
 a widow and lived alone, allowing her only 
 daughter to come to visit her once a year. 
 She came sometimes to help in our family 
 while the children were still small, made 
 big pans of doughnuts, and fed the babies 
 catnip tea. It was her proud boast that 
 she had been brought up in a minister's 
 family, a fact which made her a judge not 
 only of preaching but of the exemplification 
 of preaching. She was also something of 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 27 
 
 a philosopher. I remember when one day I 
 suggested some arrangement that I thought 
 mother would like she grandly set me aside 
 and voiced the eternal conflict between the 
 sexes as she replied: "I'll ask your father; 
 men's cal'lations and women's cal'lations is 
 different." She used to come to prayer- 
 meeting in the schoolhouse, holding in each 
 hand a candle stuck in a potato for a can- 
 dlestick to light our path to piety. She 
 always went to church and sat in the amen 
 pew with a posy of dill or caraway or "boy's 
 love" and cinnamon roses in her black- 
 mitted hands, and it never made any difference 
 to her whether she got there before or after 
 the sermon if she was in time to stand for 
 the benediction. She lived alone, growing 
 more and more recluse and miserly with the 
 years. In my youth I remember the neigh- 
 bors gave her a surprise party and pre- 
 sented her with a dictionary. She at once 
 lighted a candle, took it and the book into 
 the kitchen, and sat down to read, paying 
 no further attention to her guests except 
 to return their goodnight when they left. 
 
28 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 In later years she allowed no one to come 
 into the house or even to pass the yard gate 
 if she could help it, and after her death the 
 neighbors found an ax behind every door of 
 the house, kept perhaps with some idea of 
 protecting the six hundred dollars which 
 my mother found sewed in her dress skirt 
 when she died after a short illness at our 
 house. It would have been a bold burglar 
 who would have tried to get into the house 
 past the array of kitchen ranges, pots, ket- 
 tles, flatirons, and tinware with which the 
 tiny rooms were filled. 
 
 Then there was Austin, the gentle bache- 
 lor who lived in two rooms over the store 
 and carried the mail bag back and forth to 
 the railroad station twice daily for years. 
 Too shy to sit at table with us he was quite 
 at ease when he had his beloved fiddle under 
 his chin and forgetful of his audience would 
 play through his rather limited repertoire, 
 ^metimes singing to his own accompaniment: 
 
 Oh tell me where the dove has flown 
 
 To build her downy nest. 
 And I will roam this world all o'er 
 
 To win her to my breast. 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 29 
 
 By meek religion's humble cot 
 
 She builds her downy nest, 
 O seek that sweet secluded spot 
 
 And win her to thy breast. 
 
 The closing number, which we children 
 never failed to call for, given with many 
 contortions of the body and flourishes of 
 the bow, was a demonstration of "how 
 Uncle Lander used to do it." 
 
 The kitchen, scrupulously clean, was the 
 center of the house and family life, for 
 though the parlor was a beautiful room and 
 it was our delight to adorn it, it was remote 
 and cold in winter. The kitchen was warm 
 and convenient to the back door which was 
 the one of the five entrances to our house 
 that was most used. The neighbors came 
 often to the kitchen to smoke a friendly 
 pipe and to talk. What did those neigh- 
 bors talk about I wonder ? Whatever it 
 was it formed a pleasant accompaniment to 
 our work and play, dominoes, fox and geese, 
 and jack straws, or the cutting of apples for 
 drying, seeding raisins for tomorrow's cake, 
 or the endless over-and-over sewing of long 
 
30 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 sheets and the hemming of towels. We 
 looked upon our elders with great respect. 
 There were many who came a-visiting, stop- 
 ping on their way through the town to eat 
 a meal with us or to stay overnight. It 
 never made any difference how many came 
 or how unexpectedly, there was always a 
 hearty welcome. I remember especially the 
 times when the General Conference of the 
 churches was held in Leverett. We always 
 entertained our share of the delegates. I 
 looked upon them with mingled awe and re- 
 spect, though their personal appearance did 
 not always measure up to my ideal of what the 
 representatives of the Most High should be. 
 The minister seemed a person remote 
 from ordinary affairs, and when he came to 
 call I always fled the house; but it seemed 
 that I could never get so far away that my 
 mother through her willing emissaries, my 
 brothers and sisters, could not find and 
 bring me back. There was always a "sea- 
 son of prayer" before he left, and I hated 
 that, for it seemed part of the untactful 
 effort on the part of my elders, of which I 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 31 
 
 was all the time conscious, to get me to 
 repent of my sins and become converted. 
 I could not get conviction of sin, and the 
 God whom I was required to love was even 
 farther removed from the possibility of 
 inspiring affection than his representatives 
 on earth. I was always skeptical. My atti- 
 tude toward the dogmas presented for belief 
 was: How do you know that is so ? Many 
 of them seemed to me, even then, irrational 
 and unintelligent. I was open to con- 
 viction but demanded proof. I went on 
 attending church and Sunday school, which 
 in my day was an unmoral if not demoral- 
 izing agency — ^learning hymns and psalms 
 and gospels by heart. I was overwhelmed 
 by vague aspirations and longings as I read 
 aloud to myself, under the apple trees on a 
 Sunday afternoon, from the Book of Job or 
 the Song of Songs. 
 
 Churchgoing was no less a social than a 
 religious function. The church was a barn- 
 like structure, beautiful in summer with its 
 windows wide open to the blue sky, the 
 birds, and the trees, but cold and dreary 
 
32 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 in winter. It was theoretically heated by 
 two box stoves, one on each side of the 
 room at the end, and the little intervals of 
 comfort, when after the long morning serv- 
 ice and Sunday school we gathered around 
 these stoves to eat luncheon and enjoy the 
 friendly warmth before the beginning of the 
 afternoon service, were so pleasant by con- 
 trast that I recall them more often than the 
 hour-long sermon and proportionally long 
 prayers. It was during one of these ser- 
 mons that Mrs. Glenn, disturbed by the 
 frequent expectorations of a visiting minis- 
 ter who was in the pulpit, rose from her 
 seat in the amen corner and picking up 
 the box half-filled with sawdust with which 
 every pew was furfiished, marched with it 
 up to the half-dozen steps which led to 
 the high pulpit platform and placing it 
 in front of the preacher returned to her seat 
 unruffled. No one in the audience showed 
 surprise; none of the children smiled; so 
 perfect were our manners! 
 
 The church and the school were the two 
 social centers of the town. There were no 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 23 
 
 parents' associations in those days, and no 
 discussion or criticism of methods of instruc- 
 tion, but parents were frequent and compla- 
 cent visitors in the school, and especially on 
 the last day of the term formed an admir- 
 ing audience which stimulated us to perfec- 
 tion. We attained perfection by the very 
 simple process of going through the program 
 for the great last day every day for a week 
 before the end of the term. As a result 
 even the most stupid could answer correctly 
 if the teacher did her part and put the right 
 question. We always cleaned the school- 
 house the night before the last day, scrub- 
 bing the floor and benches and washing the 
 windows, and decorated it with oak leaves 
 and flowers, or ground pine and hemlock 
 branches, and no student on the campus 
 ever looked forward to his graduation with 
 more eager hearts than were ours in antici- 
 pation of the ceremonial Last Day. 
 
 In the school which I attended two gen- 
 erations were taught by the same prim spin- 
 ster, Cynthia B., sister of Addison. The little 
 red schoolhouse was old and dilapidated, 
 
34 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 and in the winter both wind and snow 
 came in unhindered through the rents 
 that time had made. After devotional exer- 
 cises, which consisted of reading in turn two 
 verses from the Bible, every hand would go 
 up as though instinctively, and every mouth 
 opened for the same request, "May I go to 
 the fire ?" The fire hummed in a huge 
 rectangular box stove which stood in the 
 middle of the room. It was usually red-hot 
 by the time we surrounded it, and before 
 many minutes the smoke of sacrifice would 
 rise to heaven as we pushed and crowded 
 each other in the cheer of good comrade- 
 ship till woolen garments brushed against 
 the glowing surface. We were not allowed 
 to speak to each other during school hours 
 without permission (next to "May I go to 
 the fire ?" I think the most importunate 
 petition was, "May I speak ?") and any 
 infraction of this rule was punished by 
 depriving the offender of the five-minute 
 morning and afternoon recess for a week, 
 but when we were three deep round the 
 stove we knew that rules were made only 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 35 
 
 to be broken. Cynthia B. was a rigid dis- 
 ciplinarian and in ordinary circumstances 
 little escaped her all-seeing eye. Was any 
 one so brazen as to deny a wrongdoing she 
 would march up to him and, seizing the 
 forelock firmly between thumb and finger, 
 press the head closely back till dislocation 
 threatened and the offender was obliged to 
 look her squarely in the face. In such case 
 it was a hardened sinner who would not 
 break down and confessing his sins take the 
 punishment. There was an elaborate sys- 
 tem of punishment ranging from standing 
 on the floor ten minutes to an hour, staying in 
 from recess from three days to a week, stay- 
 ing after school to learn and recite a lesson, 
 feruling, and switching. In the latter case 
 the offender cut his own switches and the 
 flogging was done before the whole school. 
 I have in mind a picture of one boy, who 
 resisted flogging, dragged by his hair to 
 the middle of the room and finally taking 
 the punishment with white face and set 
 teeth. Any resistance of authority was uni- 
 versally condemned by our parents, and in 
 
^6 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 many cases we were told that if we got a 
 licking at school we should get another at 
 home. 
 
 There were all grades in the school, and 
 from fifteen to twenty classes recited each 
 half-day. I used to listen to the recitations 
 of the older ones and could parse and 
 analyze a sentence long before . I studied 
 grammar, and was familiar with the technique 
 of multiplication and long division before I 
 was through with the "f of 24 is ^ of how 
 many times 7 ?" of Colburn's Intellectual. 
 After we got through the primary work I 
 don't remember that my sister and I ever 
 recited much. We would decide at the begin- 
 ning of the term what we wanted to study, 
 get the books, and begin. The teacher would 
 inquire from day to day how far we had 
 gone, give help if we needed it, and tell 
 us to go on as far as we could for the next 
 day. As a result of this system applied for 
 twenty-four weeks in the year I was ready 
 at twelve for the high school, much better 
 grounded in the three R's than the child 
 of today but quite ignorant of the exist- 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 37 
 
 ence even of much with which he is famil- 
 iar. It was several years before I found 
 out that Paradise Lost, which had supplied 
 the grammar class with sentences for analy- 
 sis, was really a wonderful poem of surpass- 
 ing grandeur, though I somehow managed 
 to read considerable during those years. 
 The Sunday-school library furnished Uttle 
 but the "Elsie" books or their equivalent; 
 there was no public library and few books 
 in the house, but I got hold of some vol- 
 umes of Scott and Dickens. I read Dred, 
 The Caxtons, Thaddeus of Warsaw, Scottish 
 Chiefs, and Last Days of Pompeii. The 
 Fall of Babylon and the Bible supplemented 
 the Sunday-school library for Sunday read- 
 ing. Scottish Chiefs came into my hands 
 from some source on a New England fast 
 day. Not quite sure whether it would be 
 considered suitable reading for that day I 
 hid myself in the angle of the shed door 
 and there, warmed by the April sunshine 
 and enthralled by the heroism and sufferings 
 of those brave men and beautiful women, 
 I remained indifferent to the intermittent 
 
38 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 search on the part of mother and sisters to 
 discover my whereabouts. Shakespeare and 
 Gates Ajar were given me. Tennyson I 
 bought with money given me as prize for a 
 large and beautiful collection of wild flowers 
 which I made and took to the county 
 fair one fall. Beautiful editions of Thomas 
 Moore and Paradise Lost were given me by 
 an admirer. Daniel Deronda and Theophras- 
 tus Such were read in paper edition, and my 
 lamp burned till early morning as I read the 
 story of that most womanly of women Jane 
 Eyre. I did not go at once to the high school 
 — that was the unusual rather than the obvi- 
 ous thing to do — but started on my wage- 
 earning career. They cast the bantlings on 
 the rocks early in those days, but I must say I 
 found few sharp edges and always everywhere 
 I found strong friends and helping hands. 
 
 My first experience as a wage-earner was 
 with a life-long friend of my mother's in 
 whose family I had the freedom and compan- 
 ionship of a daughter and gave a daughter's 
 service for more than the usual pecuniary 
 compensation in such cases, namely the 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 39 
 
 sum of one dollar a week. I was at this 
 time quite competent for fine ironing, could 
 get the simple meals and do a little cooking, 
 and delighted in ordering and beautifying 
 the house. I stayed there ten weeks, but 
 for me the time was measured in terms of 
 dollars. I saw a radiant vision of myself on 
 the way to church in a white dress under the 
 beautiful green parasol which the money 
 would buy, but alas! stout shoes for myself 
 and copper toes for the younger children 
 swallowed up my fortune. This was the 
 first great tragedy of my life. 
 
 About this time one of the townsmen 
 began a small florist's business, growing 
 seeds for market, and my sister and I 
 undertook the making of the little paper 
 bags in which they were sold. This we 
 did at home in odd moments when we 
 were not helping mother with housework, 
 sewing, or babies. We had the munificent 
 sum of one cent per hundred for making 
 these bags, but I seem to have no recollec- 
 tion of how we invested this or the equally 
 large sums which we must have earned 
 
40 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 from the braiding of palm-leaf braid at 
 one and one-quarter cents per yard. I do 
 remember that I invested six cents from 
 the latter earnings in a blue ribbon "catch- 
 my-lad" for my personal adornment. 
 
 My next wage-earning adventure outside 
 of home was in the pocket-book industry. 
 I went to work for a man who got his mate- 
 rial for wallets from a large factory near 
 by and made it up in his own home. He 
 and his widowed daughter both worked at 
 the job. Later my sister joined me there. 
 We worked in a room which formed the 
 family sitting-room. The hours were long 
 — from half-past seven to six with a half- 
 hour at noon — but we were well fed. We 
 shared in the family life and in the social 
 life of the town and the pleasant neigh- 
 borhood doings, which brought frequent 
 callers to relieve the tedium of the day and 
 young people and parties to make the eve- 
 nings gay. The daughter was old enough 
 to be my mother, and the sincere friend- 
 ship between us lasted till her death. When 
 the mother of the family died the business 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 41 
 
 was given up, the place sold, and my sister 
 and I went home. 
 
 It must have been at this time that 
 we conducted a dressmaker's shop, making 
 dresses for ourselves, for mother, and for the 
 neighborhood. We managed somehow to 
 know something of prevailing styles and 
 were authorities on the subject. I remem- 
 ber making a dress and jacket for one 
 of the girls in the neighborhood and how 
 seriously I considered the question of asking 
 three dollars for it. My chronology is far 
 from exact, but it must have been at this 
 time, while I was fourteen, that I took 
 the teacher's examination held in our town 
 hall and was appointed to the school in 
 my mother's old home district, known as 
 "Rattlesnake Gutter." Here, I suppose, 
 I applied the educational methods used in 
 my own instruction. I remember, however, 
 that I did not use any of the big bunch of 
 hickory rods which my uncle cut and placed 
 rather ostentatiously behind the schoolroom 
 door. It had been freely predicted that I 
 should have trouble with two of the big 
 
42 Cynthia Whttaker Tufts 
 
 boys, but a little disagreement at the begin- 
 ning of the term was amicably settled and 
 we were good friends ever after. 
 
 It was about this time that Mr. Hersey, 
 of Hingham, Massachusetts, who as a boy 
 had lived with my Grandfather Hobart 
 and worked in the cooper's shop, had the 
 thought of paying back to the town of 
 Leverett some part of the debt which he 
 felt he owed to my grandfather's family. 
 He had retired from active business with a 
 competence, some part of which he now 
 put to use in the building of a box factory 
 in Leverett. When this opened many of 
 the young people of the town went to work 
 in it, making the little oval boxes which 
 were then used for packing figs and also 
 the larger round salt boxes. It was a small 
 business, employing only about fifty hands, 
 in those early days rather more girls than 
 men, but it kept the young people from leav- 
 ing town. We worked at benches placed 
 on each side of a long, narrow, well-lighted 
 room. Working conditions were ideal and 
 the work heavy or light, about as we chose 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 43 
 
 to make it, i.e., it was done by the piece. 
 Fifteen cents for a hundred completed boxes 
 was the rate and the day's work ranged 
 from five hundred to fifteen hundred accord- 
 ing to individual ability. "The Shop " soon 
 became the center of social activities. We 
 inaugurated a debating society which met 
 fortnightly. There were spelling schools and 
 sociables, and during the winter we presented 
 a series of tableaux and one rather ambi- 
 tious play, of which I remember little except 
 that I was the noble and self-sacrificing 
 wife of a profligate husband who was re- 
 deemed to a life of virtue by the beauty of 
 my character and my patient endurance. 
 I think this is the only great event of my 
 life which had no influence on my character 
 — the only experience which has been of no 
 use in later life. 
 
 I carried through a well-arranged course in 
 history and literature this year. Mr. Hersey 
 proved a stimulating friend. He would often 
 take the vacant seat beside my bench and 
 talk to me of his experiences, ' his acquaint- 
 ances, his reading, and of what the world held 
 
44 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 for those who had the courage to take it. 
 The year in the shop I suppose had quite as 
 much educational value as a year in the high 
 school in the adjoining town of Amherst, 
 which I entered at seventeen. 
 
 My next older sister had had two years 
 in the school and was now working in the 
 insurance and real estate office of Judge 
 Thomas. There was a chance for me to 
 go into his family and work for my board 
 and I had money enough for the small tui- 
 tion which was charged. So I took the 
 entrance examination and was duly entered. 
 I stayed here a year, working mornings and 
 nights and Saturdays, studying in the eve- 
 ning or if necessary before breakfast in the 
 morning. 
 
 The next year my sister and I boarded 
 ourselves, living in two rooms and doing 
 light housekeeping, helped out by a weekly 
 box of provisions from home. In spite of 
 — probably because of — my various outside 
 activities I led the school of one hundred 
 and twenty-five in scholarship for two years 
 and two terms, with the exception of two 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 45 
 
 terms. My money hadgiven out, of course, 
 before the end of the second year and I 
 now decided that I could not any longer be 
 dependent upon anyone. So I left school 
 and went to work in the large Florence 
 silk mills. Here again I found what Would 
 I think today be called ideal conditions for 
 work, and good friends. I think the girls 
 in the mills would compare favorably with 
 an equal number of university girls, and 
 there were a half-dozen of my acquaint- 
 ances of unusual refinement and beauty. It 
 was against the rules to have any books in 
 the mills, but the foreman must sometimes 
 have been aware of the volumes many of 
 us kept concealed in a drawer, surrepti- 
 tiously snatching many a gem of wisdom, 
 learning many a poem. The work con- 
 sisted in winding silk and twist on spools 
 ready for market. Piecework was quite re- 
 munerative for those who were quick with 
 hand and brain, but new hands did not 
 get much of it to do, so when I was offered 
 a school in a nearby town I took it. By 
 this time I was aware that the pedagogical 
 
46 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 method of my school days was bad, but had 
 not formulated a new one, so my two terms' 
 work in this school was largely experimental 
 and did more for me than for the children 
 educationally. I cannot even suppose that 
 the moral reforms I brought about were 
 lasting — nearly all the children, girls and 
 boys, swore habitually and inevitably when 
 excited or angry, and the schoolyard was 
 indeed a blasphemous place. My commit- 
 teeman said he did not care whether I 
 taught them anything if I would stop the 
 swearing, but I cannot think that the brief 
 interval of restraint had any permanent 
 effect. Here for the first time in my life I 
 came in contact with old-time Methodism. 
 I went to church and shall never forget the 
 spectacle of the fat, dark-complexioned, 
 curly-haired preacher kneeling in prayer on 
 the very edge of the platform, yelling at 
 the top of his lungs so violently that the 
 perspiration ran in rivulets over his empur- 
 pled countenance. It is perhaps superflu- 
 ous to state that my first class-meeting 
 was also my last. 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 47 
 
 My sister was still in Amherst and wrote 
 me now that there was a place in the post- 
 office I could have if I wanted it, and I 
 gladly returned to a pleasanter environ- 
 ment. I was on duty in the office during 
 rush hours, and at other times worked in 
 the insurance office of Judge Thomas. The 
 friendship of Judge Thomas and his wife, 
 and that of Mr. Jameson, who was post- 
 master, and his wife, meant much to my 
 sister and myself, making' possible as it did 
 a wider acquaintance and some slight degree 
 of intimacy with the best people of a cul- 
 tured New England village. 
 
 I am sure no school board of today would 
 consider a person with my lack of training 
 as a candidate for a position in a high 
 school, but when the prospective principal 
 of a newly established high school in West- 
 port, Connecticut, was looking about for 
 an assistant Mr. Jameson recommended 
 me for the position. Westport was a small 
 town which had up to this time been desti- 
 tute of the means to higher education. So 
 when Uncle Horace Staples built a high-school 
 
48 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 building it was announced that school 
 would open in the fall of 1884. The ap- 
 plicants for admission were numerous and 
 varied, ranging in age from thirteen to 
 twenty or over. The building was not done 
 when the school opened, but this did not 
 dampen the principal's enthusiasm. We 
 examined applicants for admission in the 
 town hall and held school there for the few 
 weeks before we moved into the high-school 
 building. How culture did hum that year! 
 The principal organized a singing class and 
 a boys' debating club. He had a mineral 
 cabinet made and started a collection. He 
 rehearsed boys and girls in public speaking, 
 and there were fortnightly declamation days 
 and occasional more pretentious programs, 
 when we studied some author and recited 
 his poems and read essays upon him. We 
 held sociables and gave entertainments to 
 which the town came in a body. When 
 the girls' literary society, the "P. L. C," 
 gave an entertainment in the early spring 
 the house was filled half an hour before the 
 time, and we had to walk over the heads 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 49 
 
 of the people to light the lamps. Some 
 time during the winter a play was given, 
 and the principal got Professor Bailey to 
 come from Yale to give a reading. At 
 first there were some who looked askance 
 at the new enterprise, but while there was 
 almost no one when the school opened who 
 would take the teachers to board, before 
 the end of the first term we could have 
 boarded where we chose. We were in fact 
 the center of the town's interest and played 
 the one man to almost continuous applause. 
 At the end of two years here I decided 
 to go to college. At this time there was an 
 arrangement at Smith College by which such 
 people as I could be admitted without exami- 
 nation as "specials." In recent years this 
 class of students has been cold-shouldered, 
 but in the eighties we were treated kindly 
 and allowed to do much as we pleased. 
 As my class officer said when I presented my 
 twenty-one hours a week to her, "Specials 
 are allowed to kill themselves." During the 
 previous year I had taken a correspondence 
 course in Anglo-Saxon with my first principal, 
 
50 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 so I continued along this line in college, 
 in fact took about all the courses in Eng- 
 lish that were offered, from Beowulf to the 
 modern novel, some history, logic, and Ger- 
 man. I was so out of the habit of study 
 that it was hard to play much of a part 
 among those who were masters of the tech- 
 nique. I was somewhat surprised to receive 
 the faculty recommendation to Alpha which 
 was followed by election to its membership. 
 Before the end of the year I decided to 
 try for a degree, overestimating its value, 
 as most do who haven't one. I thought I 
 could finish the regular work in two years 
 more, but if I meant to take a degree I 
 must pass the entrance examination and be 
 enrolled as a regular student. This meant 
 work in Latin and mathematics. I had read 
 part of the required Caesar before leaving 
 high school. During the summer vacation 
 I read Cicero and Virgil, with much help 
 from my brother and from my first princi- 
 pal, and reviewed mathematics. I passed 
 the Latin examination, was predestined to 
 fail in mathematics, but was nevertheless 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 51 
 
 entered as a regular student. I had had 
 a term's work in French in the high school, 
 had read some by myself, had indeed under- 
 taken to translate a French history for 
 printing, and had submitted chapters to 
 the publisher. They never got any far- 
 ther, but I profited by the experience if the 
 world did not. I had also had two summer 
 terms at the Summer School of Modern 
 Languages of Amherst, one spent in study 
 and one in flirting and frivolity. This made 
 it possible to take advanced French and to 
 pass off Freshman-year French. I believe 
 I could have finished the course creditably 
 at the end of the third year. But impor- 
 tant events had transpired during the year; 
 also the debt that I was incurring looked 
 large; also I realized that the chief value 
 of another year would be in the commercial 
 value of the degree. So I gave up the third 
 year. 
 
 This summer I undertook my rashest 
 enterprise up to this time. The person en- 
 gaged to teach Anglo-Saxon in the Amherst 
 Summer School was not able to keep the 
 
52 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 engagement, and Professor Montague, com- 
 ing in need to Smith College, was sent to 
 me, and I agreed to undertake the job. 
 I was to teach whatever classes were formed, 
 and the compensation was the privileges of 
 the school. I was appalled when I went to 
 the class in Beowulf to find a dozen or so 
 more or less venerable professors and teach- 
 ers waiting for me. However I followed the 
 method in vogue among college teachers 
 and took out all the books the library- 
 contained on the subject, thus depriving 
 the class of any other source of information 
 — and how I worked ! The privileges of the 
 school were little to me because of Beowulf. 
 In my other class there was one devoted 
 student. Professor Ott. It did not take 
 him or me long to find out that I did not 
 know much about any of the period before 
 Chaucer, but we spent a pleasant hour daily 
 over the work and parted amicably. 
 
 During the summer a position in a girls' 
 school in Englewood, New Jersey, was 
 offered to me. I'm sure the year here was 
 much more valuable than the year in col- 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts ^2 
 
 lege would have been. The two principals 
 were among the most lovely and desirable 
 women I have ever known and gave friend- 
 ship with both hands. We boarded in the 
 one hotel in the town, there being in that 
 aristocratic suburb of New York no private 
 families to whom we could go who would 
 have us. The food was so poor and so 
 scanty that we often had to satisfy our 
 desire for more and better by reading the 
 cookbook aloud as we sat around the fire 
 after dinner, and when my first principal 
 came from New Haven on a visit and took 
 me in to New York for the day and eve- 
 ning, the first question as we gathered again 
 round the fire after his departure was not, 
 "Tell us all about him!" but, "What did 
 you have for dinner in New York ?" and 
 that dinner fed us many times. We led 
 the regular convent life of teachers in such 
 institutions. We had no masculine society 
 except that of the principals of the boys' 
 school in the town, who shared our fate at 
 the hotel. In fact no society at all, for the 
 call from an occasional parent or the yearly 
 
54 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 invitation to the minister's could not come 
 under that head. I stayed there two years 
 and in that time received two calls and was 
 invited out once to the minister's and once 
 to the home of one of the girls who was 
 fond of me. There were four college-bred 
 women in the school besides the two princi- 
 pals, who were not college bred. They 
 lived as cloistered a life as I did. I men- 
 tion this so particularly because there has 
 always seemed to me to be something so 
 anomalous in the complete social isolation 
 of the woman teacher. 
 
 From Englewood and its cloistered joys 
 I gladly returned to Amherst to act as my 
 brother's assistant when he was appointed 
 to the principalship of the high school 
 there. This was such a pleasant year that 
 it furnished little historical material. In 
 the following August I was married to my 
 first principal. 
 
THE LATER YEARS 
 
 By J. H. T. 
 
 Slightly more than half the years of the 
 life which closed January ii, 1920, are 
 included in the preceding story. As we 
 usually envisage relative values, those ear- 
 lier years would naturally be thought the 
 less interesting half. The latter half knew, 
 in wider measure, travel and reading and con- 
 tacts with people of kindred tastes and sig- 
 nificant activities; it knew wifehood and 
 motherhood; it ministered to weakness and 
 sickness in the aged, and reviewed youth 
 with its joys and sorrows, pathos and humor, 
 as it shared the experiences of growing child- 
 hood. But the group for whom the sketch 
 was first written could more easily complete 
 than begin the story, for the later years 
 followed lines of more common experience. 
 And the larger group of friends to whom 
 this now comes will not need any detailed 
 narrative or elaborate analysis. Yet men- 
 tion of some activities and traits may be 
 ss 
 
56 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 welcome if it may help to recall or to fill out 
 the impression which many received from 
 the personality of Cynthia Tufts, and a few 
 formal details may first be given record. 
 
 Cynthia Hobart Whitaker was born 
 April I, i860, in Wendell, Massachusetts, 
 the daughter of Augustus Greenleaf and 
 Caroline (Hobart) Whitaker. The "Grand- 
 father Whitaker" of whom she speaks was 
 Jonathan; his father David, who "marched 
 to Bennington" from Lancaster, Massachu- 
 setts, married a Martha Wilder of that 
 town. The Whitaker line has not been 
 traced farther than David to my knowledge. 
 The maternal grandfather, Peter Hobart, 
 descended from the well-known Hingham 
 stock of which the Reverend Peter, who 
 sent five sons to Harvard College in the 
 early days, was one of the most notable. 
 The Field line, from the immigrant Zech- 
 ariah of Hartford, lived from the first in the 
 Connecticut Valley, and several generations 
 lie buried in the Leverett cemetery. 
 
 In physical appearance and perhaps in 
 mental traits,Cynthia seemed to inherit rather 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts c^-j 
 
 from her father's hne. Her mother had 
 light hair and ruddy complexion, and was 
 of larger frame than Cynthia, who in all 
 her earlier life was very slight, and whose 
 rather pale complexion was set off by very 
 dark hair. Cynthia's mother was a warm- 
 hearted woman who was greatly in demand 
 in the whole neighborhood in time of sick- 
 ness. Doctors were frequently unavailable, 
 and nurses were not as yet heard of in her 
 earlier life, and many a Leverett mother 
 when bringing her child into the world sent 
 for Mrs. Whitaker to be with her. She was 
 an interesting conversationalist, with clear 
 and definite memories of people, sound judg- 
 ment, and shrewd insight into character. 
 Her warm heart did not blind her eyes, 
 and one might find in Cynthia's own un- 
 flinching judgments of situations a reminder 
 of her mother's sterling good sense and 
 veracity. 
 
 Cynthia — or Tena, as she was known in 
 her family, and indeed usually signed her- 
 self in earlier life — combined as a child 
 two natures which are perhaps not often 
 
58 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 bound up together. On the one hand, as 
 her story shows, she was unusually deft 
 and quick to learn any craft, and had the 
 mental confidence that goes naturally with 
 such perfect adjustment of eye, hand, and 
 brain. "I used to feel that I could do any- 
 thing," I have heard her say. On the other 
 hand, she was as a child and indeed through 
 all her life almost abnormally sensitive to 
 social environment and hesitant as to her 
 part in it. She felt benumbed, her wit and 
 animation shriveled, if she even suspected 
 lack of approval. She needed warmth of 
 appreciation if she was to be at her best. 
 She never feared judgment upon her clothes; 
 she felt sure of herself wherever it was 
 a matter of line and color, for this went 
 naturally with the first part of her. But 
 to prepare a paper or to contemplate any 
 somewhat formal social occasion required a 
 summoning of all her sense of duty and some- 
 times brought on physical distress, though I 
 doubt if any but her most intimate friends 
 suspected the truth. This dread of facing 
 novel contacts of a somewhat formal sort 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 59 
 
 persisted to the very end. It was indeed 
 aggravated by a deafness which, shght in 
 early middle life, became more of a handi- 
 cap in general conversation in later years 
 and greatly interfered with pleasure in pub- 
 lic addresses or the play. 
 
 The marriage with which the preceding 
 story closes took place on August 25, 1891, 
 and was followed by a year in Europe, chiefly 
 in Germany. I had accepted a position in 
 the just founded University of Chicago, and 
 a year abroad appealed to us as at once a 
 professional necessity and a delightful pos- 
 sibility of travel. We had little money and 
 practiced all the economies of American stu- 
 dents of that day. But the Harz and the 
 Black Forest, Oxford and the Lake Coun- 
 try, are for those who walk. Cathedrals, 
 pictures, music, are likewise for those who 
 see and hear. Coming after a series of 
 years of unremitting work, frequently done 
 under strain, and coming before the new 
 demands which the home in Chicago and 
 the university life there would make, the 
 year, which was spent chiefly in Berlin 
 
6o Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 and Freiburg, was a healing and beneficent 
 interlude. 
 
 The great World's Fair so near at hand 
 made it somewhat difficult to find quarters 
 that first year in Chicago, but the modest 
 flat in which home life began extended hos- 
 pitality to many, and as a matter for the 
 amazement of present-day beginners, it 
 may be recorded that expert housewifery 
 kept the food budget for the month within 
 eighteen dollars and enabled us, out of our 
 two thousand to pay back the six hundred 
 we had borrowed the year before. And if 
 the meals were simple and the furnishing 
 likewise, this left the more time for the 
 central business of the year — the transla- 
 tion of Windelband's History of Philosophy 
 in which my wife not only wrote all the 
 copy but gave constant criticism and help 
 toward making the English more readable, 
 until the last desperate spurt at the finish 
 completed the index at four o'clock one 
 morning as we sat amid our unpacked house- 
 hold goods in the new house to which we 
 moved the next summer. 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 6i 
 
 It was a happy year — that first year of 
 the University — as many of the "charter 
 members" would agree. Some new addi- 
 tion to the University resources or plans 
 was likely to be on the front page of the 
 morning newspaper almost any day. Presi- 
 dent Harper was not only intent upon the 
 growth of the institution, but was assiduous 
 in promoting acquaintance among the newly 
 gathered members of the Faculty. Social 
 gatherings, official or informal, were fre- 
 quent. Like others of the younger set, we 
 felt in awe of the head professors whose 
 names we had seen on title-pages of German 
 translations in Berlin, or who had come to 
 Chicago with the prestige of college and 
 university presidencies resigned. But there 
 were many of us younger people, and after 
 all we found that in the spirit of the place 
 "What are you doing ?" was even more 
 important than "What have you done ?" 
 
 And finally, in the last months of that 
 first year, came the enchantment of a White 
 City by the Lake. Before the multitude 
 discovered and thronged the grounds, in 
 
62 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 the June evenings when it was not yet a 
 great fair but only a wondrous picture, we 
 spent many hours in the Court of Honor 
 where the water gave back the lights, and 
 the peristyle lured the eye out over the 
 lake, and the stars seemed a part of it all. 
 Other years tend in memory to blur, but 
 that first year was often recalled. 
 
 The immediately following years were 
 notable chiefly for the birth of daughter 
 and son and the new cares and joys which 
 came with them. These years were signifi- 
 cant also for the coming of the Deweys from 
 Ann Arbor and soon after of the others who 
 united to make up a singularly harmoni- 
 ous department of philosophy. Besides the 
 friends of the very first years and this 
 departmental group, a third group which 
 meant much to the later years was the 
 Book Club. Its membership included seven 
 famihes. The occupations of the men — 
 teacher, physician, lawyer, engineer, pub- 
 lisher — and the varied activities and tastes of 
 the women furnished many angles for con- 
 sidering not only books but affairs and life- 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts Gt^ 
 
 problems. Monthly meetings enabled its 
 members to dispense with formal barriers, 
 take up the threads where they were dropped 
 at the last meeting, and talk frankly and inti- 
 mately about what seemed most worth while. 
 On the externals of these Chicago years 
 it is not necessary to dwell. The earlier of 
 them were passed in various dwellings with 
 the joys and hardships of the teacher's lot. 
 The maintenance of a second center in 
 the East interfered to some extent with 
 the maintenance of domestic arrangements 
 in Chicago. The last nine years had a 
 more stable character in our own house 
 at 5551 University Avenue. Three epi- 
 sodes, however, deserve mention because 
 of the opportunity they afforded for delight 
 in natural beauty, particularly in warmer 
 southern skies and semi-tropical vegetation 
 — a visit to Spain, Italy, and France with her 
 friend Mrs. Mead in 1910, to Miami in 1916 
 with the Meads, and to California with her 
 family in the summer of 191 5. Mr. Mead 
 in his appreciation has spoken of the feelings 
 which the visits to Spain and Miami brought 
 
64 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 out. California's sea and mountain, forests, 
 flowers, waterfalls, and wide horizons all 
 appealed to her so strongly that it seemed a 
 pity we could not, as she half jestingly pro- 
 posed, find a job there and remain. 
 
 Although the life in Chicago occupied the 
 greater portion of the years after 1892, a 
 considerable part of many of them was 
 claimed by a home in western Massachu- 
 setts not far from the town in which the 
 early years were spent. The home there 
 meant three different things. It meant the 
 beauty of a New England hill town — tints 
 of spring or autumn foliage, odors of June 
 or later summer, apple blossoms, laurel, 
 roses, and garden flowers, drives over the 
 hills through shaded roads, gorgeous sun- 
 sets, and blue skies. It meant, in the sec- 
 ond place, friends — family and early school 
 friends in Leverett and Amherst — and a 
 group of my own early friends who, by an 
 unusual fortune, had remained in my native 
 town and rejoiced in Cynthia's coming 
 among them. Lastly it meant ministry to 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 65 
 
 my parents and particularly to my mother, 
 who survived my father nine years, and 
 found in later life all the companionship 
 and affection of a daughter. The visits 
 to Monson, where most of the summers 
 in the East were spent, were not ordinary 
 outings; they were a second focus of inter- 
 ests, affections, and work. They began in 
 1896 with a nine months' continuous stay 
 in a rented house near my parents' home- 
 stead, and several following spring and sum- 
 mer seasons were spent in similar quarters 
 or with my parents; but after the death of 
 my father in 1901, and the breaking up of 
 the old home, we fitted up a cottage in an 
 apple orchard on a hillside which belonged 
 to my father's old farm, and here more than 
 anywhere else we gained the sense of inti- 
 macy and affection for surroundings which 
 one shapes at least in part according to his 
 heart's desire. We did little to the dwell- 
 ing except to build a fireplace and add a 
 spacious porch; the shrubbery and garden 
 flowers that we planted and tended were 
 limited to those that would give us summer 
 
66 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 beauty; but the iris, lilacs, roses, peonies, 
 syringas, and woodbine were kind to us, and 
 the entrancing whiteness and fragrance of 
 the apple orchard stretching from our very 
 door — if we chanced to be there in the 
 beauty of May — were a sensation to recall 
 many times in the succeeding months when 
 Monson had been exchanged for gray and 
 smoky days in Chicago. 
 
 The spot that Cynthia loved best of 
 all was not one that we made, but one 
 that nature had made for her. The "pine 
 hill," a short steep climb just at the door, 
 covered with strongly odorous yellow pine, 
 was prized both for itself and as a refuge. 
 For there was little domestic help to be had 
 for a summer household; the migraine which 
 had been a more or less frequent companion 
 from earliest years was likely to be sum- 
 moned by fatigue, and at times the mere 
 presence of anyone else seemed a burden. 
 Then she took a pillow and a book and none 
 followed her, for we knew she wanted to be 
 alone. On the thick carpet of pine needles 
 which had been gathering year after year. 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 67 
 
 and was pierced here and there by sprigs 
 of green pipsissewa or ground pine or by 
 the delicate Indian pipes, visited only by 
 bird neighbors, she found refreshment for 
 body and spirit and returned to take up her 
 task again. 
 
 Her ministry to my mother was tender, 
 strong, and beautiful. In early years my 
 mother had been an ardent, highly capable, 
 and successful teacher. At the age of thirty- 
 three she was married to my father, then 
 principal of Monson Academy, who soon 
 left that institution on account of a break- 
 down in health, and later had boys in his 
 home to prepare for college or business. 
 The strain of the care of this large house- 
 hold caused my mother's health to give way 
 in middle life and complete vigor was 
 never again regained, although there was a 
 resumption of many former activities both 
 in the home and without. But after 1896 
 there was a serious further loss, and from 
 1904 until her release six years later ar- 
 thritis rendered her unable to walk or stand. 
 Her sister lived with her all the year round 
 
68 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 in the cottage which we fitted up, but the 
 coming of Cynthia and the grandchildren 
 brought renewed cheer and brightness every 
 springtime and was eagerly anticipated. 
 Every morning after breakfast Cynthia 
 came in to my mother, sometimes with a 
 single blossom, sometimes with a handful of 
 bloom fresh-gathered, and made the day 
 begin with good cheer. The letters which 
 the postman brought were opened and the 
 many Hnes of kinship and friendship were 
 kept alive. The morning was likely to be 
 full of hard work but at dinner we were all 
 together again. Then after a resting time 
 Cynthia was in the habit of reading aloud, 
 for which she had a singularly well-adapted 
 voice, or sometimes there would be intimate 
 talk in which the elder and nearly helpless 
 though mentally alert woman was heartened 
 or comforted by the sympathy and steady 
 poise of the younger. And finally there was 
 always the brief word of goodnight, some- 
 times with the recital of one of the many bits 
 of poetry which Cynthia's memory treasured. 
 Cynthia's presence always seemed to bring 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 69 
 
 freshness and beauty, and her wit and playful 
 raillery dispelled many a cloud of low spirits. 
 
 The last illness was first diagnosed as 
 diabetes in June, although certain symptoms 
 appeared earlier and might have aroused 
 suspicion had they not been masked by dis- 
 comforts of other sorts to which she had long 
 been habituated. At first the response to 
 treatment encouraged us to hope for control 
 of the disease. But the improvement was 
 not maintained and it proved to be one of 
 the rare cases for which no treatment at 
 present known to the medical profession is 
 eflFective. Fortunately in this disease there 
 is little physical pain and reading is possible. 
 But the patient is likely to know from week 
 to week whether there is gain or loss, and 
 the repetition of one failure after another 
 was inevitably a severe strain upon courage. 
 Mr. Mead's appreciation tells how she met 
 this final test. 
 
 At the memorial services portraits of Cyn- 
 thia and tier favorite flowers made a setting 
 in which Mr. Ames interpreted in readings 
 — among others, the thirteenth chapter of 
 
70 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 I Corinthians, and Matheson's "O love, 
 that will not let me go" — and prayer, the 
 questionings and valuations of the spirit, 
 and the sympathies of our common human- 
 ity; Mr. Moore read selections from the 
 sketch of her early life and described her 
 dominant interests as they had come to 
 expression in the discussions of that group 
 for which the sketch was written; Mr. 
 Mead gave an intimate impression of her 
 character; memories were for many trans- 
 muted into a sense of living presence. It 
 would be out of place to attempt to retouch 
 the drawing which these friends made with 
 such sureness and affection, or to inject 
 what belongs to family intimacy, but I 
 trust myself to speak of one trait not dwelt 
 upon in the impressions of her friends which 
 did not belong to privacy of affection and 
 which my wife herself liked to have recog- 
 nized. This was her good judgment, which 
 showed in wise decisions for both the lesser 
 and the greater questions of family welfare, 
 and in estimates of men and women, meas- 
 ures and policies. 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 71 
 
 In her case this good judgment rested on 
 a keen observation, an unflinching facing of 
 facts, and a sure sense for relative values. 
 Her keenness of observation went natu- 
 rally with the acute and definite percep- 
 tions accompanying her deftness in crafts and 
 her artistic sense. Her unflinching facing 
 of facts was as free from the suspicious 
 temper which always seeks an ulterior and 
 preferably a sinister motive as from the 
 easy optimism which dislikes to look care- 
 fully at possibly unpleasant consequences, 
 or tires of examining all bearings of a situa- 
 tion. Her sense for relative values put 
 things into their perspective and did not 
 allow small matters to obscure the really 
 important issues and ends. In a demo- 
 cratic family council every opinion is of 
 course open to discussion, and is liable to 
 be challenged to give its reasons. My wife 
 claimed no special privilege for hers. But 
 she seldom failed to convince by her analy- 
 sis, and we learned to believe that if we 
 did not at once see things as she saw them 
 it was almost certainly because she saw 
 
11 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 more clearly and estimated more justly 
 and wisely. 
 
 The letters of sympathy from both inti- 
 mate friends and those who met her only 
 occasionally use one expression so generally 
 that it may fitly be reproduced as charac- 
 terizing the impression that she made and 
 that is suggested in the portrait by Mrs. 
 Schiitze which fronts the title-page — "A 
 gracious and beautiful personality." 
 
SOME OF THE DEEPER INTERESTS 
 
 By ADDISON W. MOORE 
 
 A few days after Mrs. Moore and I first 
 arrived at the University, we received an 
 invitation to an informal gathering of the 
 faculty and students of the Department 
 of Philosophy to be held at the home of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Tufts. This was our first 
 meeting with Mrs. Tufts. I distinctly recall 
 that a part of our homeward gossip that 
 evening was about the gracious personality 
 of our hostess. And we felt it was a gra- 
 ciousness not of mere manner or of social 
 savoir faire, but that it was the expression 
 of a gracious soul, of a generous human 
 interest and sympathy. A long period of 
 subsequent association, increasing in inti- 
 macy with the years, has continuously con- 
 firmed and deepened that first impression. 
 
 For the past fifteen years it has been our 
 good fortune to belong to a small reading 
 and discussion club of which Mrs. Tufts 
 was always one of the most interested and 
 interesting members. Having picked up in 
 73 ' 
 
74 Cynthia Whttaker Tufts 
 
 the course of these meetings enough of each 
 other's life-history to pique our curiosity 
 concerning the rest, it was proposed that 
 each member submit to the club as much of 
 the story of his life as he cared to reveal. I 
 think all of us here who heard those histories 
 will agree that probably the most interest- 
 ing, both in its material and in its literary 
 quality, was the one read by Mrs. Tufts. 
 (Here followed the reading of some passages 
 from the manuscript of "My Life.") 
 
 Recalling Mrs. Tufts's participation in 
 the general discussions of the club, I have 
 asked myself what were the things to which 
 she responded with greatest enthusiasm, for 
 the range of matters discussed during these 
 years touched at some point most of the 
 issues and values of life. She had indeed 
 an exquisite sensitiveness to beauty, espe- 
 cially to the charms of nature and of literary 
 art in all its forms. This sensitivity, more- 
 over, was combined with a comprehensive 
 intelligence and a very rare and saving sense 
 of humor which prevented it from ever 
 degenerating into sentimentalism. 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 75 
 
 But neither nature nor art nor abstract 
 science most kindled her soul. As I recall 
 the scenes of these discussions my picture 
 of Mrs. Tufts in the moments of her 
 greatest interest finds her in the midst 
 of discussions of human relationships, par- 
 ticularly of human suffering due to the 
 inequalities and injustices of our present 
 world. On one occasion after presenting 
 vividly the contrast between the chances 
 of survival, of food, of sanitation, and of 
 education of our children here in the Uni- 
 versity community and the children of the 
 West Side, she concluded by asking with 
 intense feeling, "Why should my children 
 have proper food, expert medical attention, 
 and every educational advantage, because 
 they happen to be born in Hyde Park 
 instead of in Halsted Street ?" 
 
 And this sympathy with human suffering 
 was in spite of the fact that Mrs. Tufts 
 knew far more than most of us what it 
 means to bid such a Spartan defiance to 
 physical pain that only the near members 
 of the family, and they not always, knew 
 
76 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 anything about it. I say in spite of this 
 fact; for it is only rare natures who sur- 
 mount the dwarfing and self-centering effects 
 of recurrent physical pain. 
 
 For the past few years, this human interest 
 of Mrs. Tufts found part of its field in the 
 work of the Vocational Supervision League 
 and for the past year as editor of the official 
 Bulletin of the League. As an expression of 
 the wide outlook which she brought to her 
 work, I quote the following passage from one 
 of her last editorials: "There is a new spirit 
 abroad in the world; a new vision of a 
 world organized for life, not for death; for 
 peace, not for war; a world in which life and 
 happiness, not death and destruction, are to 
 be the aim of governments." 
 
 But wherever understanding of and sym- 
 pathy with human suffering is so fundamental 
 as it was in Mrs. Tufts, we do not find one 
 looking out upon the world and life in general 
 with a smug and complacent optimism. 
 She was not one of those timid souls who 
 cannot find and enjoy goodness or beauty 
 until all evil and distortion have been 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 77 
 
 reduced to illusion and put away. She 
 looked out, undismayed, with level and 
 discerning eyes upon our world of mixed 
 good and evil, entering into the joy of 
 beauty and goodness wherever she found 
 them, and protesting with equal intensity 
 the distortion and evil. Nor did she seek 
 to evade human responsibility both for the 
 existence and the cure of evil by shifting 
 it upon Providence or the cosmos at large. 
 Her creed was that good will be "the final 
 goal of ill" only if we clearly see and highly 
 resolve and mightily strive to make it so. 
 
CYNTHIA TUFTS— AN IMPRESSION 
 
 By GEORGE H. MEAD 
 
 Cynthia Tufts I met first, for a few 
 moments, in Berlin some twenty-nine years 
 ago, and I have of the meeting only a 
 memory of delight, such as that left by 
 beauty and distinction whether encountered 
 in persons or in landscapes; one of those 
 pleasures that have no slight or trivial 
 influence on the best portion of a man's life. 
 It was four years later that she became a 
 distinct figure to me, when we came to 
 Chicago in 1894. 
 
 In the quarter of a century that has 
 passed since then, I have the impression, 
 not of the lines of her nature becoming 
 more distinct to me, but that what lay 
 behind and within them has been gradually 
 appearing. There are persons who leave 
 no impressions or but slight and shadowy 
 impressions in an earlier meeting. They 
 do not express themselves in the conven- 
 tional intercourse of slight acquaintanceship. 
 78 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 79 
 
 Mrs. Tufts, without being unconventional, 
 was always a definite personality on any 
 occasion, however slight, and further knowl- 
 edge of her became a natural part of the 
 outline which bare meeting had left. 
 
 No person could give so self-contained a 
 response of herself unless she had achieved a 
 personality which met her own essential 
 standards. She did not need the judg- 
 ments of others upon her to be sure of her- 
 self. We feel that many persons would fall 
 to pieces if social relations slipped and the 
 harness of life wore loose. Mrs. Tufts came 
 into social situations a self-contained per- 
 sonality that gave rather than took an 
 impress, and she impressed with quietness and 
 beauty. There was a dignity in her nature 
 that could not be lowered. She accepted 
 social standards without conveying, the im- 
 pression that they commanded her. 
 
 I never knew whether she had gained her 
 poise with effort and out of an earlier 
 diffidence which had made attainment diffi- 
 cult and painful, though I suspected that 
 this might be the case, for she was so 
 
8o Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 understandingly appreciative of others, she 
 took such pains that others should be at 
 their ease with her, that I guessed a natural 
 sympathy with those who were ill at ease 
 themselves. 
 
 In fact, comprehension and understanding 
 of others were the center of her social attrac- 
 tion and power. She understood, and with 
 understanding went sympathy and quick 
 response to ideas and experiences and espe- 
 cially sufferings. 
 
 It was easy to lead out one's most 
 cherished doctrines in her presence. They 
 put on their best appearance under her 
 encouragement. And I went away from 
 conversation with her with the sense that 
 my ideas were better than I had supposed. 
 
 But if sympathetic understanding was 
 the center of her power, the adornment of 
 it was her wit, which never failed where 
 wit was in place. It could be a weapon 
 of defense; I never knew it to be a weapon 
 of offense. It was not mixed with malice, 
 and it went with a natural subtlety which 
 at times failed of the comprehension she 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 8i 
 
 gave others so fully. It was part of the 
 equipment with which she faced the assaults 
 of life and the blows of fate. She said of 
 herself that she faced what life and death 
 had to bring with ironic patience; and it 
 was the ironic response that gave me the 
 feeling that she was so true a sport. 
 
 She suffered in many ways. She was 
 the victim of migraine that dogged her 
 path with recurrent headaches. She was 
 forced to carry the strain of growing deaf- 
 ness that kept her continually on the alert, 
 guessing at what she lost in conversation 
 and making up from the context, the while 
 she was striving to catch what followed. It 
 is not easy in the company of pain and the 
 strain of overtaxed attention to face the 
 struggles of daily existence and the pro- 
 founder distresses that every life carries 
 with it; but she did this and came through 
 it with a free spirit, facing the struggle and 
 the wreckful siege of battering days with 
 ironic patience, and with the most loyal 
 comprehending love for those who loved her, 
 and the most sensitive enjoyment of beauty. 
 
82 Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 
 
 It was our great advantage to be with 
 Mrs. Tufts in Miami, Florida, the most of 
 one winter, and to have our enjoyment of 
 its semi-tropical splendors of foliage and 
 sea enhanced and heightened by her love 
 of its colors and its atmosphere. 
 
 She spent a spring in Spain, and there 
 in its colors and Hnes and scenery she felt 
 at home. She quoted of herself a passage 
 from a book of Maugham's: "Sometimes a 
 man hits upon a place to which he mysteri- 
 ously feels that be belongs. Here is the 
 home he sought, and he will settle amid 
 scenes that he has never seen before, among 
 men he has never known, as though they 
 were familiar to him from his birth. Here 
 at last he finds rest." 
 
 I have never met a person to whom 
 flowers, especially roses, were such a poign- 
 ant delight as they were to Mrs. Tufts, 
 and her sense of colors and their combina- 
 tions was as sure as the moral law. Her 
 memory was the dwelling-place of poetry 
 as beautiful as the flowers and landscapes 
 she passionately loved. 
 
Cynthia Whitaker Tufts 83 
 
 During her long, wasting sickness the 
 beauty that marked her in hfe never deserted 
 her, her unconquerable soul coming in to 
 take possession where the body failed. She 
 never lost her wit, nor her comprehension, 
 nor her loyal love, nor her sympathetic 
 appreciation, nor her humorous sense of 
 the fatuities of existence. 
 
 It is only in these later years that I have 
 had the privilege of feeling at home in her 
 mind and its world, and have realized the 
 combination of fineness, loyalty, keenness 
 of insight, contempt of pretense, the wary 
 pessimism of her view of the future, and 
 her devotion to the interests of her own, 
 whether family or friends, or the onward 
 movements she could take part in, or follow 
 in the efforts of others whom she loved and 
 seconded and admired. I have had great 
 joy in converse with her, and now that she 
 is gone all the features of her nature that 
 I have become familiar with take their 
 places in the picture of one of the finest, the 
 bravest, clearest, and most beautiful souls 
 I have had the privilege to know.