.OUR 
 
 FE OF 
 JULIA WARD HOWE 
 BY MAUD HO"WE P"— 
 
BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 FROM THE ^ 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 Henrg W. Sage 
 
 1891 
 
 9724 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 2018.E46 
 
 The eleventh hour n the life of Julia W 
 
 3 1924 022 054 666 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 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/cu31924022054666 
 
THE ELEVENTH HOUR 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 From a Drawing by John Elliott 
 
The Eleventh Hour 
 
 in the Life of 
 Julia Ward Howe 
 
 BY 
 
 MAUD HOWE Elliott 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 1911 
 
Copyright, 1911, 
 Bt Little, Brown, and Compant. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published, October, 1911 
 
 ElectrofypedandPrintedbv 
 THE COLONI AL PRESS 
 C. H. Simonda <fc Co., Boston, V. S. A. 
 
AD MATREM 
 
 The acorns are again ripe on your oaks, the leaves of 
 your nut tree begin to turn gold, the fruit trees you 
 planted a lustre since, droop with their weight of crim- 
 son fruit, the little grey squirrels leap nimbly from 
 bough to bough busily preparing for winter's siege. 
 The air is fragrant with the perfume of wild grape, 
 joyous with the voices of children passing to the white 
 school house on the hill. The earth laughs with the joy 
 of the harvest. What thank offering can I bring for 
 this year that has not yet taught me how to live with- 
 out you? Only this sheaf of gleanings from your fields! 
 
 Oak Glen, September, 1911. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This slight and hasty account of 
 some of my mother's later activities was 
 written to read to a small group of 
 friends with whom I wished to share the 
 lesson of the Eleventh Hour of a life 
 filled to the end with the joy of toil. 
 More than one of my hearers asked me 
 to print what I had read them, in the 
 belief that it would be of value to that 
 larger circle of her friends, the public. 
 Such a request could not be refused. 
 
THE ELEVENTH HOUR 
 
 IN THE LIFE OF 
 
 JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 My mother's diary for 1906, her 
 eighty-seventh year, opens with this 
 entry: 
 
 " I pray for many things this year. 
 For myself, I ask continued health 
 of mind and body, work, useful, hon- 
 orable and as remunerative as it shall 
 please God to send. For my dear fam- 
 ily, work of the same description with 
 comfortable wages, faith in God, and 
 love to each other. For my country, 
 that she may keep her high promise 
 to mankind, for Christendom, that 
 it may become more Christlike, for 
 1 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 the struggling nationalities, that they 
 may attain to justice and peace." 
 
 Not vain the prayer! Health of 
 mind and body was granted, work, 
 useful, honorable, if not very remuner- 
 ative, was hers that year and nearly 
 five years more, for she lived to be 
 ninety-one and a half years old. When 
 Death came and took her, he found 
 her still at work. Hers the fate of 
 the happy warrior who falls in thick 
 of battle, his harness on his back. 
 
 How did she do it? 
 
 Hardly a day passes that I am 
 not asked the question! 
 
 Shortly before her death, she spoke 
 of the time when she would no longer 
 be with us — an almost unheard-of 
 thing for her to do. We turned the 
 subject, begged her not to dwell on it. 
 2 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 "Yes!" she laughed with the old 
 flash that has kindled a thousand 
 audiences, " it's not my business to 
 think about dying, it's my business to 
 think about living! " 
 
 This thinking about living, this tre- 
 mendous vitaUty had much to do 
 with her long service, for the impor- 
 tant thing of course was not that she 
 lived ninety-one years, but that she 
 worked for more than ninety-one 
 years, never became a cumberer of 
 the earth, paid her scot till the last. 
 She never knew the pathos of doing 
 old-age work, such as is provided in 
 every class for those inveterate work- 
 ers to whom labor is as necessary as 
 bread or breath. The old ploughman 
 sits by the wayside breaking stones 
 to mend the road others shall travel 
 3 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 over; the old prima donna listens to 
 her pupils' triumphs; the old states- 
 man gives after-dinner speeches, or 
 makes himself a nuisance by speaking 
 or writing, ex cathedra, on any ques- 
 tion that needs airing, whether it is 
 his subject or not; she did good, vig- 
 orous work till the end, in her own 
 chosen callings of poet and orator. 
 What she produced in her last year 
 was as good in quality as any other 
 year's output. The artist in her never 
 stopped growing; indeed, her latest 
 work has a lucidity, a robust simplic- 
 ity, that some of the earlier writings 
 lack. 
 
 In the summer of 1909 she was 
 
 asked to write a poem on Fulton for 
 
 the Fulton-Hudson celebration. Ever 
 
 better than her word, she not only 
 
 4 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 wrote the poem, but recited it in the 
 New York Metropolitan Opera House 
 on the evening of September 9th. 
 Those who saw her, the only woman 
 amid that great gathering of repre- 
 sentative men from aU over the world, 
 will not forget the breathless silence 
 of that vast audience as she came 
 forward, leaning on her son's arm, 
 and read the opening lines: 
 
 A river flashing like a gem, 
 Crowned with a mountain diadem, — 
 
 or the thunders of applause that fol- 
 lowed the last lines: 
 
 While pledge of Love's assured control. 
 The Flag of Freedom crowns the pole. 
 
 The poem had given her a good deal 
 of trouble, the last couplet in especial. 
 The morning of the celebration, 
 5 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 when I went into Mrs. Seth Low's 
 spare bedroom to wake her, she cried 
 out: 
 
 " I have got my last verse! " 
 
 She was much distressed that the 
 poem appeared in Collier's without 
 the amended closing lines. The fault 
 was mine; I had arranged with the 
 editor Mr. Hapgood for its pubUcation. 
 She had done so much " free gratis " 
 work all her life that it seemed fitting 
 this poem should at least earn her, 
 her travelling expenses. 
 
 " Let this be a lesson," she said, 
 " never print a poem or a speech till 
 it has been delivered; always give 
 the eleventh hour its chance! " 
 
 It may be interesting here to recall 
 that the Atlantic Monthly paid her 
 five dollars for the Battle Hymn of 
 6 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 the Republic, the only money she 
 ever received for it. 
 
 Her power of keeping abreast of the 
 times is felt in the Fulton poem, where 
 she rounds out her eulogy of Fulton's 
 invention of the steamboat with a 
 tribute to Peary. Only a few days 
 before the news of our latest arctic 
 triumph had flashed round the world, 
 her world, whose business was her 
 business as long as she lived in it; so 
 into the fabric of the poem in honor of 
 Fulton, she weaves an allusion to this 
 new victory. 
 
 On her ninety-first birthday a re- 
 porter from a Boston paper asked her 
 for a motto for the women of America. 
 She was sitting on the httle balcony 
 outside her town house, reading her 
 Greek Testament, when the young man 
 7 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 was announced. She closed her book, 
 thought for a moment, then gave the 
 motto that so well expressed herself: 
 
 "Up to date!" 
 
 Was there ever anything more char- 
 acteristic? 
 
 In December, 1909, the last Decem- 
 ber she was to see, she wrote a poem 
 caUed "The Capitol," for the first 
 meeting of the American Academy 
 of Arts and Letters at Washington. 
 The poem, published in the Century 
 Magazine for March, 1910, is as good 
 as any she ever wrote, with one excep- 
 tion — the Battle Hymn; and that, 
 as she has told us, " wrote itself." 
 She had arranged to go to Washing- 
 ton to read her poem before the As- 
 sociation. Though we feared the win- 
 ter journey for her, she was so bent 
 8 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 on going that I very reluctantly agreed 
 to accompany her. A telegram, signed 
 by William Dean Howells, Robert Un- 
 derwood Johnson, and Thomas Nelson 
 Page, all officers of the Association, urg- 
 ing her not to take the risk of so long a 
 journey in winter, induced her to give 
 up the trip. She was rather nettled by 
 the kindly hint and flashed out: 
 
 " Hah! they think that I am too 
 old, but there's a little ginger left in 
 the old blue jar! " 
 
 She never thought of herself as old, 
 therefore she never was really old in 
 the essentials. Her iron wiU, her in- 
 domitable spirit, held her frail body 
 to its duty till the very end. 
 
 " Life is like a cup of tea, the sugar 
 is all at the bottom! " she cried one 
 day. This was the very truth; she 
 9 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 knew no " winter of discontent." Her 
 autumn was all Indian summer, glori- 
 ous with crimson leaves, purple and 
 gold sunsets. 
 
 In April, 1910, she wrote the third 
 and last of her poems to her beloved 
 friend and " Minister " James Free- 
 man Clarke. She read this poem 
 twice, at the centenary celebration 
 of Mr. Clarke's birth held at the 
 Church of the Disciples, April 3rd, 
 and the day after at the Arlington 
 St. Church. Compared with the verses 
 written for Mr. Clarke's fiftieth birth- 
 day and with those celebrating his 
 seventieth birthday, this latest poem 
 is to me the best. The opening fines 
 bite right into the heart of the matter; 
 as she read them standing in the pul- 
 pit a thrill passed through the congre- 
 10 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 gation of her fellow disciples gathered 
 together in memory of their founder. 
 
 Richer gift can no man give 
 Than he doth from God receive. 
 We in greatness would have pleasure, 
 But we must accept our measure. 
 Let us question, then, the grave, 
 Querying what the Master gave. 
 Whom, in his immortal state. 
 Grateful love would celebrate. 
 
 Only human Hfe was his. 
 With its thin-worn mysteries. 
 
 Lifting from the Past its veil. 
 What of his does now avail? 
 Just a mirror in his breast 
 That revealed a heavenly guest. 
 And the love that made us free 
 Of the same high company. 
 
 The poem on Abraham Lincoln 
 
 written for the Lincoln Centenary 
 
 and read by her at the meeting in 
 
 Symphony Hall, Boston, February 
 
 11 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 12th, 1909, is perhaps the best of the 
 innumerable memorial poems she com- 
 posed. As one by one the centena- 
 ries of this and that member of the 
 band of great men and women who 
 made our country illustrious in the 
 19th Century were celebrated, it came 
 to be considered as a matter of course 
 that she, almost the last survivor of 
 that noble company, should write a 
 poem for the occasion. So difficult a 
 critic as Professor Barrett Wendell 
 said to me that he considered some of 
 the stanzas of the Lincoln poem as 
 good as the Battle Hymn. I remember 
 he particularly liked the last two verses, 
 
 A treacherous shot, a sob of rest, 
 A martyr's palm upon his breast, 
 A welcome from the glorious seat 
 Where blameless souls of heroes meet; 
 12 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 And, thrilling through unmeasured days, 
 A song of gratitude and praise; 
 A cry that all the earth shall heed, 
 To God, who gave him for our need. 
 
 During her last summer she was in 
 correspondence with her friend Mr. 
 Garrison about the pubUcation of a 
 volume that should gather up into one 
 sheaf these scattered occasional poems. 
 She had this much on her mind and 
 made every endeavor to collect the 
 poems together: some of them had 
 never been printed, and of others she 
 possessed no copy. She stopped in 
 Boston on her way to Smith College 
 in the last days of last September, and 
 spent an afternoon in her Beacon St. 
 house looking for some of those lost 
 poems. Her wish was fulfilled, and 
 the posthumous volume, to which we 
 13 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 gave the title " At Sunset," lies be- 
 side me. Look down the page of con- 
 tents and note how various are the 
 names that figure in the list of per- 
 sonal poems, and what a wide range of 
 character they show; beginning with 
 Lincoln, Doctor Holmes, Washington 
 Allston, Robert E, Lee, Whittier, Lucy 
 Stone, Phillips Brooks, Robert Brown- 
 ing, Archbishop WiUiams, and ending 
 with Michael Anagnos — this is a wide 
 swath to cut, wide as her own sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 One poem of hers that has soothed 
 many a wounded heart should be bet- 
 ter known than I believe it to be. 
 Though it has no dedication, it 
 might well be dedicated to the men 
 and women who have tried, and who 
 to the world seem to have tried in vain. 
 14 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 ENDEAVOR 
 
 " What hast thou for thy scattered seed, 
 
 Sower of the plain? 
 Where are the many gathered sheaves 
 
 Thy hope should bring again? " 
 " The only record of my work 
 
 Lies in the buried grain." 
 
 " Conqueror of a thousand fields! 
 
 In dinted armor dight, 
 What growths of purple amaranth 
 
 Shall crown thy brow of might? " 
 " Only the blossom of my life 
 
 Flung widely in the fight." 
 
 " What is the harvest of thy saints, 
 
 God! who dost abide? 
 Where grow the garlands of thy chiefs 
 
 In blood and sorrow dyed? 
 What have thy servants for their pains? " 
 
 " This only, — to have tried." 
 
 On the 26th of July, 1908, she wrote: 
 
 " The thought came to me that if 
 
 God only looked upon me, I should 
 
 become radiant like a star." This 
 
 IS 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 thought is embodied in the following 
 
 quatrain. 
 
 Wouldst thou on me but turn thy wondrous 
 
 sight, 
 My breast would be so flooded by thy light, 
 The light whose language is immortal song. 
 That I to all the ages should belong. 
 
 Two lines of hers have always 
 seemed to me to express above all 
 others her life's philosophy: 
 
 In the house of labor best 
 Can I build the house of rest! 
 
 Of all her labors, heavy and varied 
 
 as those of Hercules, her poetry was 
 
 what she loved best. But she lived 
 
 in an age when there are few who 
 
 can take their spiritual meat in verse. 
 
 The age of steel is an age of prose, 
 
 and so she labored in season and out 
 
 to give her message in prose as well 
 
 as in poetry, with the spoken word as 
 
 16 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 well as the written. She was the most 
 willing of troubadours; she hastened 
 gladly wherever she was called, whether 
 it was to some stately banquet of the 
 muses like the Bryant Centenary, or 
 to a himible company of illiterate 
 negroes, in the poor little chapel at 
 Santo Domingo, where she preached 
 aU one season. Whether some rich 
 and powerful association like the 
 Woman's Club at Chicago summoned 
 her or some modest group of working 
 women on Cape Cod, she was always 
 ready. She asked no fee, but accepted 
 what was given her. She spoke and 
 wrote oftenest for love, and next often 
 for an honorarium of five dollars. The 
 first need of her being was to give. So 
 much had been given to her that she 
 was forever trying to pay the debt by 
 17 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 giving of her store to others. I find in 
 her own handwriting the best expres- 
 sion of this need of giving, that was per- 
 haps the prime necessity of her Ufe. 
 
 " I, for one, feel that my indebted- 
 ness grows with my years. And it 
 occurred to me the other day that when 
 I should depart from this earthly 
 scene, " God's poor Debtor " might be 
 the fittest inscription for my grave- 
 stone, if I should have one. So much 
 have I received from the great Giver, 
 so little have I been able to return." 
 
 One day a rash scatter-brained fel- 
 low who was always getting himself 
 and others into hot water asked her 
 this question: 
 
 "Is it not always our duty to sac- 
 rifice ourselves for others? " 
 
 She knew very well that he was con- 
 18 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 templating a perfectly reckless step 
 and was trying to hoodwink her — 
 and himself — into thinking the action 
 noble, because it would be so disad- 
 vantageous to himself. The boy I 
 fear forgot her answer; here it is for 
 you to remember and lay to heart. 
 
 " We must always remember that 
 we come into the world alone, that we 
 go out of the world alone, that there 
 is nothing to us but ourselves." 
 
 Certain things, she held, we must 
 sacrifice, selfish personal ends, com- 
 fort, pleasure, ease, but if we are to 
 fight the good fight we must not make 
 the fancied sacrifice of letting our 
 arms rust while we lay them down to 
 fight another's battle — nine times out 
 of ten an easier thing to do than to 
 fight our own. She had met with so 
 19 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 much opposition all her life through 
 serving the impopular causes of Aboli- 
 tion, Woman's Suffrage, Religious Free- 
 dom, she had fought so grimly for 
 what, when she entered the ranks, 
 always seemed a Forlorn Hope, that 
 she knew the real joy lies in the battle, 
 not in the victory. 
 
 Her last public appearance in Boston 
 was at a hearing in the State House, 
 where she came to plead for the cause 
 of pure milk. This was on the 23rd 
 of May, 1910, four days before her 
 ninety-first birthday. There had been 
 a great deal about the Pure Milk 
 Crusade in the newspapers, the Bos- 
 ton Journal had made a special ques- 
 tion of it and one of the reporters had 
 already interviewed her on the subject. 
 The Chairman of the Massachusetts 
 20 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 Milk Consumer's Association had 
 asked her to give her name as honorary 
 president of the league. This she was 
 glad to do, but this was not enough, 
 she wanted to do more. I was called 
 up once or twice on the 'phone and 
 asked if I thought Mrs. Howe was 
 able to speak before the legislative 
 committee at one of the hearings. I 
 thought that with the birthday fes- 
 tivities so near and the fatigue of 
 moving down to Newport before her, 
 this would be a little too much, and 
 consequently " begged off." In these 
 days there was a meeting in Cam- 
 bridge in memory of Margaret Puller. 
 She was invited to be present, and 
 was determined to go. 
 
 " They have not asked me to speak," 
 she said more than once. 
 21 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 " Of course they will ask you when 
 they see you," I assured her. 
 
 " I have my poem on Margaret 
 written for her Centenary," she said. 
 
 " Take it with you," I advised. " Of 
 course you will be asked to say some- 
 thing, and then you will have your 
 poem in your pocket and be all pre- 
 pared." 
 
 I was unable to go with her to the 
 meeting, a young lady who came to 
 read aloud to her going in my place. 
 They came back late in the afternoon; 
 the meeting had been long and I saw 
 immediately that she was very tired. 
 The cause of this soon appeared. 
 
 " They did not ask me to speak," 
 she said, " and I was the only person 
 present who had known Margaret 
 and remembered her." 
 22 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 I was deeply troubled about this. 
 I saw that she had been hurt, and I 
 knew that if I had gone to the meeting 
 I could have managed to let it be 
 known that she had brought her poem 
 to read. For a very little time she was 
 a good deal depressed by the incident 
 — felt she was out of the race, no longer 
 entered on the card for the running. 
 
 Very soon after this they telephoned 
 me that there would be another hear- 
 ing on the milk question at half past 
 ten, and that it would probably go 
 on all the morning. She had been 
 very bright when she came down to 
 breakfast and made a capital meal. 
 When I went into her room, I found 
 her at her desk all ready for the day's 
 campaign, though I knew that the 
 Margaret Fuller incident still rankled. 
 23 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 " There's to be a hearing at the 
 State House on the milk question; 
 they want you dreadfully to speak." 
 
 She was all alert and full of interest 
 in a moment. 
 
 " What do you say, shall we go? " 
 
 " Give me half an hour! " 
 
 I left her for that half hour. When 
 I returned she had sketched out her 
 speech and dressed herself in her best 
 flowered silk cloak and her new lilac 
 satin and lace hood — a birthday gift 
 from a poor seamstress. We drove 
 to the State House together, and after 
 some difiiculty in finding the right 
 lift finally reached the room where 
 the hearing was going on. She had 
 made these notes for her speech, but 
 had not brought them with her; we 
 found them afterward in her desk. 
 24 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 " It seems to me that the theme of 
 this hearing is one which should com- 
 mend itself to all good citizens. I 
 think that even our patient American 
 public is tired of the delay, for al- 
 though we are in many ways a happy 
 people, I do think that our public is a 
 long suffering one. I should think that 
 we might hope for a speedy settle- 
 ment. For we are not discussing points 
 of taste and pleasure, but matters of 
 life and death. There are various 
 parties concerned in the desired set- 
 tlement, but to my mind the party 
 most nearly concerned is the infant 
 who comes into this world relying upon 
 a promise which we are bound to fulfil, 
 the promise that he shall at least en- 
 joy the conditions of life. I learn from 
 men of science that no possible sub- 
 25 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 stitute exists for good milk in the 
 rearing of infants. How can we then 
 delay the action which shall secure 
 it?" 
 
 She listened to the long speeches 
 with interest, Uttle realizing that this 
 was to be her last public appearance 
 in Boston, When the time came for 
 her to speak, it was noticed that while 
 all the others took the oath upon the 
 Bible to speak the truth, the whole 
 truth and nothing but the truth, the 
 ceremony was omitted with her. As 
 her name was called she rose and 
 stepped forward leaning on my arm. 
 
 " You may remain seated, Mrs. 
 Howe," said the Chairman. 
 
 " I prefer to stand," was the an- 
 swer. So, standing in the place where, 
 year after year, she had stood to ask 
 26 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 for the full rights of citizenship, for 
 the right to vote, she made her last 
 thrilling appeal for justice. Her keen 
 wit, her power of hitting the nail on 
 the head, were never used to better 
 purpose. The hearing had been long 
 and tedious. There had been many 
 speeches, the farmers who produce the 
 milk, the dealers who sell it, worthy 
 citizens who were trying to improve 
 the quality of the milk supply, ex- 
 perts whose testimony showed the far 
 from ideal conditions under which the 
 milk of the great city is brought to 
 its consumers. Everything had been 
 proper, commonplace, prosaic, deadly 
 dull. Her speech was short and to 
 the point, giving in a few words the 
 whole crux of the matter. Her pres- 
 ence, the presence of the old Sybil, 
 27 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 mother, grandmother, great-grand- 
 mother was extraordinarily romantic, 
 it lifted the whole occasion out of the 
 realm of the commonplace into that of 
 the poetic. Her speech followed in 
 substance the notes she had prepared, 
 but it was enhanced with touches of 
 eloquence such as this: 
 
 " We have heard a great deal about 
 the farmers' and the dealers' side of 
 this case. We want the matter settled 
 on the ground of justice and mercy; 
 it ought not to take long to settle what 
 is just to all parties: justice to all! 
 Let us stand on that. There is one 
 deeply interested party however, of 
 whom we have heard nothing. He 
 cannot speak for himself, I am here 
 to speak for him, the infant! " 
 
 The impression made was over- 
 28 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 whelming. This ancient Norn, grave 
 and beautiful as the elder Fate, claim- 
 ing Justice for the infant in the cradle! 
 The effect upon the audience was elec- 
 trical. The roughest " hayseed " in 
 the chamber " sat up; " the meanest 
 dealer was moved, the sleepiest legis- 
 lator awoke. The silence in that place 
 of creaking chairs, and coughing citi- 
 zens, was amazing. All listened as 
 to a prophetess as, step by step, she 
 unfolded the case of the infant as 
 against farmer and dealer. When Mr. 
 Arthur Dehon Hill, the Counsel for 
 the Association, led her from the room 
 he said: 
 
 " Mrs. Howe, you have scored our 
 first point." 
 
 The friend, who had called in her 
 help, was one of the strongest " Anti- 
 29 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 Suffragists." This was a very char- 
 acteristic happening. Whenever any- 
 great question of pubhc interest, not 
 connected with Woman Suffrage, came 
 up, the " antis " were continually com- 
 ing to ask her help. If the cause was a 
 good one she always gave it. She was 
 no respecter of persons; the cause 
 was the thing. Over and over again 
 she was appealed to by those who were 
 moving heaven and earth to oppose 
 her in Suffrage, to help some of their 
 lesser ends. She was always ready; 
 always hitched her rope to their mired 
 wagon and helped pull with a will. 
 Her wagon was hitched to a star, the 
 force celestial in her tow rope was at 
 the service of all who asked for it in a 
 good cause. 
 A few days after the State-house 
 30 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 hearing, she fell in her own room and 
 broke a rib. She recovered from the 
 effects of this and in the last days of 
 Jmie moved down to her place at 
 Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where she 
 passed nearly four happy months with 
 children, grandchildren and great- 
 grandchildren about her. Three weeks 
 before her death she wrote to the 
 Reverend Ada Bowles: 
 
 " I have it in mind to write some 
 open letters about Religion and to 
 publish them in the Woman's Jour- 
 nal." 
 
 She was at work upon the first of 
 these, a definition of true ReUgion, 
 when the end came. Her last Tuesday 
 on earth, she presided at the Pape- 
 terie, a social club of Newport ladies, 
 in whose meetings she delighted. She 
 31 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 was in splendid vein; that gay com- 
 pany of clever women gathered aroxmd 
 her as pretty butterflies hover about a 
 queen rose, still fascinated, still en- 
 tranced by this beUe of ninety years. 
 She wore over her pretty white dress 
 the hood she had received from Brown 
 University, the year before, when she 
 was given the degree of Doctor of Lit- 
 erature. She was as usual the central 
 figure at the meeting, and gave the 
 Club a vivid account of her visit to 
 Smith College, whither she had gone 
 the week before to receive another de- 
 gree. The next morning she worked 
 at her " Definition of True Religion; " 
 five days later, the summons came. 
 Leaving the task unfinished, as she 
 would have said, " the iron to cool 
 upon the anvil," she passed on to the 
 32 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 larger task that now absorbs her ardent 
 spirit. 
 
 During her last years she received 
 many letters, even printed documents, 
 with minute inquiries touching her 
 method of life. A society of Nono- 
 genarians sent a set of questions about 
 her habits of body, and mind, with a 
 postscript asking especially to what she 
 attributed her unusually prolonged ac- 
 tivity. Though I am sure she must 
 have answered, for she was faithful 
 beyond belief in such matters, we 
 have found no record of her answer. 
 Now she has left us, her children are 
 often asked the same sort of question 
 about her: 
 
 " How did she do it? " 
 
 " What was her secret? " 
 
 " Why did she die ninety-one years 
 33 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 young, instead of ninety-one years 
 old? " 
 
 If she herself had tried to tell you 
 her secret, to account for her rare 
 powers preserved so late in life, spent 
 so prodigally at an age when the lean 
 and slippered pantaloon hoards his 
 scant store of strength as a miser 
 hoards his gold, she would have said 
 something like this: 
 
 " You must remember I had a splen- 
 did Irish wet-nurse! " 
 
 Perhaps she laid too much stress on 
 that excellent woman's share in making 
 her all she was (no foster-mother was 
 ever more faithfully remembered by 
 nursling) ; she owed something, surely, 
 to her forebears. She came of good old 
 fighting stock; in her veins thrilled the 
 blood of Francis Marion, the Swamp 
 34 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 Fox of Virginia, of General Greene, 
 both heroes of the Revolution, of that 
 staunch old rebel, Roger Williams, of 
 the Wards, for two generations colo- 
 nial Governors of Rhode Island. All 
 this fighting blood, together with her 
 red hair, gave a certain miUtant touch 
 to her character; she was a good fighter 
 for every just cause, especially the 
 cause of Peace. Though she spoke 
 oftener of the Irish wet-nurse than 
 of her ancestors, she did not altogether 
 forget them as an anecdote told by my 
 sister, Mrs. Richards, proves. They 
 were at some meeting, a religious 
 gathering I think, where one speaker 
 — rather an effete pessimist — closed 
 a speech in the key of the " Everlast- 
 ing No," with the doleful words: 
 " I feel myself weighed down by 
 35 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 a sense of the sins of my ances- 
 tors." 
 
 My mother, who was the next 
 speaker, sprang to her feet with the 
 retort: 
 
 " And I feel myself lifted up on the 
 virtues of mine! " 
 
 There rang out the key-note of her 
 life, the " Everlasting Yea," the trum- 
 pet-tone to which all high souls rally. 
 
 Many people have had fine wet- 
 nurses; a legion have the same legacy 
 of power in their blood, who do not 
 accomplish much with it. 
 
 Poeta nascitur, non fit! She was of 
 course bom an uncommon person, 
 but I believe the manner and habits 
 of her life, quite as much as her native 
 power, made for her vigorous old age. 
 As I look back on the intimate compan- 
 36 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 ionship of a lifetime, I realize that 
 these excellent life habits, habits that 
 any one of us can cultivate, had even 
 more to do with her long continued use- 
 fulness than the great Irish wet-nurse 
 herself. 
 
 First, and last, and all the time, she 
 worked, and worked, and worked, 
 steadily as nature works, without rest, 
 without haste. She was never idle, 
 she was never in a hurry. Though she 
 played too, earnestly, enthusiastically, 
 it was never idle play; there was al- 
 ways a dash of poetry in her pastime, 
 whether it was making a charade for 
 the Brain Club, or composing a nursery 
 rhyme for her grandchildren. The 
 capacity for work like everything else 
 grows by cultivation. She started 
 Ufe with a rarely active mind and tem- 
 37 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 perament. So do many people. It 
 was the habit of study, of concentra- 
 tion, of work, carefully cultivated from 
 the first, held on to in spite of difficul- 
 ties — she had plenty of them — that 
 wrought what seemed to some of her 
 contemporaries a miracle. She could 
 say like Adam in Shakespeare's play 
 "As You Like It:" 
 
 " My age is as a lusty winter; 
 
 Frosty, but kindly: let me go with you; 
 I'll do the service of a younger man 
 In all your business and necessities." 
 
 " Let me go with you! " This is 
 what Age is forever saying to Youth. 
 " Do not leave me behind — I can 
 still serve! " So long as Age makes 
 good the claim, heydey, headlong, 
 good-natured Youth lets the veteran 
 march in its glorious ranks. Youth 
 38 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 does not crowd him out, as the veteran 
 too often thinks, he drops out because 
 he " cannot keep the pace! " The 
 reason she did not drop out was because 
 she made good her claim. The children 
 and grandchildren of those with whom 
 she first enlisted, were content to have 
 her march with them, still in the 
 van. 
 
 Her training, from her very start in 
 life, made her a cosmopolitan; one of 
 the factors of this world citizenship 
 was her very early study of foreign 
 languages. French, Italian and Latin 
 she knew almost from the time she 
 could speak, so that she gathered into 
 her spirit the essence of the race genius 
 of the Latins. Later came the Teu- 
 tonic baptism, for she only learned 
 German at fourteen, when her adored 
 39 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 brother, Sam Ward, came home from 
 Heidelberg, brimimmg over with the 
 songs, the poetry, the philosophy of 
 Germany. She studied Schiller and 
 Goethe with ardor — among her treas- 
 ures, we have found a long autograph 
 letter from Goethe to her tutor, Dr. 
 Cogswell. In her youth there were 
 still cultivated French people living 
 in New York, who had taken refuge 
 there during the reign of terror. She 
 remembered one of these gentlemen 
 in exile who gave her French lessons, 
 another who came to the house when 
 there was a dinner party to mix the 
 salad, a third who came to dress her 
 hair for a ball. Then there were a 
 group of Italian political exiles who 
 were made welcome at her father's 
 house, and the Greek boy (a fugitive 
 40 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 from the unspeakable Turk), Christy 
 Evangelides, adopted by him, who till 
 the day of his death spoke of her as his 
 sister Julia. All these early influences 
 tended to make a cosmopolitan of the 
 Uttle lady while she was still in the nur- 
 sery. The general culture of the " little 
 old New York " of that time was far 
 broader than that of Boston; the nar- 
 row swaddling bands of Puritan pro- 
 vincialism never bound her free and 
 vaulting spirit. From world citizen- 
 ship to universal citizenship, to other 
 world citizenship is a far cry. There 
 are men and women with a truly cos- 
 mopolitan spirit who never attain that 
 wider universal citizenship. She often 
 quoted Margaret Fuller's " I accept 
 the universe." Though keenly aware 
 of the manner in which Margaret had 
 41 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 laid herself open to ridicule by this 
 high-sounding phrase, without herself 
 formulating it (her sense of humor 
 could never have allowed that), she 
 practically did " accept the uni- 
 verse," was always conscious of a sort 
 of universal citizenship that made the 
 affairs of every oppressed people her 
 affairs. No hand, however dirty, was 
 ever stretched out to her that she did 
 not take it in her own and in taking it 
 recognize the God in the man. She car- 
 ried a touchstone in her bosom by 
 which she found gold in natures that to 
 others seemed trivial and base. She 
 had few intimate friends, none in the 
 usual sense of the term, for with aU her 
 bonhommie that made her the " friend 
 of all the world," the Universal Friend 
 was her only real intimate. Her re- 
 42 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 serve of soul was impenetrable; only 
 her poems, and occasionally a page in 
 her diary, give us any insight into her 
 spiritual nature — ghmpses of a cer- 
 tain high companionship with the stars 
 and the planets. 
 
 We hear much of the dual nature 
 of man. The term misleads. Man, or 
 at least woman has a triple nature, is 
 made up of flesh, mind and spirit. How 
 did she use these three different na- 
 tures — the physical, the intellectual, 
 the spiritual? 
 
 In her youth the views of health 
 were very different from what they are 
 now. As a child, she lived the greater 
 part of the year in New York, where 
 she was never encouraged to take much 
 outdoor air or exercise. Every after- 
 noon at three o'clock the big yellow 
 43 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 and blue family coach, drawn by two 
 fat horses, came to the door to take 
 the children out for a drive. Even 
 when they went to the country for a 
 change of air, the children's complex- 
 ions were more considered than their 
 health. Miss Danforth, an old friend 
 of the family, told my mother in later 
 years of having met the Wards at the 
 seaside, where Julia, who had a deh- 
 cate ivory complexion, wore a thick 
 green worsted veil when she went 
 down to the beach. 
 
 " Little Julia has another freckle 
 today," the visitor was told. " It 
 was not her fault, the nurse forgot 
 her veil." 
 
 She was from the first a natural 
 student, loving her books better than 
 anything else; but she was a perfectly 
 44 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 normal child too and her good spirits 
 and her social gifts often tempted her 
 from her work. Her sister Louisa 
 remembered that she used to make 
 her maid tie her into her chair, so 
 that she should not be able to leave 
 her study should the temptation assail 
 her. In spite of a too sedentary youth, 
 she started Ufe with an uncommonly 
 good body. After her marriage to 
 my father she received many new and 
 valuable ideas on matters hygienic, 
 and while never a great pedestrian 
 she always walked twice a day till the 
 very end of her life. Still it must be 
 confessed that her muscles were the 
 least developed part of her. For the 
 last twenty years she was rather lame, 
 the result of a fall, when her knee was 
 badly injiu-ed. She was always per- 
 45 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 sistent in walking as much as she was 
 able however, in spite of the effort it 
 cost her. During the summer and 
 autimm, she passed a large part of 
 the day, studying and reading, on 
 the piazza of her country house at Oak 
 Glen in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. 
 
 Though for many years she left the 
 housekeeping to the daughter or grand- 
 daughter who was living with her, she 
 always kept her own bank account 
 and never allowed any one to take 
 charge of her finances. She often 
 lamented that her hands were so use- 
 less for household tasks, envying her 
 granddaughters' dexterity with scissors 
 and needle. I must not forget to men- 
 tion her practising. She had a beauti- 
 ful voice which had been carefully 
 trained in the old Itahan method. 
 46 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 She practised her scales regularly all 
 her life; I have often heard her say 
 she believed the exercise of singing was 
 very valuable in preparing her for 
 pubhc speaking. She was faithful too 
 in practising on the piano, and always 
 played her scales so that her fingers 
 never lost their flexibility or the power 
 to do the things she really wanted 
 them to do — to hold the pen (she 
 almost never dictated, but wrote every- 
 thing with her own hand), to play 
 the piano, to accompany her speaking 
 with appropriate gestures. To the 
 last her hands retained their exquisite 
 shape; the cast made from them after 
 death shows their unimpaired beauty. 
 My father was very strict about 
 diet; all " fried abominations " were 
 taboo with him, pastry, high season- 
 47 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 ing, ham, cocoanut cakes — all rich 
 food — were anathema maranatha. 
 From first to last she was frankly a 
 rebel in this matter. It was said, in 
 the family, that she had the digestion 
 of an ostrich. In spite of all opposi- 
 tion she calmly continued to eat what- 
 ever she fancied to the end of her life. 
 During her last summer she wrote 
 to her physician asking permission 
 to eat ham and pastry, dishes that 
 to her daughters seemed a little heavy 
 for summer weather. At her last 
 luncheon party she was advised not 
 to eat pate de foies gras or to drink 
 champagne; she put aside the advice 
 with the familiar remark we all knew 
 so well: 
 
 " I have taken these things aU my 
 life and they have never hurt me." 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 The fact of the matter was, she had 
 a perfect digestion which she used 
 carefully and never abused. She ate 
 moderately and slowly, with an entire 
 disregard to what is usually considered 
 good for old people. She rose at seven; 
 in her youth and middle age she took 
 a cold bath, in later years the bath 
 was tepid — well or ill, it was never 
 omitted. During the last twenty 
 years, that great fourth score so rich 
 in happiness to herself and her family, 
 and that greater family of hers, 
 the Public, she took a little light wine 
 with her dinner, " for her stomach's 
 sake," as she would say, quoting St. 
 Paul. This, with a cup of tea for 
 breakfast, was the only stimulant she 
 needed, for her spirits were so buoy- 
 ant, her temperament so overflowing 
 49 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 with the ioie de vivre, that we called 
 her the " family champagne." Break- 
 fast with us was a social meal; there 
 was always conversation and much 
 laughter for she came down in the 
 morning with her spirits at their 
 highest level. She slept about eight 
 hours. Until her seventieth year I 
 never knew her to lie down in the 
 daytime, unless she was suffering with 
 headache. The first part of that 
 seventieth year was not a good time 
 for her. More hearty healthy people 
 are killed every year by the sentence: 
 " The days of our years are threescore 
 years and ten," than by any four 
 diseases you like to name. Even her 
 radiant health, her buoyant tempera- 
 ment felt its depressing influence; as 
 the weeks and months went by and 
 50 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 she found herself quite as vigorous in 
 her seventieth year as she had been in 
 her sixty-ninth, she forgot all about her 
 age and resumed her activities, retain- 
 ing under protest the daily nap. She 
 lay down with the clock on the bed 
 beside her; twenty minutes was quite 
 time enough to " waste in napping! " 
 During the last five or six years, always 
 grudgingly, she gave a little more time 
 to resting, taking a half-hour's siesta 
 before luncheon, another before dinner, 
 " to rest her back." She always sat 
 in a straight backed chair, never in her 
 long hfe having learned how to 
 " loimge " in an easy chair. She was 
 by nature a night owl and never 
 wanted to go to bed if there was 
 any other night owl to keep her com- 
 pany. So much for her use of that 
 51 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 faithful servant, the body. If the de- 
 velopment of her muscles was not quite 
 up to the modern standard, her intel- 
 lectual training far surpassed it. From 
 first to last she kept her mind in the 
 same state of high training that the 
 athlete keeps his body, strove for that 
 perfect balance of power in all the dif- 
 ferent functions of the brain that an 
 all-round athlete aims for in his phy- 
 sique. I never remember a time when 
 she relaxed the mental gymnastics 
 that kept her mind strong, supple, 
 active. 
 
 Once, at a crucial moment, when 
 beset by perplexities, I asked for 
 advice, her answer, stamped on my 
 memory as long as it shall hold to- 
 gether, was given in three Latin 
 words: 
 
 52 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 " Posce fortem animum." Ask for 
 a strong mind! The motto of her 
 English friend, Edward Twistleton, 
 known and loved by her generation of 
 Bostonians. 
 
 Ask for a strong mind; ask earnestly 
 enough and you will get it, will learn 
 to laugh at that old-fashioned bogey, 
 the fear of being considered " strong- 
 minded." 
 
 Long ago, when a silly acquaintance 
 demanded if it was true she was a 
 strong-minded woman, she parried 
 with the counter thrust: 
 
 "Is it not better to be strong- 
 minded than to be weak-minded? " 
 
 If you want a strong mind or a strong 
 
 body there is only one way to get it, 
 
 by faithful exercise. There is no royal 
 
 road, no easy short cut to either goal. 
 
 53 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 The wise friend, the good physician 
 can point out the way, you yourself 
 must tread it! 
 
 She always read her letters and the 
 newspapers (history in the making) 
 immediately after breakfast. Then 
 came the morning walk, a bout of calis- 
 thenics, or a game of ball; after this she 
 settled to the real serious business of 
 the day; ten o'clock saw her at her 
 desk. She began the morning with 
 study, took up the hardest reading she 
 had on hand. In her youth she read 
 Goethe; in her middle life, when she 
 was deep in the study of German phi- 
 losophy, Kant, Fichte or Hegel. For 
 years Kant was the most intimate 
 companion of her thought. In the 
 early sixties, when she was in the for- 
 ties, her diary was filled with Kant's 
 54 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 philosophy. Sometimes she differs 
 with his conclusions, sometimes am- 
 pUfies them, oftenest endorses them. 
 
 " One chosen lover, one chosen phi- 
 losopher! " was her motto. While she 
 owed much to Spinoza and records in 
 her journal that Kant does not do 
 him justice, her philosopher par excel- 
 lence was Immanuel Kant. On her 
 seventieth birthday the Saturday 
 Morning Club of Boston gave her a 
 beautiful jewel with seven moonstones 
 and one topaz. At a dinner soon after 
 she wore this jewel to pin a lace scarf. 
 The conversation at table turned on 
 Kantian philosophy and she was asked 
 some question concerning it. 
 
 " Do you think I wear the Categori- 
 cal Imperative on my left shoulder? " 
 she cried. 
 
 55 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 " Is this the Categorical Impera- 
 tive? " asked Mrs. Whitman, pointing 
 to the jewel that held the lace. After 
 that the club's jewel went by the name 
 of one of the toughest nuts in Kant's 
 philosophy. 
 
 When she was fifty years old she 
 learned Greek; from the time she 
 could read it fluently, the Greek phi- 
 losophers, historians, and dramatists 
 shared with the Germans those pre- 
 cious hours of morning study. In the 
 end the Hellenes routed the Teutons, 
 and remained her most cherished in- 
 timates. At luncheon she would tell 
 us what she had been studying, an 
 excellent way to teach children his- 
 tory. I shall never forget the day when 
 she had read in Xenophon's Anabasis 
 the account of the retreat of the 
 56 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 Greeks, who formed part of the expe- 
 dition of Cyrus. She came dancing 
 into the dining room, where the children 
 were waiting for their soup, waving her 
 beautiful hands and crjdng: 
 
 " Thalatta! Thalatta! " the cry of 
 the wearied Greeks on first catching 
 sight of the sea, after wandering for 
 years in the interior of the Persian 
 empire. 
 
 No event in history is quite so real 
 to me as Hannibal's crossing the Alps. 
 Day by day she took us with that 
 valiant Carthaginian general on his 
 long journey across Hispania, oyer the 
 Pyrenees, through Gaul, along the 
 Rhone, and over the Graian Alps. 
 The day Hannibal finally got his ele- 
 phants over the Little Saint Bernard 
 Pass, and down into Italy, was one of 
 57 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 positive rejoicing for us little ones. 
 Her imagination was so keen that 
 when she repeated to us what she had 
 been studying, it always seemed as if 
 she had seen these things with her own 
 eyes, not merely read about them. 
 The effort of studying Greek whetted 
 her mind to its keenest edge. Aristotle 
 and Plato, with her Greek Testament, 
 she read to the last. She talked with 
 us less about the philosophers than 
 the dramatists and historians. I re- 
 member how much we heard about the 
 Birds of Aristophanes, one of her 
 favorite classics. Reading Greek was, 
 I think, the greatest pleasure of her 
 later life. One afternoon last summer, 
 when a pretty girl of a studious turn 
 came to see her, I chanced to hear her 
 parting words, said with a fervor and 
 58 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 solemnity that impressed the young 
 visitor: 
 
 " Study Greek, my dear, it's better 
 than a diamond necklace! " 
 
 After the morning plunge into Greek 
 or German philosophy " to tone up 
 her mind," she took up whatever 
 literary task she was at work upon, 
 " put the iron on the anvil," as her 
 phrase was, " and hammered " at it 
 tiU luncheon. She was a most careful 
 and conscientious writer, writing, re- 
 writing, and " polishing " her work 
 with inexhaustible patience. Occa- 
 sionally she got a poem all whole, in 
 one piece, hke The Battle Hjonn. 
 This was rare though; as a rule she 
 toiled and moiled over her manuscripts. 
 In the afternoon she was at her desk 
 again, unless there was some outside 
 59 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 engagement — answering letters, read- 
 ing books in a lighter vein, Italian 
 poetry, a Spanish play, a book of 
 travels or, best of all, a good French 
 novel. 
 
 Each day opened with the stern 
 drill of the Greek or German phi- 
 losophy, by which her mind was exer- 
 cised and at the same time stored with 
 the thoughts of the wise, the labors of 
 the good, the prayers of the devout. 
 That was the first process, the taking 
 in, receiving the wisdom of the ages. 
 Then came the second or creative 
 process, when she gave out even as she 
 had received. This regular mental 
 exercise was like a series of gymnastics, 
 by which the receptive and creative 
 functions of the brain were kept in 
 perfect working order. If you are to 
 60 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 pour out, you must first pmir in. If 
 your lamp is to serve as a beacon light, 
 it must be well trimmed and filled with 
 oil every day. 
 
 She never in my memory took up any 
 work after dark. Unless she was 
 called abroad by some festivity or 
 meeting, the evening was our play 
 time. She invariably dressed for din- 
 ner, which was followed by talk, whist, 
 music, and reading aloud. She rarely 
 used the precious daylight for reading 
 English novels, so at night she was 
 ready to listen to some " rattling good 
 story " recommended by one of the 
 grandchildren. She delighted in 
 Stevenson, Crawford, Cable, Barrie, 
 Stanley Weyman, Conan Doyle, Mere- 
 dith, Tolstoi and Sienkiewicz. How she 
 loved the friends of bookland, the 
 61 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 friends who never hurt or bore! The 
 new ones were welcome, but she was 
 faithful to the old and liked nothing 
 better than to reread those master- 
 pieces of her youth, the novels of 
 Scott, Dickens and Thackeray. We 
 read Pickwick every year or two; she 
 never wearied of the greatest English 
 novelist's greatest masterpiece, A good 
 ghost story made her flesh creep; she 
 was often kept awake by the troubles 
 of the " people in the book," who were 
 so real to her that, when they were 
 having a very bad time of it, she would 
 spread her hands before her face and 
 cry out: 
 
 "Stop! Stop! I cannot endure it! " 
 
 Money troubles of hero or heroine 
 
 especially afflicted her; this was odd, 
 
 for she bore the loss of the greater part 
 
 62 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 of her own fortune with courage and 
 equanimity. Though she knew the 
 value of money, and practised the most 
 touching little economies so that she 
 might have more to give away, she 
 cared very little about money and 
 was always too busy with more im- 
 portant matters to think much of 
 it. The stories of arctic adventure, 
 Jack London's especially, " gave her 
 the shivers; " she ached with the cold 
 and hunger of his dogs and heroes. 
 The younger people among the lis- 
 teners often envied her enthusiasm. 
 Her imagination was so keen, her 
 power of making beUeve the story was 
 real so tantalizing, infectious too, that 
 it carried us through many a book that 
 would have been dull without it. 
 
 One of the last books she enjoyed 
 63 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 was Dr. Morton Prince's Dissociation 
 of a Personality. She was deeply 
 interested in this last word on psy- 
 chology and every day at luncheon 
 gave us an account of Sally's last prank. 
 In her later years, though she wrote 
 much poetry, she did not read as much 
 English verse as in her youth. I do 
 not know at what period she studied 
 Shakespeare, but she was so familiar 
 with the plays that at the theatre I 
 have often heard her murmur a cor- 
 rection of a line falsely given by some 
 player. Her memory was prodigious; 
 it was like a vast collection of pigeon- 
 holeS; where there was a place for 
 everything, and everything was in its 
 place. She seemed to have a sort of 
 mental card-catalogue of all the knowl- 
 edge that was stored away in her 
 64 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 capacious brain. It was as if the sub- 
 jects were all classified, and when she 
 wished to speak, write or think on any 
 given one, she consulted the catalogue, 
 then went straight to the alcove in that 
 well stored library and brought forth 
 volume after volume dealing with the 
 subject under consideration. It will 
 hardly be believed that she wrote her 
 volume of Reminiscences entirely from 
 memory, never so much as consulting 
 her own diary. It has been said of her 
 that she remembered all she ever knew, 
 whereas most of us forget a large part 
 of what we have known. She certainly 
 had an unusual command of her own 
 knowledge. On one of my long absences 
 in Eiu-ope, I had taken with me by 
 mistake her large Worcester's dic- 
 tionary, thinking it was mine. On my 
 65 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 return after an absence of more than 
 two years, I exclaimed: 
 
 " How dreadful it was of me to take 
 your dictionary — what have you done 
 — did you buy a new one? " 
 
 " I did not know you had taken it," 
 she said. 
 
 " But — how did you get along with- 
 out a dictionary? " 
 
 She was surprised at the question. 
 
 " I never use a word whose meaning 
 I do not know." 
 
 " But the spelling? " 
 
 She gave a funny little French ges- 
 ture of the shoulders, inherited with 
 so much else from her Huguenot an- 
 cestors, of whom she knew little and 
 thought much. It meant, I suppose : 
 
 " When you have learned Latin, 
 Greek, French, German, Spanish and 
 66 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 Italian, you will have learned how to 
 spell English — perhaps! " 
 
 At sunset, sitting upon her piazza at 
 Oak Glen, her eyes fixed on the flaming 
 sky beyond her pines, if she chanced 
 to be alone, she would repeat an ode 
 of Horace. She was learning one, line 
 by line, when the summons came. 
 I remember her saying that this made 
 the thirtieth ode she had committed 
 to memory. Nous revenons a nos 
 'premiers amours. Horace, the delight 
 of her youth, consoled what might have 
 been some lonely hours in her last days. 
 
 So much for the regular intellectual 
 drill, by which she kept her mind deli- 
 cately keen, as the soldier keeps his 
 weapons for the fight, as the craftsman 
 keeps the tools for his work. Admirable 
 as this was, it was only the secondary 
 67 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 source of her power. What was it fed 
 the inner flame of her hfe so that it 
 shone through her face, as fire shines 
 through an alabaster vase? 
 
 She tapped the great Hfe current that 
 flows round the world; to those who 
 know the trick, 'tis the simplest, most 
 natural thing in the world to do, as 
 easy as for the babe to draw the milk 
 from its mother's breast. You have 
 merely to put yourself " on the circuit," 
 let the force universal flow through 
 you, and you can move mountains or 
 bridge oceans. She knew the trick; 
 she was forever trying to teach it to 
 others, to women in especial, to work- 
 ing women above all others. 
 
 Her first waking act was prayer, 
 aspiration; her last, thanksgiving, 
 praise! Just as some persons' first 
 68 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 action is to open the window and fill the 
 lungs with fresh air, or to drink a glass 
 of cold water, hers was to open wide 
 the door of her soul and let the breath 
 of the Spirit blow through it. She was 
 a mystic, a seer. The Battle Hymn was 
 hot the only poem " given " her in the 
 gray dawn of day when the birds were 
 singing their matins; many of her best 
 poems, her best thoughts came to her 
 during the first moments of conscious- 
 ness, when the Marthas of this world 
 are wondering what they shall get for 
 breakfast, or what clothes they shall 
 put on. Poor Martha, dear Martha! 
 Try for the uplift and the grace — 
 they will come to you, even if yours 
 is not the art to make a poem out of 
 them. That is a special gift! Live 
 your poem, and its music will turn 
 69 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 the lives of those with whom you Hve 
 from prose to poetry, change life's 
 water into wine. 
 
 She very rarely talked with her 
 children on rehgious matters. Both 
 she and my father had a dread of 
 giving us the very narrow religious 
 training they themselves had received. 
 Conscious of the mistakes of such a 
 bringing up, she shunned them and, 
 though we all knew how devout a per- 
 son she was, it was chiefly through her 
 writings and her poems that we received 
 a sense of the rehgious side of her 
 nature. Her faith in a divine Provi- 
 dence was the deep well-spring in which 
 the roots of her being were fixed. She 
 lived in daily communion with the 
 divine life. Her diary is fuU of dreams 
 that are like the ecstatic visions of the 
 70 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 old saints. In the note already referred 
 to written on the margin of a poem in 
 her posthumous volume, At Sunset, she 
 says: 
 
 " The thought came to me that if 
 God only looked upon me I should 
 become radiant like a star." 
 
 Beatrice, her favorite of Shake- 
 speare's heroines, says: 
 
 " There was a star danced and under that I 
 was born! " 
 
 In October, the month she left us, a 
 wonderful star appears in the heavens, 
 and at this season of the year shines 
 with an extraordinary brilliancy. She 
 always watched for it and often pointed 
 it out to others. 
 
 " What is the name of that star? " 
 I have heard her ask more than- One 
 man of science. " It changes color 
 71 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 like a flash light in a light house, 
 flashes from white to green and then 
 to red." At last she asked the ques- 
 tion of a man who could answer it and 
 learned that her star's name was 
 Aldebaran and that is one of the stars 
 of the constellation of Taurus. Her 
 horoscope was never cast, but I believe 
 that she was born under the influence 
 of that wonderful star that flashes first 
 the color of the diamond, then the ruby, 
 and last the emerald, and that when she 
 was born, Aldebaran danced! 
 
 Though she so rarely spoke of such 
 matters, we who lived with her were 
 fed at second hand by that deep 
 limpid stream, the river of immortal 
 life, in which she grew rooted deep. 
 One of the many manifestations of this 
 was the joyousness with which she 
 72 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 took up each day and its little cares. 
 She always came into the room in the 
 morning like a child who has some good 
 news to share with the family. Those 
 wonderful spirits, that overflowed in 
 every sort of wit, jest and antic, took 
 the sting from the bitterest nature; in 
 her company the satirist grew kind, 
 the cynic humane. A deep spiritual 
 joy seemed to enwrap her Uke a sort 
 of enveloping climate. Where she was, 
 the sun shone, the sky was blue, birds 
 sang, brooks babbled, for so tremen- 
 dous was her spiritual force that it 
 always conquered. It sometimes 
 seemed to me as if I was conscious of 
 a sort of war of temperaments between 
 her and some pessimistic or cynical 
 nature. It was like one of those days 
 when, as we say, " the sun is trying to 
 73 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 come out." The sun of her presence 
 never failed to come out, to banish the 
 gray fog of the blues, the sufferings 
 of the irritable or the disheartened. 
 When people came to talk to her of 
 their troubles, as they often did, the 
 troubles seemed to shrink like the 
 clouds on a dark day, leaving first a 
 little peep of blue visible, and finally 
 the whole sky, clear and fervid. 
 
 One word more, take it as a legacy, 
 a keepsake from her. I asked her 
 for a statement of the ideal aim of life. 
 She paused a moment, then summed up 
 the mighty matter in one sentence, 
 clear and cosmic as a single rain-drop, 
 a very epitome of her own life : 
 
 "To Learn, To Teach, To Serve, 
 And To Enjoy! " 
 
 74