Class __X7-^-^
Book AA/J^O-
GopghtN^
COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.
BOSTON DAYS
LILIAN WHITING'S WORKS
The World Beautiful. First Series
The World Beautiful. Second Series
The World Beautiful. Third Series
After Her Death. The Story of a Summer
From Dreasiland Sent, and Other Poems
A Study of Elizaheth Barrett Browning
The Spiritual Significance
Kate Field : A Record
The World Beautiful in Books
Boston Days
BOSTON DAYS
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
By LILIAN WHITING
AUTHOR OF "THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL," FIRST, SECOND,
AND THIRD SERIES; "KATE FIELD: A RECORD;"
"A STUDY OF MRS. BROWNING;" "THE
SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE," ETC.
' Tell men what they knew before
Paint the prospect from the door^
BOSTON ' LITTLE, BROWN
AND COMPANY • MDCCCCII
THF USRAiW OF
CONGRESS,
Two CtlPici RcCKIVED
CL*R« «. XXa No.
U-^ ^- C
COPY 8.
Copi/rigTit, 1902,
By Little, Brown, and Company,
^W rights reserved
Published December, 1 902
UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TO
CHARLOTTE WHIPPLE
(Mrs. Edwin Percy Whipple)
WHOSE LIFE HAS BEEN ENSHRINED IN BOSTON'S
GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS, THIS RECOKD
OF ITS BEAUTIFUL DAYS IS
INSCRIBED WITH THE
DEVOTION OF
LILIAN WHITING
" The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair "
TO THE READER
|HE aim in this volume is simply to present
some transcripts of the remarkable life in
Boston during the nineteenth century, — the
latter years of which came within the personal observa-
tion and experience of the writer, and nearly all of
which is, or has been until recently, within the
memory of people yet living. It is not the design to
attempt any history of literature, or specific biographical
record, — but only to read backward, like the Chaldeans,
some of those " delicate omens traced in air," — to in-
terpret some of that mystic handwriting on the wall
which, traced in the invisible ink of spiritual record by
the great and good whose theatre of action was in this
city, yet reveals itself as in letters of light, to the vision
of sympathy and of reverence. It is the Boston whose
" hierarchy was based on education, public service, and
the importance of the ministry," — on culture, philo-
sophic thought, literary art, and the ethics of spirituality,
— which is studied in these pages. Boston was planted
in prayer, and nurtured by spiritual uplifting. Cotton
Mather, an ancestor of the writer of these pages, records
TO THE READER
ill his " Magnalia " : *" T is possible that our Lord Jesus
Christ carried some thousands of Reformers into the
Retirement of an American Desert on purpose that with
an opportunity granted unto many of His Faithful
Servants to enjoy the precious Liberty of their Ministry
. . . He might then give a specimen of many good
things which He would have His churches elsewhere
aspire and aim unto, and this being done He knows
not whether there be not all done that New England
was planted for."
Reverently may it be said that it doth not yet appear
what greatness may await the Boston of the future,
with her present wonderful activity in commercial and
industrial development ; in extension of her residence
regions by means of her splendid system of local transit ;
in the growing strength of her institutions, in the power
and influence of her citizens ; but in one quality must
the Boston of the Past and the Boston of the Future
forever be united in identity, — the quality that has made
her and will forevermore keep her to be the City of
Beautiful Ideals.
L. W.
The Brunswick,
Boston, August, 1902.
CONTENTS
I.
The City of Beautiful Ideals .... 3
11.
Concord, and Its Famous Authors . . 103
III.
The Golden Age of Genius 201
IV.
The Dawn of the Twentieth Century . 325
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Phillips Brooks Frontispiece
From a photograph by Dr. Samuel J. Miiter
Boston Common and the State House Page 3
Facsimile of a letter from John G. Whittier to
Edwin P. Whipple "63
Facsimile, " The Rainy Day," by Henry W. Longfellow " 83
The Old Manse, Concord "108
The Orchard House "140
Louisa M. Alcott "150
From a crayon by Stacy Tolman, now first reproduced
Facsimile of a letter from Henry W. Longfellow to
Edwin P. Whipple "203
Edwin P. Whipple "209
From an original painting
Facsimile of a letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes to
Mrs. Whipple "216
Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple "220
From a crayon drawing
Facsimile of a letter to Edwin P. Whipple from Ralph
Waldo Emerson and others " 230
Facsimile, " The Chambered Nautilus," by Oliver
Wendell Holmes "249
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Julia Ward Howe Page 268
From an early photograph
Facsimile, " Power reft of aspiration," by Julia Ward
Howe "273
Facsimile of a letter from Rev. Edward Everett Hale
to Edwin P. Whipple
Winifred Howells
From a painting by Helen M. Knowlton.
Trinity Rectory
Trinity Church
"Identity," a picture by Elihu Vedder for Aldrich's
poem
Sarah Holland Adams
280
311
341
424
437
441
From a photograph.
The facsimiles are from manuscripts in the possession of
Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple.
I
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS
Spirits, with whom the stars connive,
To work their will."
Every thought is public ;
Every nook is wide.
The gossips spread each whisper
And the gods from side to side.
Emerson.
^
-§
«
aq
BOSTON DAYS
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS
" Tliou slialt make thy house
The temple of a nation's vows."
|OSTON is, essentially, the City of Beautiful
Ideals, and the mot that it is a condition
and not a locality is not without its claim
to literal acceptance. It is a fact so remarkable as to
be unparalleled in the history of any nation that so
large a number of eminent persons should be born
within a period of hardly more than twenty years in
or near one city, all of whom should be drawn to it
by some law of spiritual magnetism, as the scene to
be identified with their work and life. Although Mr.
Alcott was born in Connecticut, Mr. Longfellow in
Maine, Mrs. Howe in New York, and a few others
of the group were born outside Boston, yet, prac-
tically, they are all Bostonians in the sense of sym-
pathy with the genius loci, and of their directive power
as great leaders of thought. Between 1799 and 1823
there appeared a wonderful group that included Alcott,
Emerson, Allston, Lydia Maria Child, Hawthorne, Eliza-
beth Peabody, Dr. Hedge, George Ripley, George
Bancroft, John Lothrop Motley, Eufus Choate, William
■j
BOSTON DAYS
Lloyd Garrison, Robert C. Winthrop, Longfellow, Whit-
tier, Prof. Benjamin Peirce, Margaret Fuller, James
Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips,
Thoreau, Lucy Stone, Charles Sumner, James Russell
Lowell, Edwin Percy Whipple, Julia Ward Howe,
James T. Fields, Mary A. Livermore, Abby Morton
Diaz, Edward Everett Hale, Francis Parkman, Thomas
Wentworth Higginson, and Ednah D. Cheney.
This group is a constellation of the Nineteenth cen-
tury whose illumination has not faded as one by one
they have nearly all passed on into the Silent Land.
The presence of Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs.
Diaz, Dr. Hale, Colonel Higginson, and Mrs. Cheney
still charms the hour and radiates its inspiration to
countless currents of life.
In that impressive creation of Mr, St. Gaudens,
the statue of "The Puritan," standing with a staff
held in one hand and a Bible under his arm, there
is typified the spirit in which Boston was founded.
The story of the Puritan capital is a veritable ro-
mance ; it is the story of the fire that came down
from Heaven to make itself the living coal on the
altar; of life always invested with a certain stateli-
ness as befitting a people of "quality and eminent
parts." From those days of 1630 when John Win-
throp wrote to his wife in England, " We are in
Paradise where we enjoy God and Jesus Christ; is
not this enough?" when that saintly young divine,
John Harvard, with his slender endowment of eight
hundred pounds and with the untold richness of his
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 5
endowment of faith and prayer, founded a college in
the wilderness ; from those days to these of the Twen-
tieth century, the story of Boston has not been less
wonderful than that of old when Moses led his people
into the Promised Land.
The coming of Cotton and Increase Mather and of
the Rev. John Cotton was an event of incalculably
far-reaching influence. Mr. Cotton was followed by
one of his most devoted parishioners, a woman whose
strong individuality impressed itself on the life of
the colony. This was Mistress Anne Hutchinson,
the Mary Livermore of her day. Governor Winthrop
characterized her as " a godly woman and of special
parts, who had lost her understanding by occasion of
her gi\ing herself wholly to reading and writing;
whereas, if she had attended to her household affairs
and such things as belong to women, and had not gone
out of her way and calling to meddle in such things
as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, she
had* kept her wits and might have improved them
usefully and honorably in the place God set her."
Mistress Hutchinson was as indomitable as Lucy
Stone or Mrs. Livermore, and she brought to bear a
strong and determining influence. She was essen-
tially a modern woman, three centuries in advance of
her time. She had the same wonderful power to
attract, to impress, to influence people and events
that is so peculiarly the gift of Mrs. Livermore.
Anne Hutchinson was a born mystic, a Transcenden-
talist, and a holder of a belief not unlike that now
BOSTON DAYS
springing up under many phases and names, and
everywhere recognized as the highest interpretation of
spirituality. She believed in the direct intercourse
between the individual and the Divine Spirit, which
the Puritan clergy held to be a sacrilege and a heresy.
They regarded the doctrine of " inner light " as a pecu-
liarly objectionable heresy, and when Mistress Hutch-
inson " claimed to have evolved a knowledge of the
Divine will from her inner consciousness" they de-
nounced it as blasphemy. She was a born social
leader, and as the only life of that day was the re-
ligious life, — there being no newspapers, no dances,
parties, theatres, concerts, or libraries, — nothing but
the Sabbath services, followed by the church meet-
ings and the Thursday lectures. Mistress Anne called
together her women friends (" females," in the quaint
phraseology of the day) and preached to them, giv-
ing them an enthusiastic version of the Rev. John
Cotton's latest sermon, with sundry original additions
of her own. She became the fashion, the craze, the
fad of her day. But the stern and narrow Puritan
spirit rejected her : has not the world always stoned
its prophets ? The home of Mistress Hutchinson was
on the site of the Old Corner Bookstore, and of
her personal power Mrs. Caroline H. Dall wrote : —
" Her weekly lectures appear to have fascinated those
who listened. She was richly endowed with wisdom and
grace. She exhibited great inward resources and a
saintly patience. The class of thinkers to which she
belonged recognized the profoundest spiritual truths.
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 7
She had a -wonderful memory, and no slight power of
abstract statement and generalization. At her meetings
there was perfect freedom of remark and question, — a
fascination in itself, for the dictum of the churches ad-
mitted neither. In her parlors objections might be
offered. The neighboring towns rang with her praises ;
the women who were so fortunate as to hear her reported
her sayings. Even John Winthrop said, ' She hath a
ready wit and a bold spirit.' "
The Eighteenth century was a very important and
determining period in Boston life. Benjamin Franklin
was born in January of 1 706, on Milk Street, his father's
home being on the site once occupied by the office of
the " Boston Post." Cotton Matlier, who had become a
minister of the Second Church in 1G84, died in 1728,
but his influence permeated the entire century, and it is,
indeed, in the air to-day. In this great divine were
united the names and the characteristics of the Mathers
and the Cottons. His father was Dr. Increase Mather,
pastor of the North Church, and, later. President of
Harvard. His mother was Maria Cotton, a daughter
of the Rev. John Cotton. Cottou Mather was born in
Boston in 1663, and, in the quaint phraseology of his
biography, " when he was half a year short of nineteen
he proceeded master of arts, and received his degree at
the hand of his father, who was then president." His
tomb at Copp's Hill is the most noted one in the
grounds, and the heavy slab of stone covering the vault
where lie the bodies of the Rev. Drs. Increase, Cotton, and
Samuel Mather bears simple inscriptions of names and
BOSTON DAYS
dates. During this century Peter Faneuil gave to the
city the hall now bearing his name ; the first newspaper
was founded ; and the settlement presented the appear-
ance of an active trading town. The cows were still
pastured on the Common ; but the social life held its
rigid traditions of etiquette, and the ladies went their
rounds in a chaise with one horse, attended by a colored
servant, and in the early evening, after tea, for all
Boston dined at midday, they walked on the Mall ; and
" those not disposed to the evening lecture " adjourned
to one another's houses. Great regard was paid to
what they termed "gentility." Their ideas of enter-
tainment are typified by a record in Judge Sewall's
diary, which runs : —
"I went to-day to look at my vault. It was an
awful but pleasing treat. Having said ' the Lord knows
who shall be brought hither next,' I came away."
Social rivalries were not unknown in these times.
That sturdy patriot, Samuel Adams, said of John
Hancock, whose display of wealth he indignantly de-
nounced ; " John Hancock appears in public in the
state and pageantry of an Oriental prince. He rides in
an elegant chariot attended by four servants in livery."
The Boston of Revolutionary days is so familiar in all
history that it may here be passed with little reference.
During those years the story of Boston was identical
with the story of the nation. It was a vital part of the
national progress and has become as familiar as the
alphabet. The local patriotism was strong and fervent ;
and at the close of the war there set in a new era of
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 9
progress whose trend became distinctively that of intel-
lectual and literary culture.
Meantime journalism developed rapidly; a railroad
was built from Boston to Worcester and another pro-
jected southward to run through Dorchester, which
brought out vigorous demonstrations of remonstrance.
The residents of Dorchester declared that a railroad
would be the ruin of business. Lucy Stone, when talk-
ing of the opposition to woman suffrage, used often to
relate with glee the indignant alarm felt by the people
at the prospect of a railroad. " The cattle and the
sheep grazing on the plains would be frightened to
death," they said, " and the milk would be ruined."
This curiously conservative element has always persisted
in Boston, from the time of that remonstrance against a
steam railway to that vigorous remonstrance in 1894
against granting a charter to Radcliffe College (which,
happily, did not prevent its being done) ; and remon-
strance meetings of women, protesting against political
duties, consume, apparently, more time and energy than
all the political duties they could undertake in a
lifetime.
The Nineteenth century opened as we have seen, with
the appearance of a remarkable galaxy of men and
women.
William Lloyd Garrison, who was destined to play so
potent a part in national progress, became conscious in
his earliest youth of the work to which he was divinely
commissioned, — that of freeing his country from that
" sum of all villanies," human slavery. The wealth, in-
10 BOSTON DAYS
fluence, and social prestige of his native city were arrayed
against him. Little did he consider it, for is not one
with God a majority? In an obscure room up many
flights of stairs this youth of nineteen set up the type of
his paper, '' The Liberator." He called meetings and
proclaimed his message. The story of those days when
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Lydia Maria Child and
the little band of brave reformers who gathered around
them, held their meetings in Boston, — entering by back
doors, leaving by circuitous routes, and literally taking
their lives in their hands, — is a subject for the tragic
muse.
Among the remarkable group who were destined to
contribute so largely to the formative influences of their
century, the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop was a distin-
guished figure, and one who illustrated a marked type
of New England life. There have been two distinctive
and contrasting types of life here, each of which has
contributed to the fruition of latter-day culture. The
one, that of material poverty, transfigured by qualities of
intellect and spirit ; the other, that of inherited wealth
and its attendant refinement of external environment.
The majority of men whose names are the glory of New
England have belonged to the former. Dr. Edward
Everett Hale says that his boyhood belonged to the
time when a gentleman could do anything, and there
was no task he might not ennoble. Emerson cut wood
during his college life to assist his progress. Plain
living and high thinking were a badge of culture.
Again, there were those who were born in the purple.
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 11
sons of inherited wealth, and among these were Wendell
Phillips and Robert C. Winthrop. Independent of any
necessity of earning a living, Mr. Winthrop had all his
time to devote to the culture of his scholarly tastes.
He belonged to a family whose name was one of the
illustrious group of Bradford, Endicott, Winslow, and
Winthrop. His ancestry includes many eminent names.
Robert Charles Winthrop was born in Boston on
May 12, 1800, and graduated from Harvard in the
famous class of '29. The achievements of his life were
purely those of statesmanship, which differs very widely
from politics ; and as a statesman it is perhaps criti-
cally true that he barely missed greatness, or, at least,
the greatness that impresses itself as permanent fame.
Perhaps his culture w^as a trifle too symmetrical to force
itself in any one direction sufficiently to act immediately
upon affairs. All the latter years of his life he was
easily the first citizen of Massachusetts. Wealth,
honors, troops of friends, surrounded him. Yet Clay,
Webster, and Sumner have fame more purely national.
Mr. Winthrop was all his life a conservative, — with
faultless taste, with intellectual power, with eloquence
and elegance of address, with great charm of manner ;
but the one grain of magnetism — or of madness per-
haps — that is required for greatness was lacking in his
symmetrical character. Whatever the impediments,
however, in his nature and temperament, to the bringing
a decisive influence to bear on the country at large, Mr.
Winthrop was an ideal private citizen. His life was
marked by scholarly pursuits in classic study, in historic
12 BOSTON DAYS
research, and in literary enjoyment and appreciation ;
by a fine religious sense, by moral dignity, and by social
grace. His home was a centre of exquisite courtesy
and gracious hospitality. On Washington's birthday,
each year, it was his custom to receive every person,
man, woman, or child, who cared to come to his house.
It was an occasion so unique as to live forever in the
social history of Boston. The manner of Mr. Winthrop
suggested the French noblesse. A nobleman of the Fau-
bourg St. Germain might have received all Paris as Mr,
Winthrop did all who in his own city came to greet him.
He had two homes, — a town house in Marlborough
Street and a beautiful estate in Brookline. They are
both historic homes, in which are gathered associations
from the days of John Winthrop, his ancestor, and they
abound in books, many of rare editions and exceptional
copies, and in art and souvenirs of foreign travel.
Mr. Winthrop was a lifelong communicant of Trinity
Church, and it was largely due to his influence that
Phillips Brooks, in 1869, accepted the call to Boston.
Between the rector and his distinguished parishioner
there was a devoted friendship ; and on the approach of
the ceremonial of the consecration of Dr. Brooks to the
Episcopate, he wrote to Mr. Winthrop saying : " Your
presence will be the crowning token of the kindness and
Christian friendship which you have given me all these
years." Although some thirty yeaj-s the senior of Dr.
Brooks, Mr. Winthrop outlived his friend and rector.
Nothing more typically represents the Boston of
the Nineteenth century than the Athenaeum Library.
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 13
Here the portraits of distinguished Bostonians look
down from the walls, and their busts adorn long rows
of pedestals on three sides of the upper reading room,
with its book-lined alcoves. The very atmosphere holds
the tradition and remembrance of the great and good,
whose special resort it has always been. Henry James
has laughed at the enthusiasm of the early Bostonians
over the attenuated outlines of Flaxman, who first
represented foreign art to this sesthetic circle ; and the
visitor of to-day may smile to recall the serious devo-
tion with which Margaret Fuller sat before the few
casts and the paintings of Allston, to record her
*' Impressions."
Evidently, the lovers of Art made up in enthusiasm
for what they lacked in pictorial subjects, for we find
Mary Peabody (later Mrs. Horace Mann) writing
to her sister Sophia (Mrs. Hawthorne) as follows : —
June 19, 1833.
I went to Dr. Channing's yesterday afternoon and
carried him your drawings, with which he was so en-
chanted that I left them for him to look at again. He
gathered himself up in a little striped cloak, and all
radiant with that soul of his, said with his most divine
inflection, " this is a great and noble undertaking and
will do much for us here." And then he rolled his eye-
brows upon me in that majestic way of his, which, when
it melts into a loveliness, as it sometimes does, soon takes
captivity captive. In short, he was quite in an extasy
with you. He showed me all the new books he had just
received from England, which he thought a great imposi-
tion, they being big books. Edward came in, and they
14 BOSTON DAYS
greeted afifectionately. After a long survey he exclaimed,
"why, Edward, you look gross — take care of the
intellect ! " . . .
The doctor, in the simplicity of his heart, never thinks
of feelings, only of things, as Plato would say.
Your affectionate sister,
Mary.
Dr. Chanuiug was the great preacher of that day,
and Boston society was largely of the Unitarian, or the
Orthodox Congregational Faith. A little later Theo-
dore Parker's great work was to come, and still in the
undiscerned future lay the marvellous influence and
power of Phillips Brooks. INlusic was already a factor
in social life, and occasionally a Beethoven symphony
was rendered. Modern languages were cultivated, and
with the " Conversation Classes " of Margaret Fuller,
and the influence of Dr. Hedge and James Freeman
Clarke, came a strong impulse toward German litera-
ture. Margaret Fuller translated Goethe's " Conver-
sations with Eckermann," and Elizabeth Peabody, in
her bookstore, imported works of German philosophy.
" In fact," says Mrs. Howe, recalling those days,
" Boston had a reputation for pedantry that it did not
desire nor deserve." There was, according to Mrs.
Howe's recollections, " a certain reserve which charac-
terized the hospitalities and general intercourse of that
day. In the Boston of that time," she continued,
" the gentlemen of business did not go far from the
city in the summer, and there were a number of very
beautiful countrv seats in the neighborhood. Strangers
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 15
coming to the city with proper introductions were
invited to visit families at their country residences, on
which occasions they were generally entertained with
fruit and wine, the afternoon tea being then undreamed
of."
Mr. Allston was the celebrated painter in that period.
His charm of presence not less than his genius drew
around him a beautiful circle in which Elizabeth Peabody
and Franklin Dana were among his nearest friends, and
of an exhibition of his work, Miss Peabody wrote : —
" These pictures of Allston's, in combination, form a
great whole, which has a peculiar interest as a ivhole.
Ahnost all communication of one miud with others is
partial. You are made aware of different departments at
different times. But here, at one glance, you take in
the whole of a great mind, and are rendered silent in
reverence."
The founding of the Lowell Institute, whose lecture
courses were initiated by Edward Everett, on the last
day of 1839, and whose work has from that date to
the present been one to reveal the most important
discoveries in physics, the results of the deepest re-
search into history, archseology, or the most advanced
thought in art, literature, and philosophy, — was an
epoch-making event. From this platform have been
heard Dr. Silliman, Asa Gray, Agassiz, Cornelius
Conway Felton, Dr. Holmes, Lowell, George William
Curtis, Edwin Percy Whipple, Professor Benjamin
Peirce, Charles Eliofc Norton, Robert C. Winthrop,
Edward Everett Hale, William Dean Howells, Prof,
16 BOSTON DAYS
John Tyiidall, Dr. Brown-S^quard, Proctor the as-
tronomer, Charles Francis Adams, Frank B. Sanborn,
Bayard Taylor, William James, p^re et fils. General Di
Cesnola, James Freeman Clarke, Alfred Russel Wallace,
and, in later years, Professor Lauciani, Henry A. Clapp,
John Fiske, Dr. Henry Drummond, Protap Chunder Mo-
zoomdar. Prof. William T. Sedgwick, Percival Lowell,
Rev. Dr. E. Winchester Donald, Prof. Arlo Bates,
Felix Adler, Professor Darwin (the son of Charles
Darwin), and many others of world-wide fame.
Of the early decades Dr. Hale has said : —
" Here was a little community, even quaint in some of
its customs, sure of itself, and confident in its future.
Generally speaking, the men and women who lived in it
were of the old Puritan stock. This means that they
lived to the glory of God, with the definite public spirit
which belongs to such life. They had, therefore, absolute
confidence that God's kingdom was to come, and they saw
no reason why it should not come soon. As a direct result
of this belief and of the cosmopolitan habit which comes
to people who send their ships all over the world, the
leaders of this little community attempted everything on
a generous scale. If they made a school for the blind,
they made it for all the blind people in Massachusetts.
They expected to succeed. They always had succeeded.
Why should they not succeed ? If, then, they opened a
'House of Reformation,' they really supposed that they
should reform the boys and girls who were sent to it. . . .
There was not an ' ism ' but had its shrine, nor a cause
but had its prophet. . . . The town was so small that
practically everybody knew everybody. ' A town,' as a
bright man used to say, ' where you could go anywhere in
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 17
ten miuutes.' Lowell could talk with Wendell Phillips,
or applaud him when he spoke. He could go into Garri-
son's printing-office with a communication. He could
discuss metaphysics or ethics with Brownson, and hear
a Latter-Day Church preacher on Sunday. He could
listen while Miller, the prophet of the day, explained
from Rollin's History and the Book of Daniel that the
world would come to an end on the twenty-first of March,
1842; — could lounge into the ' Corner Bookstore,' where
James T. Fields would show him the new Tennyson, or
where the Mutual Admiration Society would leave an
epigram or two behind; or hear Everett or Holmes
or Parsons or Webster read poem or lecture at the
'Odeon.' He could discuss with a partner in a dance
the moral significance of the Fifth Symphony of Bee-
thoven in comparison with the lessons of the Second
or the Seventh. Another partner in the next quadrille
would reconcile for him the conflict of free will and fore-
knowledge. At Miss Peabody's foreign bookstore he
could take out for a week Strauss's ' Leben Jesu,' if he
had not the shekels for its purchase, as probably he had
not. Or, under the same hospitable roof, he could in the
evening hear Hawthorne tell the story of Parson Moody's
veil, or discuss the origin of the Myth of Ceres with
Margaret Fuller. Or when he danced 'the pastorale'
at Judge Jackson's, was he renewing the memories of an
Aryan tradition, or did the figure suggest, more likely,
the social arrangements of the followers of Hermann ?
Mr. Emerson lectured for him ; Allston's pictures were
hung in galleries for him; Mr. Tudor imported ice for
him ; Fanny Elssler danced for him ; and Braham sang
for him. The world worked for him — or labored for him.
And he entered into the labors of all sorts and conditions
of men. . . .
BOSTON DAYS
" The truth was that literature was not yet a profession.
The men who wrote for the ' North American ' were earn-
ing their bread and butter, their sheets, blankets, fuel,
broadcloth, shingles, and slates in other enterprises.
Emerson was an exception; and perhaps the impression
as to his being crazy was helped by the observation that
these ' things which perish in the using ' came to him in
the uncanny and unusual channel of literary workmanship.
Even Emerson printed in the ' North American Review '
lectures which had been delivered elsewhere. He told me
in 1874, after he had returned from England, that he had
then never received a dollar from the sale of any of his
own published works. He said he owned a great many
copies of his own books, but that these were all the
returns which he had received from his publishers."
In the decade of 1840-50 the Lowell Institute
courses became an important factor in Boston life.
Webster, Everett, Choate, Channing, Sumner, Emer-
son, Holmes, and Winthrop lectured on its platform. In
1845 Thomas Starr King removed to Boston, where, as
a friend said, " his rare genius, insight, and marvellous
power of expression gave him a welcome everywhere."
It was in 1847 that John Amory Lowell invited the
noted Agassiz to come over from Switzerland to deliver
a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute. Har-
vard University invited the great naturalist to accept a
chair, which he j&lled with a power that radiated far
beyond Cambridge and Boston, leaving its impress on
the world. Most fortunate was Professor Agassiz in
his marriage to Miss Elizabeth Gary of Milton, a lady
of beautiful and gracious presence who entered into his
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 19
scientific life with the enthusiasm of a scholar and gave
to him ideal companionship of thought as well as of
affection. Together Professor and Mrs. Agassiz made
a memorable ti'ip to the Andes, where over a period
of several months he made important research. Mrs.
Agassiz assisted him in recording the results of his
observations. The first meeting of Longfellow and
Agassiz is noted in a line of the poet's diary under
the date of Jan. 9, 184/. "In the evening," writes Mr.
Longfellow, " there was a reunion at Felton's to meet
Mr. Agassiz, the Swiss geologist and naturalist, a pleas-
ant, voluble man, with a beaming face." Some months
later Mr. Longfellow gives another little glimpse of
Agassiz and the nearer group of friends in this entry
in his diary : —
" Agassiz, Felton, and Sumner to dinner. Agassiz is
very pleasant, affable, simple. We all drove over to
South Boston to take tea with Mrs. Howe."
There was leisure for friendship in all those years,
and when the fiftieth birthday of Agassiz came (May 28,
1857), it was celebrated by a dinner given him at Par-
ker's by fourteen of his nearer friends, Mr. Longfellow
presiding. Dr. Holmes and Lowell both read poems
written for the occasion and that of Longfellow (en-
titled "The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz") will be
found in his poetical works. It was about 1859 that
the Agassiz Museum at Harvard was founded. A
foreign visitor in Boston about this time, writing of
the circle of friends met at Mr. Longfellow's, thus
refers to the great Swiss naturalist : —
20 BOSTON DAYS
" And often, too, comes Agassiz, with his gentle and
genial spirit, his childlike devotion to science, and — or
he would not be a true son of his adopted country — his
eager interest in the politics of the day. . . . Between
the Poet and the Naturalist there exists a very warm
friendship, and among other poetical tributes, Mr. Long-
fellow has achieved the feat — for so it must seem to us,
with our rigid English tongues — of addressing to his
friend, in the October number of the 'Atlantic Monthly,'
a gay and graceful chanson in his native language."
On the departure of Professor Agassiz for Brazil
(ill 1865) Dr. Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, and other
friends gave him a farewell dinner, at which Dr. Holmes
read a humorous poem whose opening lines run : —
" How the mountains talk together,
Looking out upon the weather,
When they heard our friend had planned his
Little trip among the Andes !
How they '11 bare their snowy scalps
To the climber of the Alps
When the cry goes through their passes,
' Here now comes the great Agassiz I ' "
In later years, when the Emperor Dom Pedro of
Brazil visited Boston, he was asked to choose the guests
at a dinner to be given in his honor, and he named
Agassiz, Holmes, Emerson, and Lowell. Dr. Hale has
noted that with the arrival of Agassiz in America there
was ended the poor habit of studying nature through
the eyes of other observers.
Agassiz died in 1873, and in the beautiful commemo-
rative ode written for him by Lowell the lines occur :
" His look, wherever its good-fortune fell,
Doubled the feast without a miracle."
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 21
Transcendentalism was a spiritual impulse greatly
stimulated by the German study and reading that took
such hold on Margaret Fuller, James Freeman Clarke,
Frederic Henry Hedge, George Ripley, Elizabeth
Peabody and others iu the decade of 1830-40. In the
latter year " The Dial " was started ; and an autograph
letter from Emerson to Elizabeth Peabody, without
date, but necessarily written between 1840 and 1843
(as " The Dial " only lived three years), is as follows :
" Can Miss Peabody oblige ' The Dial ' (just ready for
extreme unction) so far as to send the first of these two
proofs directly to the printers? On page 480 occurs the
phrase, ' a dead leveller.' Is the phrase a considered
one ? I don't like the sound of it very well, but it may
be right."
Channing's influence was a potent one, reaching from
the early years of the century ; Theodore Parker also
began to be felt as a great power about 1840 ; he was
almost the Savonarola of his day. Thoreau and
Bronson Alcott were unique personalities and a law
unto themselves. "The acorn-eating Alcott," wrote
Emerson of him to Carlyle, yet no one ever more fully
appreciated another than did Emerson his Socratic
neighbor. About 1840 the famous " Brook Farm "
experiment was inaugurated, and its constitution stated
its aim at an effort " to promote more effectually the
great objects of human culture," and "to establish the
external relations of life on a basis of wisdom and
purity."
22 BOSTON DAYS
In 1841 Hawthorne wrote from Brook Farm to a
friend : —
"I have milked a cow. The herd has rebelled against
the usurpation of Miss Fuller's heifer, and whenever they
are turned out of the barn she is compelled to take refuge
with me. She is not an amiable cow, but has an intelligent
face and a reflective cast of character."
Lowell, and others of the intellectual cult of that
period, were extremely simple in outward life. It is
authentically recorded that Mrs. Hawthorne having
bought a broom carried it home in her hand walking
across the Common, and that Julia Ward Howe, escorted
by Motley, walked home from a ball. Mrs. Edwin P.
Whipple tells a pretty story of a visit of herself and her
husband to the Hawthornes in the red house at Lenox,
when Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. Whipple went out in
the garden and picked currants for tea ; Mrs. Haw-
thorne made biscuit, and JSIrs. Whipple laid the
table. But were not currants and biscuit and tea a
feast for the gods when the Hawthornes and the
Whipples sat down to this nectar and ambrosia ?
The poet Longfellow had married the daughter of a
wealthy house, — Miss Frances Appleton, who brought
to the young poet the prestige of wealth and caste,
while his widening horizon gave to her in after years
the immortality of a poet's love. Mrs. Longfellow was
a woman of great personal charm, of fine culture, and
the old '^ Craigie House " became one of the most noted
of literary homes.
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 23
The life of letters and art, of transcendeutal philo-
sophy and speculative thought, and of reform had each
its distinctive currents, yet largely meeting and occa-
sionally identical each with the other.
The Boston literati really belong to the nation,
and the interest of their lives is in no sense local.
The chronology of literary Boston extends even from
the day of Anne Bradstreet to that of the present,
with innumerable shadings and breaks and interrela-
tions. The antislavery excitement and the civil war
came in with a force that can hardly be dreamed
of in reading the literary and social history of those
times ; it requires the presence and voice of some of
those who were actors in the drama to convey any
adequate idea of the way society was divided against
itself in ardent espousal of wrong as well as right. In
the light of the present day it seems incredible to assert
that Wendell Phillips was fairly ostracized by polite
society in Boston for his espousal of antislavery ; that
Garrison was dragged by a rope through the streets, —
where now his statue, lifesize, sits enthroned, — and
that Lydia Maria Child was denied the entree to the
Athenseum Library because she had published her book
entitled " An Appeal for that Class of Americans called
Africans." Equally absurd does it seem to learn that
Mrs. Howe took her life in her hands, socially speaking,
when she first attended a " Woman's Rights " — lately
woman suffrage — convention. She herself relates the
incident — which was to have such a controlling effect
on general progress — with infinite humor. Reports
24 BOSTON DAYS
of the absurdity and audacity of the "woman's rights"
clique pervaded the town and challenged Mrs. Howe's
keen sense of justice. So she fared forth to investigate
for herself, although more than predisposed to believe
in the absurdity. She went, she saw, and she was
conquered, and convinced as well, by the sweet voice,
the radiant presence, and the invincible logic of Lucy
Stone, and she went out to take up her new and
greater life of conquering larger territory for the reform
and status of women. Yet before Lucy Stone initiated
the " movement '' for the larger life of women, Margaret
Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody were living it, and realiz-
ing in outward experience the higher outlook of intel-
lectual freedom. Many varieties of progress contribute
to social advancement.
We find Sophia Peabody writing to her sister
Elizabeth a typical record of the quality of life in those
days in the following : —
" I went to my hammock with Xenophon. Socrates
was divinest, after Jesus Christ, I think. He lived up
to his thought."
With such themes as these life concerned itself
Mr. Frothingham regards the publication of Emer-
son's "Nature" in 1836 as the entering wedge of the
transcendental movement. The movement might, in-
deed, have well been initiated by that wonderful insight
which the Seer of Concord thus expresses : " We are
escorted on every hand through life by spiritual agents,
and a beneficent purpose lies in wait for us. " Two years
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 25
later Emerson deepened the impression made by his
" Nature " by his famous address before the Divinity
School of Cambridge, — an address that provoked an
attack from Prof. Andrews Norton (the father of
Charles Eliot Norton), who saw in it " the latest form
of inlidelity." In the mean time, Emerson's lectures
grew more frequent, and his " Spiritual Laws," " Com-
pensation," " Circles," and " Transcendentalism " were
delivered before audiences who regarded these dis-
courses as vital messages. In the latter lecture Emer-
son said : —
" The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of
spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracles, in the per- a
petual openness of the human mind to new influx of ^
light and power ; he believes in inspiration and ecstasy.
He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered (L^
to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applica-
tions to the state of man, without the admission of any-
thing unspiritual, that is, anything positive, dogmatic,
personal."
When, in " The Over-soul," Emerson told his hearers
that " The soul looketh steadily forward, creating a
world before her, leaving worlds behind her," and that
" the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is
clothed," these revelations of the true nature of life
formed the exclusive topic of conversation for many
days.
All this faith and fervor and mysticism that were in
the air demanded a channel of expression beyond that
of the pulpit and the platform ; and so " The Dial " came
26 BOSTON DAYS
into existence, a quarterly magazine that had less than
four years' tenure of life, issuing only some fifteen
numbers, and which yet left an indelible impress on
the progress of thought. The special priest and
priestess of these Eleusinian mysteries — Emerson and
Margaret Fuller — were its editors, and their corps of
fellow-conspirators, as Prof. Andrews Norton regarded
them, — the apostles of " the latest form of infidelity,"
— included Elizabeth Peabody, James Freeman Clarke,
George Ripley, William Henry Channing, Theodore
Parker, Christopher P. Cranch, and others.
Mr. Cranch was an artist and poet ; a man of singular
purity and beauty of life and clearness of spiritual
vision. One poem of his should be held in living
memory, of which the opening stanza runs : —
" We are spirits, clad in veils ;
Man by man was never seen ;
All our deep communion fails
To remove the shadowy screen."
The poems of Emerson were from time to time
appearing in " The Dial," — largely received with the
unpenetrating awe with which the average tourist reads
an Assyrian inscription, — poems with such lines as
these : —
" A spell is laid on sod and stone ;
Night and Day were tampered with,
Every quality and pith
Surcharged and sultry with a power
That works its will on age and hour."
Or again : —
J
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 27
"The living Heaven thy prayers respect,
House at once and architect,
Quarrying man's rejected hours,
Builds therewith eternal towers ;
Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days.
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boU."
Emerson was oflfering the message that
" There is no great and no small
To the Soul that knoweth all ; "
or he was giving the wise counsel in the " Sursum
Corda": —
" Seek not the spirit if it hide
Inexorable to thy zeal;
Trembler, do not whine and chide;
Art thou not also real ? "
Or he enjoined on his followers : —
" Eat thou the bread which men refuse,
Flee from the goods which from thee flee ;
Seek nothing, — Fortune seeketh thee.
Nor mount, nor dive ; all good things keep
The midway of the eternal deep."
Everywhere he taught the supremacy of the soul ;
that facts and events were " fluid " to this supreme
potency. He pictured the flowing events of life, —
the circumstance and condition as the mere transient
scenery through which the soul is making her pilgrimage.
" The soul is ceaselessly joyful," he affirmed, and herein
28 BOSTON DAYS
is one of the greatest of insights, which, if truly realized
and merged into experience, makes the realization an
absolute epoch in life.
Emerson, whom Dr. Holmes aptly called " the Buddha
of the West," continued his lectures ; and of one of these
lectures we find Lowell humorously saying : —
" Emerson's oration was more disjointed even than
usual. It began nowhere and ended everywhere; and
yet, as always with that divine man, it left you feeling
that something beautiful had passed that way, something
more beautiful than anything else, like the rising and set-
ting of stars. . . . He boggled, he lost his place, he had
to put on his glasses ; but it was as if a creature from
some fairer world had lost his way in our fogs, and it
was our fault and not his. It was chaotic, but it was all
such stuff as stars are made of, and you could not help
feeling that if you waited awhile all that was nebulous
would be hurled into planets, and would assume the
mathematical gravity of system."
The social life was ideally full and rich in constant
intercourse, and a little note from Emerson to Sophia
Peabody is again indicative of its trend : —
, . . "Our common friend, Mr. Alcott, the prince of
conversers, lives little more than a mile from our house,
and we will call in his aid, as we often do, to make
amends for our deficiency, when you come. Will you say
to your sister Elizabeth that I received her kind letter
relating to certain high matters, which I have not yet
been in the vein to answer, — indeed, I dreamed that she
knows all my answer to that question, — has it alreadj^ in
her rich suggestion, and only waits for mine to see how
they will tally."
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 29
Elizabeth Peabody, who is visiting Mr, Emerson, thus
writes to her sister Sophia : —
Concord, Mass, June 23, 1839.
Here I am on the Mount of Transfiguration, but very
muctf in the condition of the disciples when they were
prostrate in the dust. ... I went to Allston's on Tues-
day evening. He was in delightful spirits, but soft as a
summer evening. ... I carried to him a volume of
"Twice Told Tales" to exchange for mine. He said be
thirsted for imaginative writing, and all the family have
read the book with great delight. I am really provoked
that I did not bring " The Token " with me, so as to have
"The Mermaid" and "The Haunted Mind" to read to
people. I was hardly seated here, after tea yesterdny,
before Mr. Emerson asked me what I had to say of
Hawthorne, and told me that Mr. Bancroft said he was
the most efficient and best of the Custom House ofticers.
Mr. Emerson seemed all congenial about him, but has
not yet read his writings. He is in a delightful state of
mind ; not yet rested from last winter's undue labors,
but keenly industrious. He has uttered no heresies about
Mr. Allston, but only beautiful things, — dwelling, how-
ever, on his highest merits least. He says Jones Very
forbids all correcting of his verses ; but nevertheless he
[Emerson] selects and combines with sovereign will, " and
shall," he says, " make out quite a little gem of a volume."
" But," says he, " Hawthorne says Very is always vain.
I find I cannot forget that dictum which you repeated ;
but it is continually confirmed by himself, amidst all his
sublimities." And then he repeated some of Very's
speeches and told how he dealt with him. Mr. Emerson
is very luminous, and wiser than ever. Oh, he is beauti-
ful, and good, and great !
30 BOSTON DAYS
We find Hawthorne writing to Sophia Peabody, his
fiancde : —
6 o'clock, P.M.
" What a wonderful vision that is, — the dream angel.
I do esteem it almost a miracle that your pencil should
unconsciously have produced it ; it is as much an appari-
tion of an ethereal being as if the heavenly face and form
had been shadowed forth in the air, instead of upon
paper. It seems to me that it is our guardian angel, who
kneels at the footstool of God, and is pointing to us upon
earth, and asking earthly and heavenly blessings for us, —
entreating that we may not much longer be divided, that
we may sit by our own fireside."
' ' Thought is the wages
For which I sell days."
The period known as Transcendentalism in New
England has been alike the subject of mystery, ridicule,
admiration, and serious study. Perhaps it has never
been more perfectly defined than by Mrs. Caroline H.
Dall, who says that it is an arc, one end of which was
held by Anne Hutchinson and the other by Margaret
Fuller.
The arc might, however, be still more widely extended
in its true spiritual inclusiveness if one contemplates it
in the light of that deeper realization expressed by the
poet, that, —
"... Through the ages, one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the progress of the
suns."
Life is but another name for spiritual evolu-
tion. Every process and achievement arc but steps
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 31
in the vast and sublime work of the liberation of the
spirit.
The special period in Boston, however, designated by
Transcendentalism lies easily between the two decades of
1830-50, during which time Margaret Fuller held her
" Conversation Classes," Mr. Ripley and his associates
luxuriated at Brook Farm, and Mr. Alcott amazed the
educational world by the original methods in his school
whose curious processes were recorded by Elizabeth
Peabody.
Dr. Bartol was eleven years the junior of George
Ripley, but he was associated with him as one of the
original members of the Transcendental Club, whose
initial meeting was held (in September of 1836) in
Mr. Ripley's house. There were present Emerson,
Alcott, Dr. Channing, Dr. Hedge, James Freeman
Clarke, Orestes A. Brownson, and Convers Francis, a
brother of Lydia Maria Child. A year later Margaret
Fuller, Theodore Parker, and Elizabeth Peabody were
added to the numbers. Theology, revelation, and in-
spiration were the chief themes that fascinated their
meditations. " The conversation turned on a few central
ideas," said one of the habitues, — " Law, Truth, Indi-
viduality, and the Personality of God." The problems
of civilization engaged the attention of Mr. Ripley and
Dr. Channing very closely, and elicited " great power of
thought and richness and eloquence " in their discus-
sion, — an eloquence which Theodore Parker declared
" would equal any of the beautiful dialogues of Plato."
George Ripley — born in Greenfield, Mass., in 1802 —
32 BOSTON DAYS
was one of the remarkable men of the preceding century.
Graduating from Harvard at the age of twenty-one, he
soon became the pastor of an Unitarian society in
Boston. At this time Dr. Channing was preaching in
Federal Street, F. W. P. Greenwood at King's Chapel,
Francis Parkman tlie elder, in Hanover Street, John
Pierrepont in HoUis Street, and Charles Lowell, the
father of the poet, was the pastor of the old West
Church in Lynde Street.
It was as the original founder of the community
known as Brook Farm that Mr. Ripley has been chiefly
remembered, although this episode in his career is not
entitled to pre-eminence over his work as a literary
man and a preacher. Social reform was in the air in
1840 as prominently as is now the labor question, —
each movement having for its basis a desire for the
improvement of humanity.
In the air, too, was one magic name, — a name to con-
jure with, for Margaret Fuller was not so much merely
or even mostly the literary woman, as she was a great
force in life. It has been asserted that she was not
only the greatest woman of letters in America, but the
only one who ever produced work of any consequence.
This extravagant statement has led not unnaturally to
contradiction equally extravagant by those who seem to
possess no true recognition of her real greatness. A
close student of profound, original power, of a wide and
exquisite culture, a fully trained and philosophic mind,
and a gift that can perhaps best be described as divina-
tion, — in these Margaret Fuller was supreme. In her
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 33
writings there is the quality of greatness, there is a
depth of spiritual insight, there is a high order of
thought, for which, indeed, too high appreciation can
hardly be claimed. Yet on the other hand she lacked
form, lacked artistic expression, the records she has left
are meagre in quantity, and indeed the true view of
Margaret Fuller is perhaps that she was one of the
greatest and the most exalted spirits ever sent into this
world, whose brief life here, in a constant conflict with
conditions, did not give her time or opportunity for the
development of her essential self. All her aims and
hopes transcended the sphere of ordinary life. Her
literary work, too, is the work of a woman whose life
up to the age of thirty was almost entirely occupied in
teaching and who died at forty. Her greatest literary
achievement, " History of Italy," was lost in the ship-
wreck which swallowed up her life and that of her
husband and child.
Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridge on May 23,
1810, and died in the shipwreck off" Fire Island, New
York, July 19, 1850. She was a precocious child,
reading Latin at six, and familiar from her nursery days
with the great literature of the world. Her life as a
teacher was full of arduous care. She sui)ported her
invalid mother, sent two of her brothers through college,
and domestic life and cares weighed heavily on her,
yet all this time her student life surpassed an acquire-
ment of that of almost any modern girl at college with
no care or claim upon her save that of study alone.
She was thirty-five years of age when she went
8
34 BOSTON DAYS
abroad. A year later she became the wife of the
Marquis d'Ossoli. In 1847 her son Angelo Eugene was
born, and three years later her life on earth, with all its
historic and tragic story, was over. Thus it will be seen
how little of that literary leisure, that calm margin of
creative thought, fell to her lot. The only wonder is
that she left any literary work at all, and, as she her-
self said, the pen in her hand was a non-conductor.
Margaret Fuller was indeed a muse, a sibyl, an impro-
visatrice, rather than a literary woman in the restricted
sense of producing literature. She was a great force,
an elemental power in life. She was the diviner of
mental states and the inspirer of nobler aims. " All the
good I have ever done," she once said, " has been by
calling on every nature for its highest." In this, the
calling on every nature for its highest, lay the secret,
too, of the potent influence of Phillips Brooks. That
was his gift. He recognized the ideal in every man, and
to that he appealed.
James Freeman Clarke has said of Margaret ; —
" She was indeed the friend. This was her vocation.
She bore at her girdle a golden key to unlock all caskets
of confidence. Into whatever home she entered she
brought a benediction of truth, justice, tolerance, and
honor, and to every one who sought her to confer or seek
counsel she spoke the needed word of benignant wisdom."
Her published works are comprised in five volumes :
" Summer on the Lakes," " Woman in the Nineteenth
Century," a volume of literary reviews entitled " Art,
Literature, and the Drama," and two volumes of miscel-
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 35
laneous papers, " Life Without and Within," and " At
Home and Abroad." But it is indeed more than a
question as to whether she can be truly recognized as a
writer alone until the reader comes into a certain sym-
pathetic comprehension of her very remarkable per-
sonality, which was truly an embodiment of the rarest
genius. In the stimulating atmosphere of Cambridge,
Margaret Fuller grew into womanhood. Her father,
himself a university man, encouraged her precocious
intellect. She was taught the Latin and English gram-
mar at the same time, and reading Latin at six was
absorbed in Shakspeare at the age of eight, and about
the same time Cervantes, Coleridge, and Moli^re fasci-
nated her. Before she was twenty she was giving daily
lessons in three languages, steeping herself in German
philosophy, in ethics, in history. The comparatively
small amount of literary work that she has left makes
this form of expression a merely incidental one in her life.
In one quality it is possible that absolute literary pre-
eminence may be affirmed of her, that of profundity.
She drew from the deepest wells of thought, and this
stamped her work with an impressiveness that contrasts
vividly with that which is the mere product of native
facility conjoined with literary tastes and scholarly
acquirement. She had the power by some subtle
alchemy to transmute any truth into a thought crystal
worthy to be held as a law. Her ideals, her tempera-
ment, and her circumstances kept up a continued con-
flict among themselves. Good health, too, which is a
very rational factor in life, was unknown to her ; but
36 BOSTON DAYS
lier sincerity, her magnanimity, her truth, her exaltation
of spirit, Iier true humility, — in short, her nobility of
soul never faltered. Her life was greater than her
work.
Mrs. Browning, meeting her in Florence, said in a
letter to Miss Mitford, —
"A very interesting person is Madame d'Ossoli, far
better than her writings, — thoughtful, spiritual in her
habitual mood of mind ; not only exalted but exaltee in
her opinions, and yet calm in manner."
Again, Mrs. Browning said of Madame d'Ossoli after
her death : —
" She was a most interesting woman to me, though I did
not sympathize with a large portion of her opinions. Her
written works are just naught. She said herself they were
sketches thrown out in haste, and that the sole produc-
tion of hers which was likely to represent her at all would
be the ' History of the Italian Revolution.' In fact, her
reputation such as it was in America seemed to stand
mainly on her conversation and oral lectures. If I
wished any one to do her justice I should say, as I have
indeed said, ' never read what she has written.' The
letters, however, are individual and full, I should fancy,
of that magnetic personal influence which was so strong
with her. I felt drawn in toward her during our short
intercourse ; I loved her, and the circumstances of her
death shock me to the very roots of my heart."
Madame d'Ossoli passed her last evening in Italy with
the Brownings before sailing on that voyage whose end
lay in the unseen realm.
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 37
The friendships of Margaret Fuller were the most
potent experiences in her life and these were very largely
the channels of her spiritual activity. James Freeman
Clarke says of her genius for friendship : —
" The insight which Margaret displayed in finding her
friends, the magnetism by which she drew them toward
herself, the catholic range of her intimacies, the influence
which she exercised to develop the latent germ in every
character, the constancy with which she clung to each
when she had once given and received confidence, the
delicate justice which kept every intimacy separate, and
the process of transfiguration which took place when she
met any one on this mountain of Friendship, giving a
dazzling lustre to the details of common life, — all these
should be at least touched upon and iUustrated to give
any adequate view of her in these relations.
..." She saw when any one belonged to her and never
rested until she came into possession of her property. . . .
Margaret's constancy to any genuine relation once estab-
lished was surprising. If her friends' aim changed so as
to take them out of her sphere, she was saddened by it and
did not let them go without a struggle, but whenever they
continued ' true to the original standard,' as she phrased
it, her affectionate interest would follow them unimpaired
through all the changes of life. * Great and even fatal
errors (so far as this life is concerned) could not destroy
my friendship for one in whom I am sure of the kernel of
nobleness.' She never formed a friendship until she had
seen and known this germ of good, and afterward judged
conduct by it. To this germ of good, the highest law of
each individual, she held them true. But never did she
act like those who so often judge of a friend from some
report of his conduct as if they had never known him,
38 BOSTON DAYS
and allow the inference from the single act to alter the
opinion formed by an induction from years of intercourse.
From all such weakness Margaret stood wholly free. . . .
She was the centre of a group very different from each
other, and whose only affinity consisted in their all being
polarized by the strong attraction of her mind. . . .
How she glorified life to all ! How she displayed always
the same marvellous gift of conversation which afterwards
dazzled all who knew her ! Those who know Margaret
only by her published writings know her least ; her notes
and letters contain more of her mind, but it was only in
conversation that she was perfectly free and at home. . . .
All her friends will unite in the testimony that whatever
they may have known of wit and eloquence in others they
have never seen one who, like her, by the conversation of
an hour or two could not merely entertain and inform but
make an epoch in one's life. We all dated back to this
or that conversation with Margaret, in which we took a
complete survey of great subjects, came to some clear
view of a difficult question, saw our way open before us
to a higher plane of life, and were led to some definite
resolution or purpose which has had a bearing on all our
subsequent career. For Margaret's conversation turned
at such times to life, — its destiny, its duty, its prospect.
With comprehensive glance she would survey the past and
sum up in a few brief words its results ; she would then
turn to the future and by a natural order sweep through
its chances and alternatives, — passing ever into a more
earnest tone, into a more serious view, — and then bring
all to bear on the present till its duties grew plain and its
opportunities attractive. . . . Events in life apparently
trivial often seemed to her full of mystic significance."
Margaret Fuller was in her twenty-fifth year when
she first met and knew Emerson. A year or so earlier
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 39
Dr. Hedge had told him of her genius and scholarship
and had loaned him her manuscript translation of
Goethe's " Tasso." Emerson notes that he also became
the more interested in her through the warm praises of
Harriet Martineau, who passed the winter of 1835-36
in Boston and was for some time his guest. The
strong courage and earnest sincerity of Miss Marti-
neau made a deep impression on Margaret Fuller, who
afterwards said of their first meeting, —
'' I wished to give myself wholly up to receive an
impression of Miss Martineau. I shall never forget
what she said. It has bound me to her. In that hour,
most unexpectedly to me, we passed the barrier tliat
separates acquaintance from friendship, and I saw how
greatly her heart was to be valued."
At the time of her first meeting with Emerson he
described himself as " an eager scholar of ethics and
one who had tasted the sweets of solitude and stoicism,"
and he adds that " I found something profane in the
hours of amusing gossip into which she drew me, and
when I returned to my library had much to think of
the crackling of thorns under a pot. Margaret, who
had stuifed me out as a philosopher in her own fancy,
was too intent on establishing a good footing between
us to omit any art of winning. She studied my tastes,
challenged frankness by frankness, and was curious to
know my opinions and experiences." Emerson records
that he had heard, and perhaps he partly shared, the
rumor that Margaret was critical and disdainful of all
but the intellectual, " but," he adds, '' it was a super-
40 BOSTON DAYS
ficial judgment." " When she came to Concord,"
he continues, " she was ah^eady rich in friends, rich
in experiences, rich in culture. She was well read
in French, Italian, and German literature. She had
learned Latin and a little Greek, but her English read-
ing was incomplete ; and while she knew Moli^re and
Rousseau and any quantity of French letters, memoirs,
and novels, and was a dear student of Dante and
Petrarch, and knew German books more cordially than
any other person, she was little read in Shakspeare,
and I believe I had the pleasure of making her ac-
quainted with Chaucer, with Ben Jonson, with Her-
bert, Chapman, Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, with
Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne. I was seven years
her senior, and had the habit of idle reading in old
English books, and though not much versed, yet quite
enough to give me the right to lead her. She fancied
that sympathy and taste had led her to an exclusive
culture of southern European books."
One of the mystic personalities who have left an
impress on this time was Jones Very, a man spiritually
akin to Fenelon and Madame Guyon. He appears as a
curious figure against the background of religious tradi-
tion. A graduate of Harvard and a tutor there for two
years, he is a figure in the history of the college ; as a
poet he was a Transcendentalist for Transcendentalists ;
and his own unique personality was one remarked even
in his own unconventional days. He was a man of
absolute sincerity of life. His own attitude is typified
in the lines from his sonnet entitled " Jacob's Well" :
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 41
" Thou pray'st not, save when in thy soul thou pray'st.
Disrobing of thyself to feed the poor ;
The words thy lips shall utter then, thou say'st,
They are as marble, and they shall endure.
Pray always, for on prayer the hungry feed ;
Its sound is hidden music to the soul ;
From low desires its rising strains shall lead,
And willing captives own thy just control."
Mr. Very believed in the absolute surrender to the
Divine Will, and this faith he realized in outward life.
He crystallized this faith in the lines, —
" The Prophet speaks ; the world attentive stands !
The voice that stirs the people's countless host
Issues again the Living God's commands."
Jones Very was born iu Salem in August of 1813,
the eldest of six children. The family all had the gift
of versification. In his youth he was an ardent student
and expressed a desire to go " to the depths of litera-
ture." He graduated from Harvard in 1836 with the
second honors of his class, and was immediately ai>
pointed a tutor in Greek, carrying on his study of
theology at the same time in the Divinity School.
Exceedingly sensitive and reserved in character, enig-
matic to many, his rare tenderness and sincerity shone
through the reticence and reserve of his nature. Writ-
ing verse was a part of the daily expression of his life.
Like Milton, he regarded it not so much as his own
gift, but as proceeding from " a power above him."
Like all the group of which he was a prominent and
beautiful figure, he was intensely religious ; to a degree,
indeed, that made the general public pronounce him a
42 BOSTON DAYS
monomaniac, but the keen insight of Mr. Emerson dis-
cerned his true poise, and he said of Mr. Very that he
was " profoundly sane " and added that he " wished the
whole world were as mad as he." It was Elizabeth
Peabody, however, who was his chief discoverer. She
was the Rontgen ray that flashed its light through all
manner of barriers, and her chief mission seems to have
been always the revelation of persons to themselves.
With her wonderful power of establishing rapport, she
became very intimate with Jones Very. Her sister
Sophia (afterwards Mrs. Hawtliorne) also came to know
him well, and in one of her letters to Elizabeth she thus
speaks of Mr. Very : —
"I do not think I am subject to my imagination; I
can let an idea go to the grave that I see is false. When
I am altogether true to the light I have, I should be in
the heaven where the angelic Very now is. . . . Jones
Very came to tea this afternoon. He was troubled at
first, but we comforted him with sympathy. His conver-
sation was divine, and such level rays of celestial light as
beamed from his face, every time he looked up, were
lovely to behold. We told him of our enjoyment of his
sonnets. He smiled and said that, unless we thought
them beautiful because we also heard the Voice in reading
them, they would be of no avail. ' Since I have shown
you my sonnets,' said he to me, ' I think you should show
me your paintings.' Mary brought my drawing book and
Aeschylos. He deeply enjoyed them."
Elizabeth Peabody was deeply interested in Mr.
Very's poems, which she says were produced very
rapidly, pencilled down "just as they came to him,"
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 43
often produced at the rate of two or three a day.
These Mr. Very copied on a large sheet of paper, folded
in pages, and when the daily supply of poetry was
complete he brought it to her and she transmitted it
to her familiar spirit, Mr. Emerson. In those days, we
must remember, the chief occupation, the prevailing
industry, it might be said, of these transcendental folk
was to write and discuss each other's poems. Their
inspirations were their special capital in life. In his
journal Mr. Emerson alludes to Very and says : —
" Our Saint was very unwilling to allow correction of
his verses, but I, his friend, said, ' I supposed you were
too high in your thought to mind such trifles.' Mr. Very
replied, ' I value these verses not because they are mine,
but because they are not.' Very interesting are the jour-
nal records of Mr. Emerson regarding Jones Very. In
one place we find him saying : ' Jones Very came here two
days ago. His position accuses society as much as
society names that position false and morbid, and much of
his discourse concerning society, church, and college was
absolutely just. He has nothing to do with time because
he obeys. A man who is busy has no time. He does
not recognize that element. A man who is idle saj^s he
does not know what to do with his time. Obedience is in
eternity. Mr. Very sa^^s that he feels it an honor to wash
his face, being as it is the temple of the spirit. He also
says that it is with him a day of hate that he discerns the
bad element in every person whom he meets which repels
him ; he even shrinks a little to give the hand, that sign
to receive. His only guard in going to see men is that he
goes to do them good, else they would injure him
spiritually."
44 BOSTON DAYS
Emerson's characteristic humor appears in the follow-
ing extract from his journal, in which his amusement at
Verj's eccentricities is revealed side by side with his
appreciation of the poet's high character : —
" I ought not to omit to record the astonishment which
seized all the company when our brave Saint the other
day fronted the presiding Preacher. The Preacher began
to tower and dogmatize with many words. Then I fore-
saw that his doom was fixed ; and, as soon as he had
ceased speaking, the Saint set him right, and blew away
all his words in an instant, — unhorsed him, I may say, and
tumbled him along the ground in utter dismay, like my
angel of Heliodorus ; never was discomfiture more com-
plete. In tones of genuine pathos, he bid him wonder at
the Love wliich suffered him to speak there iu his chair of
things he knew nothing of ; one might expect to see the
book taken from his hands and him thrust out of the
room, and yet he was allowed to sit and talk, whilst every
word he spoke was a step of departure from the truth ;
and of this he commanded himself to bear witness."
Mr. Emerson often writes to Miss Peabody of the
enjoyment he has in conversations with Mr. Very, and
to the latter he wrote : " Do not, I beg of you, let a
whisper or a sigh of the muse go unattended to or un-
recorded." Again, we find Mr. Emerson writing to
Miss Peabody : —
"I cannot persuade Mr. Very to remain with me
another day. He says he is not permitted, and no assur-
ances that his retirement shall be secured are of any avail.
He has been serene, intelligent, and true in all the con-
versation I have had with him. He gives me pleasure
and much relief, after all I had heard concerning him."
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 45
Mr. Very's own mind is vividly revealed in this para-
graph of a letter written to Mr. Emerson in 1838, in
which he says : —
"I am glad at last to be able to transmit what has been
told me of Shakespeare — 't is but the faint echo of that
which speaks to you now. . . . You hear not mine own
words, but the teachings of the Holy Ghost. . . . My
friend, I tell you these things as they are told me, and
hope soon for a day or two of leisure, when I may speak
to you face to face as I now write."
Later we find Jones Very ordained as a minister and
one who brought wonderful power of unseen and un-
analyzed influence to bear on life. " To have walked
with Very," says another clergyman, " was truly to have
walked with God." And another appreciative clerical
brother said, " I told my people that to see Very for
half an hour in my pulpit was a far greater sermon than
any ever preached to them from the lips of an orator."
Perhaps the secret of the strong impression he made ("
was his absolute realization of the Divine Presence as *"
the great fact of life. He could not understand this
fact as being vague or unreal to any one. One who
knew him says that " in the height of his ecstasy he
would sit for hours rapt in thought and gazing off
into the infinite. Like the saintly Buddha he seemed
long since to have slain ' love of self, false faith, and
doubt,' a conqueror of the love of life on earth he had
become. He regarded the whole duty of life as that of
uttering the words given to him."
46 BOSTON DAYS
It was in 1839 that the house of Little, Brown, and
Co. — that old landmark among Boston publishing
houses — published a small collection of Mr, Verj's
work, — fifty sonnets, three prose essays, and a few lyrics,
and this was done, if one mistake not, by the request of
Mr. Emerson. The life of Mr. Very was largely that of
a recluse, although not by intentional choice. He had
the isolation of his temperament. Not with any ego-
tism, but with intense humility, he regarded himself as
a prophet of God whose service was to be the channel
of the divine messages to him. This thought is em-
bodied in the following sonnet : —
" I looked to find a man who walked with God,
Like the translated patriarch of old :
Though gladdened millions on his footstool trod,
Yet none hke him did such sweet converse hold.
I heard the wind in low complaint go by
That none its melodies like him could hear ; j
Day unto day spoke wisdom from on high, ^
Yet none like David turned a willing ear ;
God walked alone unhonored through the earth ;
For him no heart-built temple open stood,
The soul, forgetful of her nobler birth,
Had hewn him lofty shrines of stone and wood,
And left unfinished and in ruins still
The only temple he delights to fill."
Dr. Hale, who knew Mr. Very, has recently said of
him: —
" I have been wishing that some one would prepare a
notice of a man whose work is of the very first impor-
tance, while his name seems to have been written in
water.
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 47
" I lived from September, 1837, to Jaly, 1839, in
Massachusetts. So did Samuel Longfellow. Very's
room was in the same entry, and he was regarded as the
proctor of that entry. He was evidently desirous to be
on good terms with the boys in the entry, and always
saluted us cordially and invited us into his room. I was
but a boy, but Sam Longfellow and I had sense enough to
see the genius and insight of the man. We had a very
great respect for him, though we knew he was odd, and
was called a crank. But a sort of diffidence prevented
him from taking in the least towards us the tone of an
instructor or a leader. As I was studying some of his
sonnets within a fortnight past, I could not but ask my-
self what might have happened to the world if this man,
with his profound insight, had had the audacity or self-
assertion of George Fox or of John Wesley.
" We certainly knew that he was outside the line of
common men ; we certainly thought that something was to
come from that life. But I should say now that only the
angels of God can say what infinite results are proceeding
from his life in the minds of thoughtful men and women
to-day."
Mr. Very lived until the May of 1880, and of all that
has been written of him nothing more delicately inter-
prets his life than the words of Emerson when he said :
" His words were loaded with fact. What he said, he
held was not personal to him, was no more disputable
than the shining of yonder sun or the blowing of this
south wind. Jones Very is gone into the multitude as
solitary as Jesus. In dismissing him, I seem to have dis-
charged an arrow into the heart of society. Wherever
that young enthusiast goes, he will astonish and discon-
48 BOSTON DAYS
cert meu by dividing for them the cloud that covers the
gulf in mau."
The " Church of the Disciples " — that most ideally
beautiful of religious organizations — was inaugurated
in the house of Dr. Nathaniel Peabody in West Street
in April of 1841, when a few persons subscribed their
names to the declaration of faith as written by James
Freeman Clarke : —
" We unite together in the following faith and purpose ;
our faith is in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. And
we do hereby form ourselves into a Church of the Dis-
ciples that we may co-operate together in the study and
practice of Christianity."
The first names following the signature of the founder
and pastor were those of Dr. and Mrs. Peabody and
their three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia.
Somewhat later came into this communion Dr. Henry
B. Blackwell and his wife Lucy Stone, Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe, Mrs. Hemenway, Mrs. Cheney, and many
otliers whose names have flown to world-wide fame.
From this initiation of the Church of the Disciples
whose future lield a power undreamed of by its founder,
we may for a moment turn backward and study the
life and personality of James Freeman Clarke, whose
work expanded in many directions.
He was the author of several books, of which the
most important is his " Ten Great Religions," which is
held by students and thinkers as one of the most
valuable works of authority, so extended is its re-
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 49
search into sacred history, so just and fair is it in tone.
"The Christian Doctrine of Prayer," " Thomas Didymus,"
" Common Sense in Religion," " Steps of Belief,"
" Events and Epochs in Religious History," and " Self-
Culture " are among his works. Dr. Clarke also wrote
many poems of a contemplative and meditative charac-
ter, and he wrote the introduction to a book on spirit-
ualism, or at least a personal experience of a lady who
was a seer of spirits and able to converse with them,
and who did not realize during her early childhood
that there was anything phenomenal in the appearance
of the beautiful beings with whom slie held conversa-
tions. This book is called " Light on the Path," and in
his preface Dr. Clarke expressed his entire confidence in
the lady, and, practically, his acceptance of what may
be termed spiritual spiritualism, — an acceptance which
becomes almost an inevitable sequence, one would suj)-
pose, of the perfect faith in immortality and in revealed
religion.
No brief outline of the life of Dr. Clarke can adequately
suggest that gentle persistence of energy which charac-
terized him, save as it clothed with the personal memo-
ries of his nearer circle of friends and the literary
knowledge of that yet more extended circle of readers
and thinkers on both hemispheres, to whom the name
of James Freeman Clarke has been identified with some
valuable religious works, and others, perhaps hardly less
valuable, of the contemplative type. One of the earliest
Transcendentalists, he was one of the purest teachers
of that school of thought which has been exemplified in
4
50 BOSTON DAYS
liis life and work. He was free from tlie vagaries of Mr.
Alcott, he was less magnetized by German metaphysics
than Dr. Hedge, and he was of a less exclusively sub-
jective temperament than Dr. Bartol. He offers the
exceptional study of the purely contemplative life of the
scholar who yet resisted the tendency to the closet and
the cloister to which this temperament is always liable,
and gave to public activities his best whenever duty
called him. Not combining the saint and the seer, as
did Emerson, he was not less the saint, and his life
reveals to us how potent and how wide may be an
influence that is as gentle, as quiet — at times as imper-
ceptible — as that of the Holy Spirit in its working
upon the hearts of men. His nature was the absolutely
spiritual ; his kindness was given to the just and the
unjust, and his character illustrated the gospel of love
which he taught.
" Oh, beauty of holiness,
Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness! "
The Transcendentalism of New England has been a
powerful force in American life. It is the leaven
which has leavened national thought ; its influence has
been universal, and in no sense geographical ; wherever
books are read — and the readers and worshippers of
Emerson are so numerous throughout all the great West
that they give perceptible tone to intellectual life —
wherever books can go, the transcendental spirit of New
England has taken root in tliose temperamentally fitted
to come into this spiritual attitude, and thus its force
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 51
has become a great and underlying power in our
national life. By entering into the transcendental spirit
a man was made " a citizen of the world of souls ; " he
accepted a higher allegiance, and entered into the uni-
versal life. Transcendentalism was really the purest
form of idealism ; the insistence, or " the power of the
thought and of will, or inspiration, or miracle, or indi-
vidual culture," as against and as greater than " facts,
history, the force of circumstances, and the animal
wants of man."
" James Freeman Clarke was a contemporary and
an intimate friend of Theodore Parker," writes Mr.
Frotliingham ; " he was a co-worker with Channing, a
close friend and correspondent of Miss Fuller, a sympa-
thizer with Alcott in his attempts to spiritualize educa-
tion, a frequent contributor to ' The Dial,' the intellectual
fellow of the brilliant minds that made the epoch what
it was. But his interest was not confined to the
school, nor did the technicalities of or details of the
transcendental movement embarrass him ; his catholic
mind took in opinions of all shades, and men of all
communions. . . . But though churchly tastes led him
away from the company of themselves where he in-
tellectually belonged, and an unfailing common sense
saved him from the extravagances into which some of
them fell, a Transcendentalist he was, and an uncom-
promising one. The intuitive philosophy was his
guide. It gave him assurance of spiritual truths ; it
interpreted for him the gospels and Jesus ; it inspired
his endeavors to reconcile belief, to promote unity
52 BOSTON DAYS
among the discordant sects, to enlighten and redeem
mankind. His mission has been that of a spiritual
peacemaker. But while doing this he has worked
faithfully at particular causes ; was an avowed and
earnest abolitionist in the antislavery days. An enemy
of violent and vindictive legislation, a hearty friend of
laborers in the field of woman's election to the full
privileges of culture and citizenship ; a man in whom
faith, hope, and charity abounded ; a man of intellect-
ual convictions which made a groundwork for his life."
The liberal and sympathetic mind of Dr. Clarke asso-
ciated him sympathetically both with the adherents to
the more liberal forms of evangelical truth aud with the
avowed liberals and radicals. This, indeed, is the true
transcendental spirit to be able to see justly all forms
of faith. Dr. Clarke's work exemplified impressively
the spiritual charity which characterizes his " Ten
Great Religions."
It was rather a matter of coincidence than of cause
and effect tliat the enthusiasm for German literature
and thought glowed so brightly among a little group at
the time that the transcendental movement increased in
strength. Dr. Hedge says that this had no very direct
connection with the philosophy of Kant and his succes-
sors, although the ideas of the German pliilosophcr were
eagerly sought and appreciated by a small group of young
and ardent persons and this trend of thought became an
outlet for superabundant spiritual activities. In this
social circle there were a few who were especially bound
to each other in the ties of noble and permanent friend-
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 53
ship, — Emerson, Miss Peabody, James Freeman Clarke,
and Margaret Fuller. Dr. Hedge, as a youth of twenty,
went abroad taking with him a letter of introduc-
tion to Goethe, who received him most cordially.
In 1830, when Dr. Clarke was editing a theological and
literary magazine in Louisville, Ky., the correspond-
ence between himself and Margaret Fuller began. Of
this period Dr. Clarke wrote, in the memoirs of Miss
Fuller, in which he collaborated with the Rev. William
Henry Channing and Emerson — in his portion of these
memoirs he wrote of Margaret : —
"From 1829 till 1833 I saw or beard from her almost
every day. There was a family connection, and we called
each other cousin. She needed a friend. She accepted
me for this friend, and to me it was a gift of the gods, an
influence like no other."
Mr. Clarke refers to this friendship as one that en-
larged his heart and gave elevation and energy to his
aims and purpose, — generous words of appreciation
they are, for if JNIargaret gave him energy he surely gave
her steadfastness and gentleness, and a faithful friend
on whom her more mercurial nature could rely.
While Dr. Holmes had no especial sympathy with the
transcendental movement, there yet existed between
James Freeman Clarke and himself a tender and beau-
tiful friendship, which found expression in one of the
most perfect lyrics of the genial Autocrat, who wrote
for a birthday tribute to his classmate a poem containing
these stanzas : —
54 BOSTON DAYS
" I bring the simplest pledge of love.
Friend of my earlier days :
Mine is the hand without the glove,
The heartbeat, not the phrase.
** How few still breathe this mortal air
We call by schoolboy names !
You still, whatever robe you wear,
To me are always James.
" That name the kind apostle bore
Who shames the sullen creeds,
Not trusting less, but loving more,
And showing Faith by deeds."
And the last stanza runs : —
" Count not his years while earth has need
Of souls that heaven inflames
With sacred zeal to save, to lead, —
Long live our dear Saint James ! "
Dr. Holmes often alluded to his old classmate as
"Saint" James, and to a friend who spoke of this to him
one day he smiled and said that at no period of Dr.
Clarke's life would the title have been inappropriate, as
he seemed always the embodied spirit of gentleness and
peace, - — of love abounding and overflowing.
Among the habitues of the home of Dr. and Mrs,
Clarke were the Channings, Emerson, Longfellow and his
brother, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, Mr. and Mrs. Whipple,
Dr. Holmes, Rev. Dr. Andrew Preston Peabody, Dr.
Hedge, JSIargaret Fuller, Cliristopher Cranch, Lydia
Maria Child, Dr. and Mrs. Howe, Miss Peabody,
Whittier, the Hawthornes, Lowell, Agassiz, and many
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 55
more of the good and the great, all of whom were
familiar friends in their household.
Between James Freeman Clarke and Margaret Fuller
there always existed a confidential friendship. Writing
to him under date of July 31, 1862, she says : —
" I have no reserves, except intellectual reserves ; for to
speak of things to those who cannot receive them is
stupidity rather than frankness. Therefore, dear James,
give heed to this subject. You have received a key to
what was before unknown of your friend; you have made
use of it ; now let it be buried with the past, over whose
passages, profound and sad, yet touched with heaven-born
beauty, let silence stand sentinel."
And again she writes to ]Mr. Clarke : —
" I have been happy in the sight of your pure design, of
the sweetness and serenity of your mind. . . . Youth is
past, with its passionate joys and griefs, its restlessness,
its vague desires. Now, beware the mediocrity that
threatens middle life, — its limitations of thought and in-
terest, its dnlness of fancy, its too external life. ... So
take care of yourself, and let not the intellect more than
the spirit be quenched."
Transcendentalism had its inflorescence in many ways,
serving as a leaven that entered into the social, literary,
and ethical atmosphere, and it may bo regarded as one
of the voices crying in the Wilderness which summoned
the future to larger and nobler views and stimulated the
capacity to dwell in still more stately mansions.
A story is on record that Theodore Parker's earnest
and heroic life dated its first conscious impulse back to
56 BOSTON DAYS
an occurrence which he himself often rehited. It seems
that when Mr. Parker was a boy about twelve years of
age he was at work one day on his father's farm near
Lexington, and suddenly a venerable man stood by him.
His silvery hair and flowing beard impressed the lad as
somewhat unusual, and for some time the aged man
walked along by him, talking to him earnestly of all
that it was possible for a boy to do and to become in
the world. It made upon hiin a lasting impression,
and he repeatedly affirmed that the hour became to him
a conscious date in life, one that initiated all his
latent force and aspiration. On inquiring as to whence
the stranger came, no one could tell. It was a country
neighborhood where any visitor attracted attention, and
as no one but the lad had seen him, he came in after
years to half believe that his visitor was of supernormal
origin.
The impression that Theodore Parker made upon the
progress of religion was a deep one, and if its elements
were a little mixed and love was somewhat tempered
with aggressiveness, it may be remembered that only
thus do the Titans of thought shatter the shells and
husks of dead forms and bid the spirit emerge into
freedom. Mrs. Howe ranks the hearing of Mr. Parker's
sermons among tlie blessings and privileges of her life.
Mrs. Child confessed to her impression that he "was
the greatest man, morally and intellectually, that our
country has ever produced." Frances Power Cobbe,
who was ail in all his most appreciative friend in the
sense of absolute sympathy of spirit, calls his " Dis-
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 57
courses of Religion " epoch-raakiug ; and she felt that he
taught her " to see the evidence of a summer yet to be
in the buds that lie folded through our northern winter."
Mr. Parker regarded liis work as in the nature of a
gospel for ultimate universal acceptance. Perhaps it
was his misfortune to consider himself as too exclusively
the channel of that larger truth which was pouring
itself through many circles not only in the ministry, but
from press and platform and in literature as well.
Always indeed the poet's words are true, —
" God sends his teachers unto every age,
To every clime, and every race of men,
With revelations fitted to their growth."
Theodore Parker's work doubtless benefits a multitude
who have never identified it with his name. The
noblest energy, indeed, that a man can contribute to
progress springs up in a thousand new forms and
communicates itself through various channels. Dr.
Bushnell and Henry Ward Beecher were to come ;
Edward Everett Hale and Phillips Brooks. Notable
work, too, in the liberation of thought has been done
by Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage and Dr. Lyman Abbott,
nor could any r&umd of Boston ministry miss its
profound recognition of the noble work of Rev. Dr.
George A. Gordon.
When Theodore Parker sailed for Europe on that
voyage from which there was no returning, he sent one
of his sermons to Mrs. Child with a little note, to
which she refers in a letter to a friend, saying she shall
58 BOSTON DAYS
treasure it among sacred relics, " for my heart misgives
me," she adds, " that I shall never look upon that
Socratic head again." Her heart prophesied truly, for
from this voyage he never returned, and his grave in
the English cemetery in Florence, where all that was
mortal of Mrs. Browning, Landor, and Arthur Hugh
Clough was also laid, is still a shrine of reverent and
poetic pilgrimage.
One of the most typically unique characters of those
early years of the Nineteenth century was Delia Bacon,
whose life was devoted to the quest of endeavoring to
prove that Sliakspeare did not write the plays which
bear his name. Miss Bacon was the modern Cassandra
of literature. Theodore Bacon, her nephew, has made
an interesting record of this life, which, beginning in
privation and the "simplicity of a refined poverty,"
ended in disappointment and distraction. The earliest
formative influence of the little Delia's life was found in
the school of Catherine Beecher, of which she became a
pupil. At this time Harriet Beecher, whom the world
knows as Mrs. Stowe, was associated in the manage-
ment of the school. Nearly thirty years afterward
Catherine Beecher described Delia Bacon as a child of
" fervent imagination, and tlie embryo of rare gifts of
eloquence in thought and expression ; pre-eminently
one who would be pointed out as a genius ; and one,
too, 80 exuberant and unregulated as to demand con-
stant pruning and restraint." The religious life of the
girl was fervent and intense, but marked by the bitter-
ness and despondency of the time.
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 59
The years went on. She studied, wrote, taught, and
worked incessantly. Great force, eloquence, imagery,
characterized her language. She was sensitive, proud,
finely organized, and knew no rest or care or shelter ;
and this, as her biographer says, was not a normal or a
healthful life for a nervous organization of fine intellect-
ual powers, of strong affections. Her work included,
at one time, lessons given to classes at Brattle House
in Cambridge, and Mrs. Farrar mentions her in her
" Recollections of Seventy Years." In this life of study
and teaching, her mind at last became fixed on the
greatest work of English letters, the Shakspearian
drama. Miss Bacon was in London. Carlyle was her
friend, though he disavowed any faith in her theories,
and Hawthorne, to whom she appealed for aid, was
most considerate and patient. Miss Bacon, while in
Cambridge giving lessons at Brattle House, made the
impression on Mrs. Farrar of being " one of Raphael's
sibyls," who " often spoke like an oracle." There are
characters sometimes sent into this world who cannot
be judged from the ordinary standards of human motive
and achievement. They are fated beings, born to
fulfil a destiny. They are apparently predestined to a
certain work, — a work to which all that n)arvellous
foreordination of heredity, of environment, of place,
and time, and influence, lead directly toward, and they
fulfil that destiny. Delia Bacon seems one of those.
Hawthorne's words on her are those of exquisite
justice. Of her convictions regarding Shakspeare he
says : —
60 BOSTON DAYS
" What matters it though she call him by some other
name ? He had wrought on her a greater miracle than
on all the world besides. This bewildered enthusiast had
recognized a depth in the man whom she decried, which
scholars, critics, and learned societies devoted to the elu-
cidation of his unrivalled scenes had never imagined to
exist there. She had paid him the loftiest honor that all
these ages of renown have been able to accumulate upon
his memory."
Emerson defines fate as the result of " unpenetrated
causes." Temperament, too, is fairly synonymous with
destiny, and this truth, too, is implied in Emerson's
lines : —
" Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes, rich or great."
Lydia Maria Child is a striking illustration of this
theory, for her beautiful temperament dominated and
fairly transformed outward events.
Mrs. Child was the most sunny and radiant of spirits.
She was a wonderful combination of the rational and
the mystic, but her mysticism was tliat of the spirit and
never degenerated into mere bombastic rhetoric unrelated
to significance. Of spurious transcendentalism she was
swift to prick the bubble ; but she entered with deepest
sympathy and illuminating intelligence into every form
of the intimations of immortality. " This marked spec-
ulative tendency seemed not in the slightest degree to
affect her practical activities," says Mr. Whittier of her.
From the speculative thougiit she drew that energy
which transmitted itself into effort and achievement.
Her mind was not only well stored, but it was one of
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 6l
exceptionally original power. She was brilliant in wit
and repartee. Her husband once remarked to her :
" I v/ish for your sake, dear, that I were as rich as
Croesus," to which she flashed back, " You are Croesus,
for you are king of Lydia."
She was full of high courage. She was one of the
great leaders in the cause of human freedom when its
unpopularity was so great as seriously to threaten loss of
life and property and reputation to every one who
embraced it. In the decades of 1820-40 Mrs. Child
was the best-known literary woman in the United
States, with fiime and prosperity attending her, both of
which she imperilled and even lost by writing an article
entitled, " An Appeal for that Class of Americans called
Africans." The Athenaeum Library that had bestowed
on her the honor of its freedom closed its doors to her ;
the sale of her books and subscriptions to the magazine
she was editing fell off. Yet of Mrs. Child at this time
it might well be said : —
"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched
crust
Ere the cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be
just."
Mrs. Child experienced both extremes, — " sharing
the wretched crust " and also living to see the despised
cause take its place amid the loftiest ranks of sacrifice.
How wonderfully the Boston of the early part of the
Nineteentli century rises as a living panorama before
those who turn the records ! The transcendental
movement initiated by the little group who formed
62 BOSTON DAYS
themselves into a club ; the intellectual problems of
literature and philosophy as crystallized in the " conver-
sations " of Margaret Fuller and her circle ; Theodore
Parker preaching that epoch-making sermon on " The
Transient and Permanent Elements in Religion ; " Garri-
son, Phillips, and Mrs. Child leading the forlorn liope
against slavery ; Lucy Stone inaugurating her great
work for tlie larger life of womanhood, — and through
it all the devotion to German pliilosophy, to literature
in every attainable form, and the constant microscopic
scrutiny and analysis of life as is revealed in the volu-
minous letter-writing of the day.
Born in 1802, Mrs. Cliild lived on until October of
1880, and she has left a record as one of the most re-
markable women that America has produced, not alone,
perhaps not even chiefly, in work, but in character. She
was gifted with great literary and scholarly ability ; she
was a woman who, in the days when the larger oppor-
tunities were denied to women, had still achieved high
and symmetrical culture. But that culture of character
which was hers — the living out of divineness, as it
literally was — transcended all else.
" Go put your creed
Into your deed, "
was her ruling precept. At the age of twenty-six she
married David Lee Child, a Boston lawyer. Of her
literary work Mr. Whittier wrote : —
"It is not too much to say that half a century ago she
■was the most popular literary woman in the United States.
-^.
c^uL- u/^^^^^^i^.^ ^^^c^U
^_^.
'7 Ce/^\lJCo'-^
'-l^.^Vf^ CeO^U^ '^ eM^^-^T.^^ c^
^
/^^^. ^C^:ui:^ ay^^Cj^
W
/I
^^
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 63
She had published historical novels of uuquestionable
power of description and characterization, and was widely
and favorably known as the editor of the 'Juvenile Mis-
cellany,' which was probably the first periodical in the
English tongue devoted exclusively to children, and to
which she was by far the largest contributor. Some of
the tales and poems from her pen were extensively copied
and greatly admired."
Many anecdotes of Mr. Whittier are told iu Mrs.
Child's letters, and of a visit to him in his home in
Dauvers in 1860 she said: —
" Friend Whittier and his gentle Quakerly sister seemed
delighted to see me, or rather he seemed delighted and
she seemed pleased. There was a Republican meeting
that evening, at which he felt obliged to show himself ;
but lie came back before long, having indiscreetly excused
himself by stating that I was at his house. The result was
that a posse of Republicans came, after the meeting was
over, to look at the woman who ' fired hot shot at Gov-
ernor Wise.' In the interim, however, I had some cozy
chat with Friend Whittier, and it was right pleasant going
over our antislavery reminiscences. Oh, those were glori-
ous times ! working shoulder to shoulder in such a glow of
faith! — too eager working for humanity to care a fig
whether our helpers were priests or infidels. That 's the
service that is pleasing in the sight of God.
" Whittier made piteous complaints of time wasted and
strength exhausted by the numerous loafers who came to
see him out of mere idle curiosity, or to put up with him
to save a penny. I was amused to hear his sister describe
some of those eruptions in her slow, Quakerly fashion.
'Thee has no idea,' said she, 'how much time Green-
leaf spends in trying to lose these people in the streets.
-^
64 BOSTON DAYS
Sometimes lie comes home and says, " Well, sister, I had
hard work to lose him, but I have lost him."' ' Ihit I
can never lose a her,' said Whittier, ' The women are
more pertinacious than the men ; don't thee find 'em so,
Maria?' I told him I did. 'How does thee manage to
get time to do anything?' said he. I told him I took care
to live away from the railroad, and kept a bulldog and a
pitchfork, and advised him to do the same."
Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman, the biographer of Miss
Martineau, was prominently associated in the early anti-
slavery days with Garrison, Phillij^s, and Mrs. Cliild.
With them were closely allied Rev. Samnel J. May, Dr.
and Mrs. Follen, and Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring.
Miss Martineau has left a pen picture of Mrs. Chapman
which is one to live in literature. Miss Martineau
writes : —
" When I was putting on my shawl upstairs, Mrs. Chap-
man came to me, bonnet in hand, to say, ' You know we
are threatened with a mob again to-day ; but I do not my-
self much apprehend it. It must not surprise us ; but my
hopes are stronger than my fears.' I hear now, as I write,
the clear silvery tones of her who was to be the friend of
the rest of my life. I still see the exquisite beauty which
took me by surpiise that day, — the slender, graceful
form ; the golden hair which might have covered her to
her feet ; the brilliant complexion, noble profile, and deep
blue eyes ; the aspect, meant by nature to be soft and
winning only, but that day (as ever since) so vivified by
courage, and so strengthened by upright conviction, as to
appear the very embodiment of heroism. ' My hopes,'
said she, as she threw up her golden hair under her
bonnet, ' are stronger than my fears.' "
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 65
Miss Martineau left so strong an impression on
Boston that fifty years later it crystallized into a pur-
pose to place her statue in Wellesley, the " College
Beautiful." The commission to execute it was fittingly
given to Anne Whitney, poet and sculptor, and the
occasion of its unveiling — in the Old South Church, in
December of 1883, was the last public appearance of
Wendell Phillips.
Of the sculptor's work Mrs. Livermore said : —
"Miss Whitney has, in this instance, unconsciously
put much of herself — much of the simple, genuine,
almost divine womanhood she herself lived out, and the
result is a marvellous statue of Harriet Martineau.
As you look you find yourself repeating the lines of
Lamartine : —
" * At her feet the poor flung palms,
And holy women wept their blessing.' "
The birthplace and early home of Wendell Phillips
was in the old West End, his father's house being at
the corner of Beacon and Walnut streets. He was
born in 1811, and his death, in February of 1884, was
an event that marked the close of a thrilling chapter
of Boston history. His majestic manhood is known to
all. Stronger than John Bright, more eloquent than
Victor Hugo, he even transcended both in his devotion
to humanity. His public career was an epic poem ; his
domestic life an idyl.
No tribute has been paid to him that is at once
so noble, eloquent, and poetic as that of John Boyle
5
66 BOSTON DAYS
O'Reilly, who fairly embalmed the entire biography of
Wendell Phillips in these lines : —
" Come, workers ; here was a teacher, and the lesson he taught
was good ;
There are no classes or races, but one human brotherhood;
There are no creeds to be hated, no colors of skin debarred ;
Mankind is one in its rights and wrongs — one right, one hope,
one guard ;
The right to be free, and the hope to be just, and the guard
against selfish greed.
By his life he taught, by his death we learn, the great reformer's
creed ;
And the unseen chaplet is brightest and best which the toil-worn
hands lay down
On his coffin, with grief, love, honor — their sob, their kiss, and
their crown.
From the midst of the flock he defended the brave one has gone
to his rest ;
And the tears of the poor he befriended their wealth of affliction
attest.
From the midst of the people is stricken a symbol they daily
saw,
Set over against the law books, of a Higher than Human Law ;
For his life was a ceaseless protest, and his voice was a prophet's
cry
To be true to the truth and faithful, though the world were
arrayed for the Lie.
" From the hearing of those who hated, the threatening voice has
past ;
But the lives of those who believe to the death are not blown like
a leaf on the blast.
A sower of infinite seed was he, a woodman that hewed to the
light,
Who dared to be traitor to Union when the Union was traitor
to Ei"ht ! "
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 67
William Lloyd Garrison was six years the senior of
Wendell Phillips. Their lives were closely associated
in the antislavery struggle, — a conflict whose scenes
are difficult to realize in the present. Colonel Higginson
has said of Mr. Garrison : " I never saw a countenance
that could be compared with his in respect to moral
strength and force ; he seems the visible embodiment
of something deeper and more controlling than mere
intellect. . . . He did the work of a man of iron in an
iron age," adds Colonel Higginson, and writes, also, that
" in the Valhalla of contemporary statues in Boston,
two only — those of Webster and Everett — commemo-
rate conservatives in the antislavery conflict, while all
the rest, Lincoln, Quincy, Sumner, Andrew, Mann,
Garrison, and Shaw, represent the party of attack."
To which list might well be added Colonel Higginson's
own honored name, and that of Mr. Frank B. Sanborn.
Wendell Phillips came from one of what Dr. Holmes
so well terms the " Academic families " of New Eng-
land, — families who, from generation to generation,
are college-bred men. The father of Wendell Phillips
was a man of wealth and prominence, at one time the
Mayor of Boston, and his home was one of ease and
culture. Mr. Phillips graduated from Harvard in the
class of 1831, — Motley, the historian, being his class-
mate. Colonel Higginson, in his fascinating volume
called " Contemporaries," pictures the dramatic initia-
tion of the career of Phillips in witnessing the mobbing
of Garrison in 1835. " To the antislavery cause," says
Colonel Higginson, " he sacrificed his social position,
68 BOSTON DAYS
his early friendships, his professional career. . . . Being
rich, he made himself, as it were, poor through life,
reduced all his personal wants to the lowest terms,
earned all the money he could by lecturing, and gave
away all he could spare. . . . He was fortunate in
wedding a wife in perfect sympathy with him, — a life-
long invalid, yet with such indomitable courage, such
keenness of wit, such insight into character, that she
really divided with him the labors of his career. , . .
They lived on Essex Street, . . . the house was plain
and bare without and within, but peace and courage
ruled."
On this Essex Street house in which Mr. Phillips
lived there is now placed this tablet : —
Here
Wendell Phillips resided during forty years,
Devoted by him to efforts to secure
The abolition of African slavery in this country.
The charms of home, the enjoyment of wealth and learning,
Even the kindly recognition of his fellow-citizens.
Were by him accounted as naught compared with duty.
He lived to see justice triumphant, freedom universal,
And to receive the tardy praises of his former opponents.
The blessings of the poor, the friendless, and the oppressed
enriched him.
In Boston
He was born 29 November, 1811, and died 2 February, 1884.
This tablet was erected in 1894, by order of the City Council of
Boston.
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 69
Mrs. Howe fitly characterizes the first speech of
Wendell Phillips in Faneuil Hall as the hour when the
Pentecostal flame visited him. Mrs. Child says of one
of the early antislavery meetings : —
" I know there were very formidable preparations to
mob the antislavery meeting the next day ; I was excited
and anxious, not for myself, but for "Wendell Phillips.
Hour after hour of the night I heard the clock strike,
while visions were passing through my mind of that noble
head assailed by murderous hands. This meeting was
that of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, and it
was on this occasion that Mr. Phillips, when his voice
was drowned by the mob, stooped forward and addressed
his speech to the reporters. Colonel Higginson made
himself heard above the storm, and James Freeman
Clarke, whose speech preceded that of Mr. Phillips, was
' treated with such boisterous insults that he was often
obliged to pause.' "
On the Sunday evening following the death of Mr.
Phillips, Colonel Higginson addressed a meeting in the
Parker Memorial, and he gave a most discriminating
analysis of Mr. Phillips, — the finest and truest insight
that has yet been formulated.
" After slavery had disappeared," said Colonel Higgin-
son, " Mr. Phillips, like other old abolitionists, men and
women, was left for a moment without a mission. The
minor causes they had advocated seemed hardly enough
for a lifework. Some of them found no work worth
doing after slavery fell. Garrison, more happy by his
calm, clear temperament, devoted himself to a few strong,
clear, thoroughly comprehended causes, and lived and
70 BOSTON DAYS
died for them. Wendell Phillips, more varied in his
impulses, more impassioned, less self-controlled, was less
his own master in the absence of his one great purpose.
He seemed like a man feeling around for an object. He
grasped here, there, and everywhere for a new mission, a
new cause, new interests, always heroic, always dis-
interested, but having with that the disadvantage that
a man who had devoted the prime of his life to one great,
clear, easily comprehended reform, had lost the study and
training that are needed to grasp the more complex
reforms that followed the fall of slavery. The anti-
slavery movement was the simplest of all reforms in its
principles. It needed but to grasp one thought, — that
man could not lawfully hold property in man. That given,
the intellectual work was done. That time passed, and
there came the complex reforms of to-day, — labor reform
and its immense difficulties, communism, socialism, and
nihilism, questions of currency and tariff, which tax the
strongest intellect. In the midst of these, Wendell
Phillips found himself unable to grasp them. He carried
to them the simple force of his antislavery principles,
but the questions were not to be settled so easily. The
questions of capital and labor, of distribution and re-
adjustment, the complicated relation of the human race,
cannot be so easily settled. He was at a disadvantage
of the complex questions. Hence the chafing in all his
later life of a spirit heroic, magnificently unselfish, yet
constantly fretting with the problems which he had
grappled too late in life for their full comprehension,
while he had an unwillingness to own that he stood at the
threshold, which alone would have enabled him fully to
comprehend them. With that came, in later years, an
unconsciousness of the strength of his assertions and the
vehemence of his denunciations. He thought that all
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 71
who were abused by respectable portious of society were
abused as Garrison was, and must be right. When we
think of the weakened strength with which he grasped
great, difficult problems which are arising among us, we
may well feel grateful that the measure of one man's
activity is fourscore years, when he may be dismissed
with the benediction that he has gone to his reward."
The funeral of Wendell Phillips was an impressive
occasion. Among those present were the poet Whittier,
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Colonel Higginson, Frederick
Douglass, Louisa M. Alcott, Rev. Dr. Bartol, Mrs.
Annie Fields, Mrs. Lucy Stone, Dr. H. B. Blackwell,
Miss Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Phillips Brooks, the
sons of Garrison, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Miss Anne
Whitney, Dr. Bowditch, Elizur Wright, Theodore Weld,
Abby Morton Diaz, John Boyle O'Reilly, President
Eliot, of Harvard; the Rev. Edward Everett Hale,
Rev. M. J. Savage, James Freeman Clarke, Frank B.
Sanborn, the Governor of Massachusetts (then Hon.
George D. Robinson) and his staff, and many of the
immortals.
There was an entire absence of floral decorations, but
a simple sheaf of wheat was placed on the casket.
The pall-bearers included Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Judge Samuel E. Sewall, and Wendell Garrison.
The gathering was a thoroughly American one, all
nationalities, creeds, and colors being represented. The
colored element was particularly prominent.
The choir sang Mr. Whittier's beautiful poem in
which the stanza occurs : —
7^
BOSTON DAYS
" God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly
What He hath given :
They live on earth in thought and deed as truly
As in His heaven."
The services consisted only in a prayer by the Rev.
Samuel Longfellow (the poet's brother), the singing of
a hymn written for the occasion, and a prayer by the
Rev. Samuel May. In the prayer by Mr. Longfellow he
said : —
" "We bless Thee for all that lifts up our lives to a
nobler plan and a worthier aim ; for the heroes, the saints,
the martyrs, who lived by faith in ideas, in principles, in
the things unseen, but most real; for the good who lived
to bless and help their fellows ; for the faithful who lived
for duty; for the true who have chosen to obey God
rather than man, willingly bearing the cross in bearing
witness to the truth. They have left us an example that
we should follow in their steps, and make our lives worthy
and unselfish and noble, and live not for the things that
perish, but for those that ai'e immortal."
Frederick Douglass, as he gazed upon the sculptured
beauty of that grand face sealed with the majesty of
death, said brokenly : " I came not here alone only
to see the remains of my dear old friend ; I wanted to
see this throng, and to see the hold that this man had
upon the comnumity. It is a wonderful tribute."
The floodgates of reminiscence and anecdote and
memory seemed opened by the transition of Wendell
Phillips to the Unseen, and there was such an illumina-
tion on that historic and tragic past of forty years ago
as almost made it real to the younger generation. As
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 73
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in referring to the services,
said, " It was noticeable how they all spoke to God
and did not speak to men."
The burial scene was very simple and dramatic. The
Phillips family tomb in the " Old Granary " burying-
ground was near the gates opening on Tremont Street,
where the ceaseless tide of city life surged up and
down, and the pulse never ceases to throb. It was
fitting that Mr, Phillips should rest there — in the heart
of the city he so loved.
It was five o'clock of that gray February day, with
the misty light rapidly deepening into evening, when
the funeral cortege reached the gates. The sidewalk
was filled with people. A long line of horse-cars were
blocked by the crowd. The roofs and walls and every
window in the vicinity was crowded. The casket was
laid, simply and reverently, in the tomb in which his
father, John Phillips, the first Mayor of Boston, rests,
and which is near the tombs of Samuel Adams, of Paul
Revere, of John Hancock, of Peter Faneuil, and the
father and mother of Franklin.
The beautiful words of Mr. O'Reilly were on the air :
" Come, brothers, here to the burial ! But weep not, rather
rejoice,
For his fearless life and his fearless death ; for his true, un-
equalled voice,
Like a silver trumpet sounding the note of human right ;
For his brave heart always ready to enter the weak one's fight ;
For his soul unmoved by the mob's wild shout or the social
sneer's disgrace ;
For his freeborn spirit, that drew no line between class and
creed and race."
74 BOSTON DAYS
111 later years it was found that the tide of pilgrimage
to the grave of Phillips was so incessant that the body
was removed to another burying-ground.
Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis is a brilliant name in the
Boston galaxy, as one with whom patriotism was
a passion. She was a woman of fine culture and of cos-
mopolitan experience. She had been presented at
almost every European court ; she had probably the
greatest social prestige that had at that time been given
to any American woman ; she had the entree of royal
circles and the nobility, as well as of art and literature ;
and from years of life in Europe, of the most brilliant
and distinguished character, she returned to Boston
with enlarged and renewed ardor of patriotic devotion
to her own country.
Elizabeth Boardmau Otis was the daughter of William
and Elizabeth (Henderson) Boardmau. Her father
was a wealthy merchant of the India and China trade,
which, in the early years of the century, was the chief
source of Boston's wealth. Her mother was the
daughter of Joseph Henderson, the first sheriff of Suf-
folk County, whose sword is preserved among the relics
in the old State House. Miss Boardmau received the
most careful education and the most exquisite culture
that the best masters could give, combined with every
social opportunity and with travel. While still a young
girl she made a brilliant marriage. Harrison Gray Otis
was the son of the ISIayor of Boston at that time, and
bore his father's name. The Otis family stood among
the highest in the land, but social distinction was not
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 75
an aim with Mrs. Otis. She was born to it ; she
always had it as inseparable from her personality ; she
took it as naturally as the air she breathed, and
thought nothing of it in itself. Her aims and ideals
were of a lofty character. Mr. Otis died in his early
life, and Mrs. Otis took her four young sons to Europe
where they remained several years for their better study
of language and art. She was herself an admirable
linguist, speaking four or five languages, and her life
abroad was thus rendered most brilliant and delightful.
It was somewhere in the '40's that she returned to
Boston. She was born about 1803 and died in 1873.
At this time Boston was a small town, where one could
go anywhere in ten minutes ; where people all knew
each other and took the keenest interest in each other's
personality and work. jMrs. Otis embraced with ardor
the stirring philanthropic interests of the day. The
asylum for the blind, of which Dr. Samuel G. Howe
was then at the head, engaged her interest ; the '' Snug
Harbor" for disabled sailors; the securing funds for
Thomas Ball's equestrian statue of Washington, and
the purchase of Washington's tomb at Mount Vernon.
To complete the fund for the latter, Mrs. Otis gave a
ball at the Boston Theatre on March 4, 1859, which is
chronicled as being " more splendid in arrangement,
more beautiful in its array of fair women and brave
men, and nobler in its purpose than anything which has
ever preceded it." The scene is said to have been one
of unsurpassed magnificence, and the sum of $10,000
was realized for the purpose.
16 BOSTON DAYS
On Washington's birthday Mrs. Otis always opened her
house for a public reception. The spacious rooms were
decorated in the national colors and filled with flowers
sent by friends. All day the throng of citizens, high and
low, rich and poor, poured through her portals, and each
and all were welcomed with that grace and high-bred
courtesy that so peculiarly distinguished this lady. The
woman who merely affects the air of the great lady de-
lights in being described as " very exclusive ; " but the
genuine great lady is, by that very attribute, inclusive,
and overflowing with generous good-will to all hu-
manity. The military processions passing the house of
Mrs. Otis on this day paused and saluted her. Her
home is still standing, — a spacious house on the corner
of Mount Vernon and Joy streets, in the West End, —
but it is now used for a boarding-house. It was Mrs.
Otis who, on her return from Europe, inaugurated
a fuller and freer social life in Boston. She was far and
away the most cosmopolitan woman that Boston had
seen, and it was an era in social life when she in-
troduced a season of Saturday afternoon and Thursday
evening receptions, after the informal European fashion,
serving only tea and cake, and tlms inaugurating a
finer and more easy hospitality. On one of these re-
ceptions it chanced that tliere were present the Pres-
ident of the United States (then Mr. Fillmore), Lord
Elgin, the Governor-General of Canada and his suite,
and several other very noted men of the day. The
Otis mansion was the centre of the most brilliant
and distinguished Boston life, and to Mrs. Otis all
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 77
visitors from Europe of rank and distinction invariably
brought letters.
It was, however, in the work of the Civil War — the
sanitary commission work — that ISIadame Otis, as she
came to be called, contributed what was perhaps the
greatest service of her life. A large building on Tremont
Street was given up to the work, and the government
gave its entire charge into the hands of Madame Otis.
All goods and money for the use of the soldiers were
deposited there. Her splendid energy, her noble ardor
of patriotism, her irresistible enthusiasm, and great ad-
ministrative ability made her the most efficient and
valuable aid to the government. One of her first acts
was to establish a " Bank of Faith," and to this contri-
butions flowed in. During the three years she was in
charge, over $1,000,000 came in, and not one penny of
this was solicited. Is it not a remarkable instance of
the absolute reliance in the most practical way that
may always be placed on the Divine power for sending
the aid that is needed for a just and holy cause ? The
entire system of aid was based on voluntary dona-
tions. During these three years she never missed
being at her post from ten to three each day, save
on Sundays and religious festivals. Madame Otis
left an impress upon Boston life that still remains
vividly.
While her work had not the marvellous scope which
characterized Mrs. Livermore's during the Civil War,
as Mrs. Livermore's was national and that of Madame
Otis restricted to the New England States, it was of the
78 BOSTON DAYS
same generous and noble quality which so signally im-
mortalizes that of Mary A. Livermore.
The literary homes of Boston were a signal feature
of the city. The home of Prof. George Ticknor, the
Spanish historian, stood on the corner of Park and
Beacon streets, and there for forty years a cordial and
gracious hospitality prevailed. After fifteen years at
Harvard, Professor Ticknor was succeeded by the poet
Longfellow, and in 1835 he went abroad with his
family, remaining four years and sharing the social life
of courts and nobility. It was at the Ticknor house
that Lafayette was entertained when in Boston, at a
little Sunday night supper which is still famous in
Boston annals. Among other guests were President
and Mrs. Quincy, Daniel Webster, and Mr. Prescott.
The Adams family were then, as always, prominent in
all that made for the local as well as the national de-
velopments of progress. The comparative modernity
of the Republic is emphasized by the fact that the
great-grandson of its second President, John Adams,
died within the last decade, with a more fomous brother
still living. John Quincy Adams, grandson of the Presi-
dent whose name he bears, great-grandson of John
Adams, who succeeded Washington., and the son of
Charles Francis Adams, the first Republican Minister
to the Court of St. James, died at his home. Mount
Wollaston, Quincy, at the comparatively early age of
sixty-one. In a national sense he was hardly prominent,
but a deep interest is associated with his honored and
historic name. The antiquarian might prowl about the
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 79
quaint old towns of Quincy, Quincy Adams, Braintree,
and the estate of Mount Wollaston with no little
reward. The three towns are a little out of Boston,
and the resident traveller is always amused to see the
way strangers throw open the car windows and lean
out and gaze as the quaint names are called by the
conductor. The widow of Col. Edmund Quincy died
in Braintree in 1700, and Judge Sewall, who attended
the funeral, thus describes the event in his journal,
which is preserved among historical documents.
" Because of the porrige of snow [writes Judge Sewall]
the bearers rid to the grave, alighting a little before they
came there. Manners, Cousin Edward and his sister rid
first ; then Mrs. Anna Quincy, widow, behind Mr. Allen,
and Cousin Ruth Hunt behind her husband."
The conscious way in which people took themselves
in those days has resulted in leaving the most minute
records of trifles. Very little happened, and thus they
had abundance of time to set it down. Even in the
literary life of the Nineteenth century, whenever two or
three Bostonians met together in the home of culture
they seem to have always gone home and written down
their respective remarks. In one of Louisa Alcott's
diary records she notes of an evening : " Mr. Parker
[Theodore Parker] came to me and said, ' Well, child,
how goes it ? ' ' Pretty well, sir.' * That 's brave,' he said."
In all the diaries of the Alcotts, Emerson, Margaret
Fuller, James Freeman Clarke, Sophia Hawthorne, and
Miss Peabody, the reader constantly finds recorded the
80 BOSTON DAYS
remarks some one has made durins; a call or meetiiior.
" I met Mr. Emerson by the large tree near the two
roads. He said : ' It is a fine day,' " is a typical speci-
men hardly exaggerated. It illustrates the serious way
that they all took themselves and each other. The
infinite entertainment afi'orded by all those old records
is not the least of the enjoyments of living in the very
heart of their atmosphere.
In the old Quincy house at Braintree there is one
room still hung with curious Chinese paper placed
there in 1777 to prepare to do honor to the marriage of
Dorothy Quincy and John Hancock. The house in
which John Adams died is still extant, incorporated
with the larger mansion built on its site, and in it is
still one room panelled, from floor to ceiling, in solid
mahogany. The Adams genealogy, including the
Quincy, Hoar, and Norton branches, is a matter of
national history and need not be touched upon here.
Dr. Holmes, as is widely known by his witty poem
" Dorothy Q.," traces a family connection with the
Quincys, and Wendell Phillips and Phillips Brooks
were remotely connected with each other and with
Dr. Holmes through the Wendells. Prof Charles
Eliot Norton, of Harvard, traces his ancestry to the
Nortons who intermarried with the Quincys. New
England genealogy — if one has a taste for social
analysis and the study of hereditary traits — offers a
very fascinating field, as the individualities are so prom-
inent and as they represent ideas, movements, and the
general forces of progress.
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 81
Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England under
Lincoln, was a remarkable man. John Quincj Adams,
who had been locally prominent in politics, rather
endured than desired political office ; he was a good
citizen in his town of Quincy, where he had always
lived, passing the winter in his town house on Mount
Vernon Street in Boston. The Adams family are not
imaginative and ardent by temperament, but they are
conspicuous for sound intellect, cool, calm, and more or
less dispassionate views ; they are logical, honorable, and
just. Many people believe the calm, dispassionate one
to be the genuine New England type, but nothing could
be more remote from the truth. New England is the
land of romance, of poetry, of imaginative grace, of
spiritual fervor, of idealism. It is the home of the
mystic. If one can find and fit the magic key he can
open and read at will many a curious volume of for-
gotten history. There have been such treasures of
moral earnestness, of religious faith, of spiritual ecstasy
poured out in New England that it has become trans-
muted into a certain fine exaltation of life — into artistic
and creative energy.
The most notable member of the Adams family of
late years is Charles Francis Adams, Senior, a lawyer, a
railway magnate, and a man of letters. One of the
ablest, the most fascinating and significant contributions
to contemporary literature is his great work, " Three
Episodes of Massachusetts History."
Before the decade of 1840-50 few Bostonians left
their homes for the summer ; but the Ticknors always
6
82 BOSTON DAYS
went to Nahant or Portland ; the Prescotts had their
country house ; Mr. Longfellow had a cottage at
Nahant ; Mrs. Howe a cottage near Newport, and in
the summer that Tennyson's poem " In Memoriam "
was first published, George William Curtis and Charles
Sumner journeyed there to read with Mrs. Howe the
wonderful new poem that thrilled two nations.
There was an occultation of correspondence In those
days among the choice spirits. A little (undated) note
from Emerson to Whipple thus runs : —
Concord, Saturday Morning.
Dear Whipple, — I believe you bade me come to
your house to-morrow evening, and I was to make a reply
later. I hope it is not too late honorably to say that
Samuel Ward had asked me for the same hour, a little
before you at the club, but with a little uncertainty about
his being in town. But now he is, and has got my boy
there with him, and his family are such uncertain, transient
meteors that I think I must go. So you shall let me pay
my respects to you another day.
Ever yours,
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The loneliness of James Russell Lowell in those days
of his early poetic flights is revealed in the following
letter written by him to Mr. Whipple, who at that time
was editing a paper called the "Boston Notion." Mr.
Lowell did not even know the name of the editor whose
recognition of his powers was almost the first he had
received, but in his grateful appreciation of it he wrote
as follows : —
iM ^ 4
C/i
5-4
V5
r
g
i^
'tn f
^
It
1 "^
Jl ^
i
^
i
J "^
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 83
Boston, Oct. 12, 1841.
My dear Editor, — You are to me a mere nominus
umbra, — but confident that you are somebody or other, I
wish to thank you for your kind notice of me in last Satur-
day's " Notion." I regard unkind criticism as little as need
be, — yet it is owing to puffing obtained by utterly worthless
and mediocre poets, and the ease with which they obtain
access to the columns of newspapers, too common in this
country. But these unknown friends which the poor
poet makes, — these hands stretched out to give him a
grasp of grateful encouragement across whole oceans or
continents, — these make up for many troubles. Is it
not strange that poets who must be the warmest hearted of
men should most often be the hardliest educated? It was
very grateful to me as I took up your paper in a public
room, where there was but one face in many that I knew,
and saw some kuid words about myself, to think that,
perchance, the writer was now in the room and that
among these strangers I yet had a friend. I send you
my volume, which I hope you will like, and if you find
anything congenial in the enclosed poem, print it in your
next "Notion." And so, my good unknown, I am yours
in sympathy,
James Kussell Lowell.
P. S. — It just occurred to me that some editors prefix
the notes of their correspondence to their verses. If you
print my poem, do not print this.
J. R. L.
The home of Mr. Longfellow was a centre of emi-
nent and beautiful hospitalities. In 1852 Kossuth, the
Hungarian patriot and exile, accompanied by his friends,
Count and Countess Pulszky, visited Boston. Mr. Long-
fellow gave a dinner for them at which Mrs. Howe was
84 BOSTON DAYS
also a guest. " Uncle Tom's Cabin " had appeared, and
the poet records that every evening he and Mrs. Long-
fellow read themselves into despair over that tragic
story of which one million copies were sold within the
first year of its publication.
" The Scarlet Letter " was published and made a
profound impression. Charlotte Cushman was playing,
and in one of Victor Hugo's dramas, the " Actress of
Padua," she especially interested Mr. Longfellow, al-
though he thought her acting too powerful and says,
"I like less acting better." Dr. and Mrs. Howe,
Charles Sumner, and INlr. and IVIrs. Longfellow shared a
box on the occasion of the premiere of this play, Jenny
Lind entranced the music-lovers and the populace alike,
and a group of sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
appeared in " Graham's Magazine," inciting discussion :
President Quincy of Harvard was then living, " hale and
hearty at the age of eighty," as Longfellow records, and
knowing everything except, perhaps, his own name,
which tradition says that he forgot on one occasion
when in the post office inquiring for his mail. Fanny
Kemble Butler came with her glowing interpretations
of Shakspeare, reading " The Tempest," " Romeo and
Juliet," " Macbeth," and other plays, and of the former
Mr. Longfellow writes : —
" We went to hear Mrs. Butler read ' The Tempest.'
A crowded house. A reading-desk covered with red, on
a platform, like the gory block on the scaffold; upon
which the magnificent Fanny bowed her head in tears and
great emotion. But in a moment it became her triumphal
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 85
chariot. What glorious reading ! the spiritual Ariel, the
stern Prospero, the lover Ferdinand, Miranda the beloved,
Stefano, Trinculo, Caliban, — each had a voice distinct
and separate, as of many actors. And what a glorious
poem is ' The Tempest ! ' — hardly a play, for its dramatic
interest is its least interest. It is an emblem of the
power of mind over matter. Ariel is an embodied thought
projected from Prospero, obeying his will, subduing and
controlling the elements. It is the apotheosis of intellect.
The poet's hand here sweeps the whole harp of human
life, from Ariel to Caliban, the great bass string."
Wagner's music was beginning to be known even
in the early fifties, and Mr. Longfellow accompanied
INIrs. Howe to an orchestral concert when the wonder-
ful overture to Tannhauser was produced. Jenny Lind
with the young pianist, Mr. Goldschmidt, who after-
ward became her husband, went out to call on the poet
and lunched with him and Mrs. Longfellow ; Sumner
dined with them, and they gave a farewell dinner to
Hawthorne, on the eve of his sailing for his consulate at
Liverpool, at which the guests were Emerson, Arthur
Hugh Clough, Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton. Dr.
and Mrs. Howe give a dinner at which Sumner Adams
and Palfrey are guests, and Mr. Longfellow notes that
he, a singer, came in as Alfred among the Danes.
Arthur Hugh Clough, then visiting Boston, gave a din-
ner at his hotel, the old Tremont House, to Emerson,
and invited Mr. Longfellow, Charles Sumner, Horatio
Greenough, the sculptor, Lowell, Hawthorne, and
Theodore Parker, and they all adjourned to Music Hall
to hear Alboni. Mrs. Browning's " Drama of Exile "
BOSTON DAYS
appeared, and all literary Boston read it. The tragedy
of Margaret Fuller's death occurred, and Mr. Longfellow
writes : —
" The papers bring us news of the wreck of the ' Eliza-
beth ' on Fire Island, and the loss of Horace Sumner,
and of Margaret Fuller, Marchioness d'Ossoli, with her
husband and cliild. AVhat a calamity ! A singular woman
for New England to produce ; original and somewhat self-
willed ; but full of talent and full of work. A tragic end
to a somewhat troubled and romantic life."
A potent and beneficent individuality of those days
was Elizabeth Peabody, the sister-in-law of Horace
Mann and of Nathaniel Hawthorne ; the friend of
Channing, Allston, Emerson, Theodore Parker, Mar-
garet Fuller, Sarah Holland Adams, James Freeman
Clarke ; of Motley, Bayard Taylor, Bronson Alcott ; of
Mazzini, Froebel, Carlyle, Lord Houghton, George
Eliot, and many another of the greatest minds of a half
century ago, — a woman who lived much in the lives
of other people. She was the friend, the sympathizer,
the inspirer of ideas. She cared nothing for personal
fame, and everything for personal service.
Hawthorne and Elizabeth Peabody were close friends
before he became engaged to her younger sister, Sophia,
and on her return one day from an absence it is said
that, observing the sympathy of attraction between
them, she said, " I now take you both into my heart."
All the forces of heredity predestined Elizabeth
Peabody as an educator. Her father, ])r. Nathaniel
Peabody, met the woman who became his wife while
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 87
he was teaching a school for boys and she one for girls
in Andover. This was in 1800. Two years later they
were married, and in May of 1804 Elizabeth Peabody
was born in Billerica, a little village between Lowell
and Boston, where Mrs. Peabody had established a
boarding-school for girls. The mother was a trained
English scholar with cultivated tastes and never-failing
aspirations. The father was a classical student and
taught his daughter Latin in her earliest childhood.
Their home was of refining and uplifting influences.
They had no money, but they had possessions more
valuable.
Miss Peabody was one of that remarkable group of
persons born in or near Boston in those early years of the
past century. She began teaching at the age of sixteen
(in 1820), and her intellectual activity hardly waned
from that date until about 1888 or 1889. At one time
she had a class of girls in Salem whom she instructed in
literature ; she had a school on Mount Vernon Street
in Boston, and she assisted Mr. Alcott in the famous
school he established in this city. On Sept. 22, 1839,
Mr. Alcott records in his diary : —
" I opened school to-day with thirty children, and am
assisted by Miss Peabody, who unites intellectual and
practical qualities of no common order. Her proposition
to aid me comes from the deep interest she feels in
human culture. ... I have spared no pains to surround
the pupils with appropriate emblems of intellectual and
spiritual life. Paintings, busts, books, have been deemed
important. I wish to fill every form that dresses the
88 BOSTON DAYS
senses with significance and life, so that whatever is seen,
said, or done sliall picture ideal beauty and perfection,
thus placing the child in a scene of tranquil repose and
spiritual loveliness."
Somewhere in the early decade of 1830-40, the
Peabodys removed to a house on West Street in this
city, where Miss Peabody utilized their front room as a
foreign book store and circulating library. She im-
ported the French and German books of the day, and
this room became a meeting place, a " literary centre,"
where groups of the people who were making the
thought of the day could be found. There would drop
in Emerson, Dr. Hedge, James Freeman Clarke, and
Margaret Fuller. The idea of the Church of the
Disciples first occurred to Dr. Clarke in this room.
The Boston of this time was one that dined at two
p. M. ; that found its artistic ecstasies largely satisfied
with what Henry James has since termed the '^ attenu-
ated drawings" of Flaxman ; that took a strong and
abiding interest in the movements for greater liberty
and progress in Europe, sympathizing with Kossuth and
Mazzini ; that read its German classics and held the
faith of the absolute supremacy of the spiritual life.
Their special diversion appears to have been " Conver-
sations." There was held (in 1848) a series of these
on "Self-Knowledge," in which Emerson, Thoreau,
Theodore Parker, W. H. Channing, Miss Peabody,
Mrs. Cheney, and James Freeman Clarke all took part.
In 1867 Miss Peabody again revisited Europe and
passed a winter at Rome. Every morning she break-
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 89
fasted with Charlotte Cushman — by Miss Cushmaii's
invitation — and of this time she says in a letter to a
friend : —
" Never was my mind in such a state of activity.
It seems to me that I came to my mental majority that
year, and all my own life and the world's life, as history
had taught it to me, was explained. . . . Do you recollect
how I used to come and announce my discoveries in the
world of morals and spiritual life, whose gates seemed to
be opened to me by the historical monuments as well as
the masterpieces of art? What golden hours those were
when such grand receptive hearts and imaginations
bettered one's thoughts in the reply ! "
The initiation of that reform whose fulfilment came
so slowly — the political enfranchisement of women —
was a stirring and vital idea of these days, led by sweet
Lucy Stone.
In this great movement, which has been less the
emancipation than the development and advancement
of woman's life, Lucy Stone was easily the most
potent factor. Her life pre-eminently stands for the
development of humanity. No woman of the present
or the future is so great or so fortunate as not to receive
benefit from the life of this woman, who was born into
the simple and primitive conditions of a farmer's
daughter in New England. No woman of the present
or the future is so humble or so obscure as not to have
her life broadened, her possibilities enlarged, because
Lucy Stone has lived. Her personality inspires such
tender remembrance that it is a little difficult to exclude
90 BOSTON DAYS
all personal feeling and sketch dispassionately the out-
line of this great, this noble and beautiful life. The
pen falters, and the eye sees only dimly through tears
that silent home where the music of her voice is stilled,
and from which her spirit went forth to its larger
ministry. Yet it is good to dwell on this life that was
lived so serenely, so bravely, so resplendently before us.
We may well pause before it as at a sacrament.
Lucy Stone was born near West Brookfield, Mass.,
on Aug. 13, 1818, the daughter of Francis and Hannah
H. (Matthews) Stone. Of a family of nine children she
was the eighth. She was but eight years the junior
of Margaret Fuller, whose comparatively early death
seems to throw her a generation farther backward.
She was one year the senior of Julia Ward Howe and
of James Russell Lowell. The years from 1803 to
1824 are luminous in New England history with the
appearance of the constellation of great spirits who came
as teachers to their century. They, our poets and
prophets, have shaped our Nation's destiny. In his
chancellor's address before the University of New York
in 1890 George William Curtis said : —
" Amid the exaltation and commotion of material success
let this university here annually announce in words and
deeds the dignity and superiority of the intellectual and
spiritual life, and strengthen itself to resist the insidious
invasion of that life by the superb and seductive spirit of
material prosperity."
These words convey the essence of the spirit in which
this group of rare and noble persons of that time
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 91
lived and which they taught to the world. They
stood for the supremacy of the higher life over the
lower, and among them all no braver or more resolute
work was done for humanity's uplifting than the per-
sonal work of Lucy Stone.
Her ancestry is what in New England parlance
is called " good New England stock." The expression
defines a certain flawless integrity of life that the
Pilgrim Fathers held as the first essential. To be
scrupulously honest and just, to be industrious and
intelligent, was their creed. Not unfrequently was
there narrowness and hardness in this life. It was apt
to be prosaic and colorless, but it was an eminently
sure and safe foundation for the superstructure of the
larger development that was to come. Francis and
Hannah Stone were of this quality. Mr. Stone was a
small farmer, prosperous in his activities and greatly
respected by his neighbors. But he believed, with his
generation, that the husband was the riglitly appointed
ruler over his wife, and that education in the larger
sense, while necessary for his sons, was quite superfluous
for his daughters. The little Lucy was born to combat
this. Almost from her cradle she exhibited that in-
vincible resolution that characterized her womanhood.
She was a vigorous, sturdy, uncompromising little
maiden, a keen student, standing first in her classes at
the country school, always industrious and active.
Often, she has told us, she has driven the cows over the
hills barefooted in the early dawn ere the starlight had
paled before the sunrise, when the cold dew on the
92 BOSTON DAYS
grass made her sliiver ; yet always with that radiant
sense of the beauty of the morning that was a part of
a naturally poetic nature. The household life was one
of toil. Her mother engaged in all the homely domestic
labor, and the children were taught to lend a hand as
an inevitable result of their conditions. Very early in
her childhood Lucy Stone's ruling purpose began to
assert itself She rebelled against the authority of her
father over her mother, and being told it was the law,
she said, in childish utterance, that such laws must be
changed. Even then, however unconsciously, her
destiny was upon her. Those whom the Lord hath
anointed are sealed with His seal.
When the young girl announced her intention to go
to college, her father asked : " Is the child crazy ? " He
would not — perhaps he could not — give her the
money to go. But when did ever the lack of material
aid stop in its progress a dauntless spirit? A noble
purpose, like love, laughs at locksmiths. If a god
wishes to ride, says Emerson, every chip and stem will
bud and shoot out winged feet to carry him. In the
case of Lucy Stone, a goddess wished to ride — and she
rode. In our colloquial phrasing of the day she
" arrived." Beginning in her early teens, Lucy Stone
worked and saved until she was twenty-five years old
before she had the little fund to enable her to start for
Oberlin, the only college of the day tliat admitted
women. How did she gain it ? Not by china paint-
ing and music lessons. Instead, she earned money
by picking berries and selling them to buy books ;
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 93
she studied the books and became a district school
teacher. And a most successful one she was ; still, being
only a woman, she received only a fraction of the salary
paid to men. The day came that this dauntless young
woman started for Oberlin. Her scanty resources were
too precious to afford comforts, and in crossing Lake
Erie she slept with several other women on a pile of
grain sacks on deck because staterooms were beyond
their finances. It is a picture to be held in reverence
by the younger women whose possibilities in life are so
infinitely enlarged and uplifted because of the girl who
picked berries to buy books and who slept on deck that
she might journey to a college course. Can too much
honor be given to that sublime courage that held its
unfaltering view of the end, however hard and distaste-
ful the means ?
Here was an American heroine. Let us never cover
from sight one homely detail of her privations and her
sacrifices. That she did housework in the " Ladies'
Boarding-hall" at Oberlin at three cents an hour ; that
she cooked her own food in her room and lived —
as she herself related the story — on fifty cents a
week ; that she washed and ironed her clothes, and
added to this teaching in the preparatory department,
— let this ascendency of the higher powers over the
lower never be concealed in any sketch of the life of
Lucy Stone. Dante, in his exile and poverty, was not
more noble in exaltation of spirit than this New Eng-
land farmer's daughter in her quest for knowledge and
intellectual resources. But, ah ! the outward poverty
94 BOSTON DAYS
and the inward riches ! The limitations in the material,
the extensions into the spiritual ! Here was the young
woman boarding herself at fifty cents a week and doing
housework at three cents an hour, yet being able to
donate her time and strength and services to teach a
colored school for the many fugitive slaves whom Ober-
lin, as a station of the " underground railroad," attracted.
During this time she made her first public speech, and
was remonstrated with by the wife of the President
of Oberlin for doing what was unscriptural and un-
womanly ! In 1847, at the age of twenty-nine, she
graduated from Oberlin. At once she entered on what
was to be the work of her life. After giving some lec-
tures for " woman's rights," as the incipient movement
was then known, she was engaged by the x4ntislaYery
Society to speak. But the cause of women took prece-
dence in her mind. Rev. Samuel J. May remonstrated,
and she finally arranged to divide her lectures between
the two causes.
Volumes could be written regarding her early lecture
experiences and the social conditions of the time. There
was no demand for her theme. She had to overcome
prejudice, break down barriers, create the demand for
the lecture, and then meet it.
She would go out to put up her own posters with a
paper of tacks and a stone for a hammer.
But the personality of Lucy Stone not only disarmed
prejudice, but won all hearts. Her daughter, Alice
Stone Blackwell, relates this incident : —
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 95
" At one woman's rights meeting in New York the mob
was making such a clamor that it was impossible for any
speaker to be heard. One after another tried it, only to
have his or her voice drowned forthwith by hoots and
howls. William Henry Channing advised Lucretia Mott,
who was presiding, to adjourn the meeting. Mrs. Mott
answered, ' When the hour fixed for adjournment comes,
I will adjourn the meeting; not before.' At last Lucy
Stone was introduced. The mob became as quiet as a
congregation of church-goers ; but as soon as the next
speaker began, the howling recommenced, and it con-
tinued to the end. At the close of the meeting, when
the speakers went into the dressing-room to get their hats
and cloaks, the mob surged in and surrounded them ; and
Lucy Stone, who was brimming over with indignation,
began to reproach them for their behavior. ' Oh, come,'
they answered, ' you need n't say anything ; we kept
still for you.' "
In 1853 tlicre was a "hearing" before the legislature
of Massachusetts for a petition for woman's rights, the
first signature being that of Mrs. Alcott. Among the
speakers were Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and
Lucy Stone. Among the hearers was Henry B. Black-
well. Already in sympathy with her speeches, he was
charmed with the speaker. For tliree years he pressed
his suit that she would be his wife, and at last was
rewarded with success, although she had resolved
never to marry, but to devote her life to her work.
Her husband won her by the pledge and promise that
she should find greater support in it through him.
How perfectly that promise has been kept, the world
knows. Truly the marriage of Henry B. Blackwell
96 BOSTON DAYS
and Lucy Stone was one that fulfilled the poet's ideal
of being
" yoked in all exercise of noble aims."
In her home in West Brookfield, Mass., in 1855,
they were married. Colonel Higginson, then an Unita-
rian clergyman, performing the ceremony. It was mu-
tually agreed that the bride should retain her own name
and be known as Mrs. Lucy Stone. This was to her a
matter of the ethics of individuality.
Since then what is the story of their wedded life?
It is that of a crescendo of personal happiness, of
mutual work for humanity through the uplifting and
advancement of women, of the ever-deepening honor
and affection of friends and of society at large, of modest
prosperity, and a wise and beautiful ordering of life.
For a few years after their marriage they lived in
Orange, N. J. There was born to them their only
child, Alice Stone Blackwell, now a young woman
whose literary genius and whose eloquence as a speaker
is already widely recognized. Miss Blackwell is a poet
and a scholar. She is a graduate of Boston University ;
is now the editor of the " Woman's Journal," and is
the most able and effective and brilliant of the younger
women speakers in New England.
The records of conventions and legislative movements
in which Lucy Stone was so important a factor have
recorded themselves in national history. More than
thirty years ago Lucy Stone, William Lloyd Gar-
rison, Julia Ward Howe, George William Curtis,
Colonel Higginson, and others, organized the American
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 97
Woman's Suffrage Association. Its work is well known
to all.
The home of Lucy Stone and Henry B. JSlackwell,
on the seashore in Dorchester, a beautiful suburb
of Boston, is a large white house with charming grounds.
It faces the south, looking out on the dreamy blue
of the Milton hills, which Mrs. Stone always called
" my little blue hills." On the east is the sea, with
the picturesque curve of Squantum thrown far out in
the restless water. Entering the house there is on the
right a large drawing-room with its grand piano, and
on the left the library, its centre-table always littered
with late books and periodicals, and its beautiful
" sunset window," where the glories of the changeful
western sky gleam through the flowering shrubs and
trees. Above, Mrs. Stone's own room was that whose
eastern windows looked over the sea, and from
the south took in the entire range of her " little blue
hills." With nothing for show or mere luxury about
the house, it is the ideal home of comfort, of peace, of
sunny sweetness. The hospitality was simple and cor-
dial ; it was especially extended to those most in need
of its comforting. Over young women alone in the city
Lucy Stone's heart especially yearned. To them went
her first invitation to her Thanksgiving or her Christmas
dinner ; for them her carriage was sent to meet them at
the station. Not those in whose society she might,
perhaps, find most of intellectual enjoyment, but those
to whom her kindness and her hospitable home could
give pleasure, was her first thought. If ever the life of
7
98 BOSTON DAYS
the true follower of Christ were lived, it was lived by
Lucy Stone. Professing no specific creed, she practised
the divine life. The church affiliation of the Blackwells
was with that of James Freeman Clarke, now succeeded
by Rev. Dr. Ames, whose personal holiness and rare
eloquence as a preacher make the deepest impression
on the Boston days of the present.
Up to the last months of her life INIrs. Stone knew
little abatement of its activities. Her blue eyes kept
their luminous clearness ; her fair cheek its hint of
apple bloom ; her brown hair was scarcely silvered
under the delicate lace cap that rested lightly over it.
The wonderful sweetness of her voice always had an
irresistible power. Her presence on the platform was
magnetic in its serene and potent attraction.
Lucy Stone was a remarkable combination of strength,
sweetness, serenity, and sunshine. She had tlie tem-
perament of exhilaration. She never lost her youtli.
She was never careworn or sad or depressed, because
she always looked beyond. Her tenderness was as
inexhaustible as her faith ; her sweetness as infinite as
her strength. She had a mind of the most remarkable
clearness and of logical power. " Lucy Stone would
have made a great lawyer," once said Murat Halstcad
of her. She could hold any argument, always with
invincible strength and firmness, but always with that
same marvellously serene sweetness. Slie was the
very embodied spirit of the morning, the Prophetess of
the New Day.
And always was there with her that deep tenderness
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 99
and solicitude for the comfort of others. " Are you
dressed warmly enough ? " might be her salutation on
a cold day. Never of herself, always of others was her
thought. She was royal by nature. Well might the
poet have said of her : —
" She doeth little kindnesses,
Which most leave undone, or despise.
For naught that sets one heart at ease,
Or giveth happiness or peace,
Is low-esteemed in her eyes."
Never did there fade from her face that trustful,
happy, uplifted look. It was always —
" A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet."
Lucy Stone has left to us the heritage of a singularly
noble character. The world is the fairer that she has
lived in it. There were none of the ordinary associa-
tions of death when this radiant and prophetic spirit
put on immortality. We thought of her only as entering
into the life more abundant and gaining the use of still
greater powers than those she so nobly exercised here.
She has left the world better than she found it. What
greater tribute can be paid ? Life is made possible to
all by the greatness of the few. The degree in which
this greatness is shown depends solely on the spiritual
quality of the individual, and not in the least degree
upon rank or circumstances. The world's greatest
benefactors have been her prophets and her poets. It
is ideas and ideals that are of value. It is not posses-
L.ofC.
100 BOSTON DAYS
sions, but thought, that can relate its power to the
needs of humanity, and the sublimest gift to man was
given by One who had not where to lay his head.
And His gift was for all time, and is so beyond price
that it is forever free to the poorest.
The Boston grouping at this time is one of historic
interest. There were the special students and thinkers,
— Alcott, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody,
Theodore Parker, James Freeman Clarke, Dr. Hedge,
Mrs. Caroline Ball, who also affiliated with every noble
effort in the service of humanity and with the literary
interests of the day as well as with their special
research and study in metaphysics and philosophy ; and
there was Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, " the Cadmus of
the Blind," as Whittier called him ; Dr. Edward Everett
Hale, then a young clergyman ; Hawthorne, held spell-
bound under the magic of I'omance ; Edwin Percy Whip-
ple, the most sympathetic of friends and critics ; James
T. Fields, who at the head of a liberal publishing house
was doing so much toward making the best foreign
literature accessible on this side. Thackeray came and
lectured, and was hospitably entertained by Mr. Fields
and Mr. Longfellow ; Jenny Lind charmed the city with
her lyric art ; Rachel appeared, offering a new revelation
of dramatic interpretation, and the great forces of art
and thought were a condition of radiant energy. It was
a most remarkable period, and one which is almost
without parallel since the golden days of Pericles.
II
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS
For Joy and Beauty planted it,
With faery gardens cheered,
And boding fancy haunted it
With men and women weird.
Emerson.
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS
Behind thee leave thy merchandise,
Thy churches and thy charities ;
And leave thy peacock wit behind ;
Enough for thee the primal mind
That flows in streams, that breathes in wind
Leave all thy pedant lore apart ;
God hid the whole world in thy heart.
Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns,
Gives all to them who all renounce.
Emerson.
PHE Concord idyl is the most classic chapter
in American history. The New England
town lying in its quiet beauty on a placid
river, amid pine-clad hills, has become the shrine of
literary pilgrimage, invested with a mystic atmosphere
of poetic beauty and consecration which binds the
most casual comer to maintain the honor of the place.
In the amber lights of an autumn day it is a golden
dream, under the embowering yellow maples, shot
through with scarlet gleams, under which one saunters
conscious of presences unseen, of voices that fall on no
mortal ear, of a " diviner Silence " in which dwell those
who
" far beyond our vision and our hail
Are heard forever, and are seen no more."
One treads the winding way as a via sacra and sees
104. BOSTON DAYS
" in every star's august serenity
And in the rapture of the flaming rose"
some subtle trace of vanished touch and tone. Ah,
how profoundly does one feel the truth of the lines:
" Empires dissolve and peoples disappear ;
Song passes not away.
Captains and conquerors leave a little dust,
And kings a dubious legend of their reign ;
The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust ;
The poet doth remain."
The Concord seer who crowned our days " with flower
of perfect speech ; " the greatest of American romancists
who left his " unfinished window in Aladdin's tower ; "
the speculative philosopher whom Lowell compared to
the Phidian Jove — Emerson, Hawthorne, and Alcott
— form an immortal trio inseparably connected with
Concord. Here was the scene of their life and work in
their more essential phases ; and here, on the crest of the
hill overlooking Sleepy Hollow, lie buried all that was
mortal of those who have left on life and literature a
permanent impress.
But the group around these three central figures
was itself remarkable, — Thoreau, Frank B. Sanborn,
William Henry Channing, whom ]\Ir. and Mrs. Sanborn
took into their home and cherished through life as a
brother ; Louisa Alcott, Samuel Hoar ; and the friends
who came and went in the Emerson, Hawthorne, and
Alcott households enjoying hours of the most ideal
social intercourse because it was an intercourse based
on spiritual gravitation. Thoreau, who graduated from
CONCORD, ASl) JTS FAMOUS AUTHORS 105
Harvard in 1837, " witfiout any literary distinction,"
as Emerson records ; stoic and recluse, betook himself
in 1845 to the shores of Lake Walden, where for two
years he lived the life of solitary labor and study, ex-
changing^ his hermit's hut for a brief residence in the
town jail, because he refused to pay his taxes, from
which he was released by a friend who paid them for
him. He was never disturbed by outward things,
which, he said, respect the devout mind, and he claimed
that " a mental ecstasy is never interrupted." Emerson
notes that the biography of Thoreau is found in his
verses, — as in this stanza : —
" I hearing get, who had. but ears,
And sight, who had but eyes before ;
I moments live, who lived but years,
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore."
It is Emerson who most truly recognized the inner life
of this strange being, and who sums up all Thoreau's
character in the words : —
" His soul was made for the noblest society ; he had
in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world ;
wherever there is knowlerlge, wherever there is virtue,
wherever there is beauty, he will find a home."
The homes and haunts of Emerson, Alcott, Haw-
thorne, and Thoreau offer an objective point for as classic
a pilgrimage as can be found in the region of the lake
poets of England, or to the heath where the witches
appeared to Macbeth, to that street in Florence on
which stands Dante's house, or to Casa Guidi, which
106 BOSTON DAYS
was so long the home of the Brownings. Emerson
was one of the few greatest spirits that have ever come
into this world, bringing a message of the higher possi-
bilities of life ; and even yet we stand too near fully to
recognize his supreme power as a spiritual seer.
Alcott was an exceptional individuality in his absolute
nobility of thought; Hawthorne the greatest magician
in prose romance ; Thoreau, unique, unworldly, and
illustrating in his life the wide distinction between the
things that are significant and' insignificant ; Louisa
Alcott, a woman whose greatness of character excelled
even her literary fame : and the circle that these great
spirits drew about them will forever remain an impres-
sive one in literary history.
The town' of Concord is unparalleled by any other in
America. It has the distinctive New England flavor,
as a matter of course ; but beyond this there is more.
The stamp of high intelligence and refinement Concord
shares with many another town of New England, and,
indeed, of an entire country ; but there is a special recog-
nition among its residents of what one may perhaps not
inaptly designate as the consecration in the air, — the
heritage left by the high spirits that have vanished from
mortal eye. " After all, it is the fine souls that serve
us, and not what we may call fine society," truly said
Emerson ; and if one falls inadvertently into a bit of
transcendental dialect and refers to Concord as a town
of " fine souls " the reader will readily pardon him.
Although the most famous of the townspeople have
passed on to the life beyond this, there still remain
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 107
noted leaders, and a most refined and cultured circle of
people. The name of Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, a wit,
poet, and scholar and distinguished as a social scientist,
author, reformer, and philanthropist, readily recurs to
all in connection with Concord, as does the name of
that supremely gifted genius, Daniel French, the artist
whose great work entitled " Death and the Sculptor "
was regarded as the finest piece of sculpture shown at
the Columbian Exposition.
The beautiful free library of the town, whose annual
circulation averages over 23,000, among a population
of 3,000, attracts the visitor, and within he will find the
portrait of Emerson, painted by David Scott in Edin-
burgh in 1848; Raphael Mengs' copy of Titian's
Columbus ; Marshall's copy of Stuart's Washington ;
a bust of Hawthorne ; French's busts of Emerson,
Alcott, and Miss Alcott ; Gould's bust of Emerson ;
SchofTs engraving, Rouse's crayon portrait of Emerson, —
the finest likeness of him ; a bust of Plato, and Dexter's
bust of Agassiz; a landscape by Edward Simmons,
who was a native of Concord ; a bust of Horace Mann,
and other works of artistic interest and local association.
Loitering along the long street, one passes the former
residence of Hon, Samuel Hoar, where his son, Judge
Hoar, was born, and who died in Concord in 1856.
The house is now in possession of the third generation
of the family. It was the daughter of the elder Hoar,
Elizabeth, who was the betrothed of Emerson's tenderly
beloved brother, Charles, who died in 1836, and of
whom Emerson wrote to his wife : —
108 BOSTON DAYS
" A soul is gone, so costly and so rare that few persons
were capable of knowing its price. In losing him I
have lost my all, for he was born an orator and a
writer."
The little shops along the street in Concord all
placard their windows with photographs and views
of the local celebrities and noted places. No stranger
could fail to realize how all-pervading is the pride and
sympathy of the town in the great spirits that have left
it their heritage of fame.
From Monument Square at the east end several roads
diverge, — one running past the " Old Manse " to the
bridge and the statue of the Minute Man, where was
fired " the shot heard round the world ; " on another,
one comes to the home of Emerson and goes on to the
" Orchard House," where Alcott lived, and on whose
grounds stands the little hillside chapel where the
"School of Philosophy " was held from 1878 to 1886.
The approach to the " Old Manse " is through a
sombre avenue which was originally of the black ash-
trees, but these dying, it has mostly been filled in with
maples. Two high posts of granite frown upon the
outer entrance. On the hill which rises between the
" Old Manse " and the village, is a single poplar-tree out-
lined against the sky. The Manse was built in 1/65 for
Rev. William Emerson, the grandfather of Ralph Waldo.
He married Phoebe Bliss. His early death left her a
widow at the age of thirty-nine, with a group of little
children, and she soon became the wife of Dr. Ezra
Ripley, a man nine years her junior, who succeeded
^^'M
i % ,J•.l"■^.^^^■.
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 109
Mr. Emerson as iniiiister of the parish. Dr. Ripley, who
was a character in his day, planted the orchard that still
stands sloping down to the river. He often discovered
large providences in small events. Purchasing a
" shay," he recorded the fact in his diary, and added :
" The Lord grant it may be a comfort and blessing to
my family." On their all being overturned in it, he
records : " I desire that the Lord would teach me suit-
ably to repent this Providence, to make suitable re-
marks on it, and to be suitably affected by it." His
long prayer usually included meteorological appeals,
and he especially petitioned against lightning, that it
might not "lick up our spirits." He was a just and
good man, officially severe, as became the times, and
most tenderly sympathetic in his own nature. The
" Old Manse " has sheltered, at one time and another,
nearly all the noted divines of New England ; and the
chamber where they slept is still known as the " saints'
rest." Its walls are covered with inscriptions. The
study is kept just as it was one hundred years ago, and
it is said that still at the dead of night unseen hands
lift the latch and currents of cold air rush in.
Emerson was the enchanter whose magic, like that of
Merlin, cast its spell on the atmosphere. "He was
surrounded by men who ran to extremes in their idio-
syncrasies," said Dr. Holmes : " Alcott in speculations
which often led him into the fourth dimension of men-
tal space ; Hawthorne, who brooded himself into a
dream-peopled solitude ; Thoreau, the nullifier of civili-
zation, who insisted on nibbling his asparagus at the
no BOSTON DAYS
wrong end, to say nothing of idolaters and echoes. He
kept his bahuice among all."
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, on Sum-
mer Street, now in tlie heart of business thoroughfares,
on May 26, 1803, and any reference to him cannot but
invite meditation . on the spiritual seer and the poet
whose influence only deepens and increases as the years
go by and as humanity progresses to higher planes.
The appreciation of Emerson is not limited to any cult :
he is more universal even than Goethe ; and while he is
the delight of the scholar and of the saint, he is no less
the delight, the iuspirer, of the enthusiasm of youth, of
the man of culture and gifts, or of those whose life is
largely given to toil, or hampered by trial or privation.
Indeed, it is to these that he is all-essential. For it is
Emerson who is supremely, out of all the entire world
of authors, "the friend aiid aider of all who would
live in the spirit." Emerson is a poet for poets ; he is
the seer, the diviner, the prophet ; he is the most re-
markable spiritual teacher of this century. There could
hardly be to-day any subject so profitable to engage the
general attention as that of his life, his influence, and
the illumination on the problems of existence which he
has contributed to the world.
In 1G34 the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, rector of Wood-
hill and Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, came
to this country from England, and was one of the
founders of the present town of Concord, Mass. His
granddaughter, Elizabeth Bulkeley, married Rev. Joseph
Emersou. Their son married Rebecca Waldo, aud
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 111
they had a son, Joseph, who also became a minister
and who married Phoebe Bliss. Rev. Joseph Emerson
was pastor of the Unitarian Church in Concord, and he
lived in the " Old Manse." The famous Mary Moody
Emerson — the aunt to whom Ralph Waldo Emerson
owed so much — was a daughter of Rev. Joseph and
Phoebe (Bliss) Emerson, and among their other children
was William, who became a minister and married Ruth
Haskins. The Rev. William and Ruth (Haskins)
Emerson were the parents of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
His grandfather, Rev. Joseph Emerson, died at the
age of thirty- three. He was the man who used to
pray every night that none of his descendants might
ever be rich. He was a classical scholar, a devoted
lover of the Iliad, and he ruined his health by his devo-
tion to study. After his death Mrs. Emerson became
the wife of Dr. Ezra Ripley, — her husband's successor
as pastor of the church, who was nine years her
junior.
Rev. William Emerson recorded in his diary that in
June of 1796 he " rode out with the pious and amiable
Ruth Haskins, and conversed with her on the subject
of matrimony," — apparently to good purpose, as they
were married in +he following October.
After this marriage he records in his diary : —
' ' We are poor and cold, and have little meal and little
wood, but, thank God, courage enough. In 1799 he was
invited to be the pastor of the First Church in Boston, and
the emoluments of his pastorate were fixed at $14 a week ;
also the parish dwelling-house and twenty cords of wood."
112 BOSTON DAYS
He died at the age of forty-two, in May, 1811, leav-
ing his young wife with six children, of whom Ralph
Waldo, born in May, 1803, was the third, and all were
under ten years of age.
The " pious and amiable Ruth," left a widow with
her family of children, was constantly assisted and
invigorated by the care and help of Mary Moody
Emerson, the sister of her husband, who took a lively
interest in the little flock. " Educated, " she exclaimed ;
" they were born to be educated ! " There was a new
family of the little Ripleys, and Mary Moody had been
taken by her grandmother in Maiden. Here she had
grown up and lived, and only occasionally saw her
mother and her little half-brothers and sisters, who lived
on in the " Old Manse " at Concord.
She was the most unique character of her time, and
the curious story of her life must always stand out as
a marked chapter in New England biography. In a
letter written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his early
life, referring to his aunt, he says : —
"Give my love to her, — -love and honor. She must
always occupy a saint's place in my household ; and I
have no hours of poetry and philosophy since I knew
these things, into which she does not enter as a genius."
Mary Moody Emerson was born in Concord in 1774,
and died (in 1863) on Long Island. She was born
just before the opening of the Revolution. Her father
was the minister of Concord, and as a chaplain went to
Ticonderoga where he died. His wife married again.
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 113
and Mary was reared by her grandmother in Maiden,
Mass. The second husband of Mrs. Emerson was
Dr. Ezra Ripley, as before noted, and a new family
of children sprang up. In the old farmhouse at
Maiden, Mary Moody Emerson lived a varied and
curious life. " What a subject is her life and mind for
the finest novel ! " her illustrious nephew has said of her.
From her journal, under date of November, 1805, we
learn that she " rose before light ; visited from necessity
once, and once for books ; read Butler's ' Analogy/
Cicero's ' Letters,' — a few ; washed, carded, cleaned
house, and baked." " There is a sweet pleasure," she
says, " in bending to circumstances while superior to
them."
Emerson, writing of her, said : —
"Her early reading was Milton, Young, Akenside,
Samuel Clarke, Jonathan Edwards, and always the
Bible. Later, Plato, Plotinus, Marcus Antoninus,
Stewart, Coleridge, Cousin, Herder, Locke, Madame de
Stael, Channing, Mackintosh, Byron. Nobody can read
in her manuscript, or recall the conversation of old-school
people, without seeing that Milton and Young had a
religious authority in their mind, and nowise the slight,
merely entertaining quality of modern bards. And
Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, — how venerable and organic
as Nature they are in her mind! What a subject is her
mind and life for the finest novel ! When I read Dante,
the other day, and his paraphrases to signify with more
adequateness Christ or Jehovah, whom do you think I
was reminded of? Whom but Mary Emerson and her
eloquent theology? She had a deep sympathy with
8
114 BOSTON DAYS
genius. When it was unhallowed, as in Byrou, she had
none the less, whilst she deplored and affected to de-
nounce him. But she adored it when ennobled by char-
acter. She liked to notice that the greatest geniuses
have died ignorant of their power and influence. She
wished you to scorn to shine.
" For years she had her bed made in the form of a
coffin, and delighted herself with the discovery of the
figure of a coffin made every evening on their sidewalk
by the shadow of a church tower which adjoined the house,
" Saladin caused his shroud to be made, and carried it
to battle as his standard. She made up her shroud,
and death still refusing to come, and she thinking it a
pity to let it lie idle, wore it as a night-gown, or a day-
gown, nay, went out to ride in it, on horseback, in her
mountain roads, until it was worn out. Then she had
another made up, and as she never travelled without
being provided for this dear and indispensable contin-
gency, I believe she wore out a great many."
A more extraordinary character was never known than
Mary Moody Emerson. Yet she had the quality of
greatness, — vast mental capacity and resources, spir-
itual fervor, perpetual aspiration. With these went the
constant conflict with circumstances, the constant and
triumphant assertion also of the potency of spirit over
the temporary vexations of the material world.
On the low stone that marks her grave in the Emer-
son lot in Sleepy Hollow are the lines : —
" She gave high counsels. It was the privilege of cer-
tain boys to have this unmeasurably high standard indi-
cated to their childhood, a blessing which nothing else in
education could supply."
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 115
This eccentric aunt of Emerson's was, nevertlieless,
one of the strongest formative influences in his life.
The three brothers, Edward, Charles, and Ralph
Waldo, went to the Latin School and later to Har-
vard. At the time Emerson entered Harvard (1817)
George Ticknor was professor of modern languages
and Edward Everett of Greek. The president was
Dr. Kirkland. Emerson was chosen poet for Class
Day, but while his standing as a student was fair,
it was in no wise distinguished. Josiah Quincy,
his classmate, has said of him that he "gave no
sign of the power that was fashioning itself for
leadership in a new time." Later he taught school,
went to Europe for a year, entered the ministry, and
finally resigned his charge, as he could not conscien-
tiously administer the Lord's Supper. In September of
1829 he married Ellen Louise Tucker, who only lived
three years. In 1835 he married Miss Lydia Jackson,
of Plymouth, and on her marriage induced her to write
her name Lidian, as more euphonious with Emerson.
Miss Jackson was, at the time of her marriage to the
poet, a woman thirty-three years of age, keenly intelli-
gent and cultivated, and with exceeding sweetness of
nature. She owned her residence — the " old Winslow
house," as it was called — and proposed that they should
make that their home, but Emerson was charmed by
Concord. Before their marriage he wrote her, saying :
" I must win you to love Concord. I am born a poet, —
of a low class without doubt, yet a poet. That is my
nature and vocation. My singing, to be sure, is very
116 BOSTON DAYS
husky, and for the most part in prose. Still I am a poet
in the sense of a perceiver and dear lover of the harmo-
nies that are in soul and in matter, and especially of the
correspondences between these and those. A sunset, a
forest, a snow-storm, a certain river-view, are more to me
than many friends, and do ordinarily divide my day with
my books. Wherever I go, therefore, I guard and study
my rambling propensities. Now Concord is only one of
a hundred towns in which I could find these necessary
objects, but Plymouth, I fear, is not one. Plymouth is
streets."
It would have seemed as if the sea and Plymouth
woods might have appealed more to Emerson's poetic
sense than an inland village like Concord, quietly pic-
turesque as it is ; but they did not. He loved this quiet
town and he bought a home on the Lexington road
known as the " Coolidge house," where in September
of 1835 the wedded couple set up their household gods.
They had four children, — Waldo, Ellen, Edward, and
Edith, Waldo died in childhood, and it is for him that
Emerson's poem, " Threnody," was written, Edward
Emerson studied medicine, but of late years devotes
himself to art. Edith married a wealthy and prominent
man, Mr, Forbes, of Milton, Mass., and one of her
children, a daughter, has a talent for sculpture and has
studied under Mr. William Ordway Partridge. JNliss
Ellen Emerson has never married, and she occupies
their home in Concord, and is the idolized figure in the
entire village.
On the death of his brother Charles, Emerson wrote
to his wife : —
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 117
" And so, Lidian, I can never bring you back my noble
friend, who was my ornament, my wisdom, and my pride.
A soul is gone so costly and so rare that few persons were
capable of knowing its price, and I sliall have my sorrow
to myself, for if I speak of him I shall be thought a fond
exaggerator. He had the four-fold perfection of good
sense, of genius, of grace, and a virtue as I have never
seen them combined. . . . And you must be content
henceforth with only a piece of your husband, for the best
of his strength lay in the soul with which he must no more
on earth take counsel."
To Margaret Fuller he wrote of Alcott, saying : —
" He has more of the godlike than any man I have ever
seen, and his presence rebukes and threatens and raises.
I shall dismiss for the future all anxiety about his success.
If he cannot make intelligent men feel the presence of a
superior nature, the worse for them. I can never doubt
him. His ideal is beheld with such unrivalled distinctness
that he is not only justified, but necessitation to condemn
and to seek to approve the vast actual and cleanse the
world. . . . The most extraordinary man and the highest
genius of his time. He ought to go publishing through
the land his gospel, like them of old time. Wonderful is
the steadiness of his \ision. ... It were too much to say
that the Platonic world I might have learned to treat as
cloudlaud had I not known Alcott, who is a native of that
country. Yet I will say that he makes it as solid as
Massachusetts to me."
Under date of August, 1836, Emerson writes to one
of his brothers : —
"Mr. Alcott has spent a day here lately, — the character-
builder. An accomplished lady is stayiug with Lidian, —
118 BOSTON DAYS
Miss Margaret Fuller. She is quite an extraordinai'y per-
son for her apprehensiveness, her acquisitions, and her
power of conversation."
From the first Mr. Alcott made an impression on
Emerson that only deepened with time. Alcott was
four years his senior. " That godlike man/' Emerson
called him from the first, and " the highest genius of
his time." He asserts that Mr. Alcott "makes the
Platonic world as solid as Massachusetts to me."
Of Emerson's habits in his early married life, James
Eliot Cabot writes : —
" The morning was his time for work, and he guarded it
from all disturbances. He rose early and went to his
study, where he remained until 1 o'clock, when, partaking
of the mid-day dinner, he went to walk. In the evening
he was with his family, and he never worked late, think-
ing sleep to be a prime necessity."
The record of Mr. Emerson's life is almost exclusively
that of a spiritual biography. Not that he failed of
being in real relations witli humanity ; he was pre-
eminently in these right relations, and his life as a son,
brother, husband, father, friend, neighbor, and citizen
rang true at every touch. He was faithful, tender,
noble, and loyal. But it was the soul's journey through
the universe that interested him, and he read the eter-
nities and not the times. Like Emily Dickinson he
could have declared, —
" The only news I know
Is bulletins all day
Fi-Qui Immortality."
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 119
His lofty spirituality was conjoined, however, with
what the world agrees iu calling the practical quali-
ties. It is true that nothing is so " practical " as
spirituality of life, for when it does not give greater
tenderness, greater thought, greater consideration for
family, friends, and humanity in general, it is not the
highest spirituality at all. In the true sense of the
term practical, no one was ever more so than Jesus,
the Christ. To comfort the sorrowing, to heal the sick,
to inspire all into the radiant hopes of the higher life
and the infinite achievement possible to the soul, —
is a very practical work.
Mr. Emerson made in all three journeys to Europe, —
one in his early life and two in later years. By means
of these his circle of friends was still further enlarged, and
the friendship and correspondence between himself and
Carlyle is well known. Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, of
Harvard, edited the two large volumes of the correspond-
ence of Carlyle and Emerson, as will be remembered, —
a work which is one of the monumental contributions
to the literature of this century, and which Matthew
Arnold characterized as " the best memorial of Carlyle
which exists."
From his early life up to about 1878 Emerson lectured
largely in New England, but somewhat widely, too,
in the West. It could hardly be said that he was
a popular lecturer in the sense in which it was said of
Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, and Anna
Dickinson, but he was the most wiiming personality of
them all ; and if his lectures appealed only to the
120 BOSTON DAYS
higher order of responsive thought, that order was by
no means lacking, whether in a country town in the
West, or in the New England metropolis. The Eastern
people who are not familiar with the West or the South
do not realize the intense intellectual vitality of the
country and the country towns, — the noble and beau-
tiful aspirations of the young people. They consti-
tute a public which those familiar with it appreciate
truly.
Mr. Emerson had a certain fine and persistent instinct
of fitness, if one may call it so, that would never have
allowed him to be in debt, — to be in any undignified
position. Poverty and privation companioned his early
life, but it was always the poverty that is borne with
dignity and that had the solace of high thought. One
may accept the deprivation of fashionable society if he
have the company of the gods.
In the town of Concord Emerson was the most be-
loved citizen. He was always a working factor in
town meetings and organizations, actively interested in
the schools, the local government, the social and moral
progresSo He was never a recluse in the sense of being
indifferent to whatever made for the welfare of the
])cople. He loved his friends and neighbors, and was
beloved, — adored, indeed, by them.
And a goodly company, indeed, they were. Hon.
Samuel Hoar was a noble man, whose life and influence
contributed measurably to elevate the standard of
living. He was born in Lincoln (near Concord) in
May, 1778, and died in Concord, Nov. 2, 1856. He is
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 121
buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, and on his tomb is
a design of a window with the words : —
" The pilgrim they laid in a chamber
Whose window opened toward the sunrising.
The name of the chamber was Peace ;
There he lay till break of day and then he arose and sang."
Besides this quotation from the " Pilgrim's Progress "
there is a long inscription, of which some lines are :
"He was long one of the most eminent lawyers and
best beloved citizens of Massachusetts, — a safe coun-
sellor, a kind neighbor, a Christian gentleman. He had
a dignity that commanded the respect and a sweetness and
modesty that won the affection of all men. He practised
an economy that never wasted, and a liberality that never
spared. Of capacity for the highest offices, he never
avoided obscure duties. He never sought station of
fame or emolument, and never shrank from positions of
danger or obloquy. His days were made happy by public
esteem and private affection, . . . and he met death
with the perfect assurance of immortal life."
Elizabeth Hoar, his daughter, the betrothed of Charles
Emerson, was always regarded by Emerson as a sister,
and his mother, Madame Emerson (the '^ pious and
amiable " Ruth Haskins), who lived in his family, and
died in the fifties, always looked upon Miss Hoar as a
daughter. Elizabeth Hoar died in 1878, having lived
to be sixty-three years of age. Samuel Hoar married a
daughter of Roger Sherman. Judge E. R. Hoar, whose
death occurred a decade ago, was their son, as is
also the present Senator Hoar. Besides the Hoar
122 BOSTON DAYS
family, the Emersous, the Hawthornes, the Alcotts,
Thoreau, and Mr. and Mrs. Frank B. Sanborn made up
a remarkable circle. Such a group of residents of course
drew visitors of note, and thus for nearly half a century
Concord has been the scene of literary pilgrimage.
Margaret Fuller frequently visited at the Emersons.
Elizabeth Peabody was a familiar guest, as were the
Whipples, Mrs. Howe, James Freeman Clarke, and Dr.
Hedge.
In those days now forever vanished from all save
memory, Emerson, Alcott, Dr. Hedge, and Dr. Bartol
formed a club of their own, — an alliance defensive,
though not offensive, and exclusive of all other varieties
of meetings or gatherings. They met at stated times
for one hour, and when that was told the four
philosophers went each his own way. That they might
escape the interruptions of a rude and unfeeling world,
whose noise and bustle would jar upon the lofty medi-
tations of the transcendental mind, they met in Miss
Bartol's studio, which had been evolved from a former
stable, in the rear of her father's old" Boston house, on
Chestnut Street. Here, however often the doorbell of
the house of Bartol might ring, it could not disturb the
serenity of the great men. Of this quartet two are so
well known as to require no comment. The names of
Emerson and Alcott are as immortally linked as those
of Goethe and Schiller. Dr. Hedge was the con-
temporary and warm friend of James Freeman Clarke
and of Margaret Fnller. He lived on into a great
age, dying during this last decade, at the age of
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 123
over fourscore. His house was in Cambridge and his
specialty was German metaphysics. It was in his early
youth that the craze of German enthusiasm swept over
Boston, and found its most devoted disciples in Mr.
Hedge, Mr. Clarke, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth
Peabody. At that time Miss Peabody opened a book
store in the front room of her father's house on West
Street, for foreign books and periodicals, as they were
unable otherwise to procure their German lore. This
shop became a sort of library clubroom, and it was
here, as noted, that James Freeman Clarke first dis-
cussed his idea of founding the church to which he gave
the name of the Church of the Disciples. Dr. Hedge
graduated at Harvard and fared forth to visit Goethe,
on his subsequent tour to Europe, with letters of in-
troduction to the great poet as before noted, and he re-
turned to still further fan the flame of enthusiasm for
Goethe's language and literature. He became eminent
as a translator, as well as a philosophical essayist ; and
it is traditionally told that his intellectual force so im-
pressed its superiority on the Harvard undergraduates
of the day that he was appreciatively (if irreverently)
known to them as " Old Brains."
Dr. Holmes knew Emerson well, and despite the
" oflicial " authority of Mr. James Eliot Cabot's life of
Emerson, the biography written by Dr. Holmes has
infinitely more vitality, color, and power of communi-
cating the essential personality of Emerson. In a letter
(dated Oct. 9, 1894) to Miss Ellen Emerson, Dr. Holmes
writes : —
124 BOSTON DAYS
". . . lu a generation or two your father will be an
ideal, tending to become as mystical as Buddha, but for
these human circumstances which show that he was a
man. . . . It will delight so many people to know these
lesser circumstances of a great life that I can hardly bear
to lose sight of any of them."
This reveals the more sympathetic and related spirit
in which Dr. Holmes wrote the biography of Emerson.
The life of Mr. Cabot has the essential claims, too, but,
at all events, no lover of Emerson can afford to miss the
racy, keen-sighted, vital, and charming interpretation
given by Dr. Holmes.
Emerson's personality radiated strength and courage.
Margaret Fuller thus expressed her recognition of
him : —
"When I look forward to eternal growth I am always
aware that I am far larger and deeper for him. His
influence has been to me that of lofty assurance and sweet
serenity. I present to him the many forms of nature and
solicit them with music ; he melts them all into spirit and
reproves performance with prayer."
To Mr. Whipple, who was at one time preparing an
article on Emerson for an encyclopaedia, he wrote : —
Concord, April 22, 1859.
Dear Whipple, — I have with too much pains notched
out my calendar of two little events, but as I had begun to
fix the year of each work, thought I would wade through.
What is curious I have omitted ; namely, that by paternal
or maternal lines I am the eighth consecutive clergyman.
Othei'wise, for eight generations we are a consecutive line
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 125
of clergymen on one or the other side, reaching back to
Peter Bulkley, the founder of Concord, who is my ances-
tor. Was it not time I should vote for the necessity of
change? The rest of all this detail is for your article,
but I thought you should have it in manuscript for public
reference. Make the shortest article, for I grudge you
here to the cyclopedia, which I have not looked into, but
believe is to have nothing good but what you and Lowell
have put into it. I gave you already the ground of my
life. Yours ever,
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
About this time Mr. Emerson vrrote again to Mr.
Whipple : —
Concord, April 18.
Dear Whipple, — I am too well pleased to know that
I have fallen into your good hands, and I took up my pen
on Saturday to tell you so when I was called away per-
emptorily. I did not return home in time for the mail.
In ten or twelve days I will attend to the matter of dates,
and will make out a list of such as I may think you may
want with all the gravity which the occupation demands.
Ever yours,
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Emerson as a poet is less known than as an essayist.
But to those who revel in the latter an ever deeper joy
is found in his poetry. The profoundest spiritual mean-
ing pervades his poems as the fragrance pervades the
rose. Take these lines : —
'• Draw the breath of Eternity.
Serve thou it not for daily bread, —
Serve it for pain and fear and need.
126 BOSTON DAYS
Love it, though it hide its light ;
By love behold the sun at night.
If the law shall thee forget,
More enamoured, serve it yet.
Though it hate thee, suffer long,
Put the Spirit in the wrong."
It were an impertinence to attempt to explain a
poet's meaning ; but were ever lines more impressive
in their counsel to serve the highest right — not for
reward, nor bread, but for pain, or fear, or need ; to
love, though love's light be obscured ; to love so deeply
and truly as to work a miracle and " behold the sun at
night."
The keenest significance is often condensed in his
words as in these couplets : —
" Thought is the wages
For which I sell days."
" Would'st thou seal up the avenues of ill ?
Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill."
" What boots it ? What the soldier's mail
Unless he conquer and prevail 1 "
To the supreme gift of life, — personal charm, —
Emerson gives this tribute : —
" I hold it of little matter
Whether your jewel be of pure water,
A rose diamond or a white,
But whether it dazzle me with light.
I care not how you are dressed,
In coarsest weeds or in the best :
But whether you charm me,
Bid my bread feed and my fire warm me."
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 127
With this gift of the gods — this perfect inflorescence
of wit and grace — Emerson was signally endowed,
and Mr. Longfellow eloquently recognized this charm
when he called the Concord seer " the Chrysostom of
his day."
In the group of poems entitled " Initial, Dsemoniac,
and Celestial Love," there is the most perfect exposition
of holy and consecrated love, in its immortal significance,
untouched and unchanged by any of the changes or the
incidents and accidents of life on earth, that is por-
trayed in the English language. Not even the sonnets
of Shakspeare, nor Mrs. Browning's " Sonnets from
the Portuguese " contain anything more noble than such
lines as these from " The Celestial Love."
" But God said,
' I will have a purer gift ;
There is smoke in the flame ;
New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift,
And love without a name.
Fond children, ye desire
To please each other well ;
Another round, a higher,
Ye shall climb on the heavenly stair,
And selfish preference forbear ; '
Nor less the eternal poles
Of tendency distribute souls.
There need no vows to bind
Whom not each other seek, but find.
They give and take no pledge or oath, —
Nature is the bond of both :
No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns, —
Their noble meanings are their pawns."
128 BOSTON DAYS
Again we find in Emerson : —
" Give all to love ;
Obey thy heart :
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit, and the Muse, —
Nothing refuse.
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope ! "
The Emerson and the Alcott households almost
equally divide the interest of those who still make
their passionate pilgrimage to Concord.
The life of the Alcott family is an epic poem, and its
quality is fairly photographed in Louisa Alcott's " Little
Women," — a story that has so marvellously touched life
because it was written out of the very springs of vitality.
Mr, Alcott was the mystic by nature and by grace.
He was great when tried by the standard of spiritual
measurement ; but his faculties did not relate them-
selves to the needs of ordinary life. Measured, too, by
professional demands, he had too little of the applied
powers to have ever made a successful teacher, author,
or lecturer on genuine professional lines. Mr. Frothing-
ham, in his " Transcendentalism in New England,"
says of Mr. Alcott : " He is not a learned man in the
ordinary sense of the term ; not a man of versatile mind
or various tastes ; not a man of general information in
worldly or even literary affiiirs ; not a man of extensive
commerce with books. Though a reader, and a con-
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 129
staut and faithful one, his reading has been limited to
books of poetry — chiefly of the meditative and interior
sort — and works of spiritual philosophy. Plato,
Plotinus, Proclus, Jamblichus, Pythagoras, Boehnie,
Swedenborg, are the names oftener than any on his
pages and lips."
Mr. Alcott was born in Wolcott, Conn., Nov. 29,
1799, the eldest of eight cliildren. His ancestry was
that of the plain living and high thinking which has
contributed the best elements to American citizenship.
The boy was born with a taste for books. The limita-
tions of poverty were in the little household, but while
there was poverty of the purse there was no poverty
of the spirit. The kingdom of the mind, like that of
heaven, is open to all who can receive. Not that
there could be claimed for Mr. Alcott the dower of a
great genius. It was instead that of a very unique
personality, — a nature singularly pure, sweet, and
trustful as a child ; with no little unconscious but
never offensive egotism ; hospitable to all generous
impulses and high thought, but almost totally deficient
in what Emerson calls the useful, reconciling talents.
Of him Emerson wrote to Carlyle in October of 1862 :
" As for Alcott, you have discharged your conscience
of him manfully and knightly. I absolve you well.
He is a great man, and was made for what is greatest ;
but I now fear that he has already touched what best
he can and through his more than prophetic egotism
and the absence of all useful reconciling talents, will
bring nothing to pass, and be but a voice in the wilder-
9
130 BOSTON DAYS
iiess, as you do not seem to have seen in him under his
pure and noble intellect. I fear that it lies under
some new and denser clouds." Mr. Alcott apparently
thought that Pheidias need not be always tinkering.
His nature was created for an Arcadian age, and to
the shrewd, sharp, economic New England atmosphere
he brought no adaptation. Of economic concerns
and the market Mr. Alcott had as little conception as
the great god Pan might bring. His affinities were
far more with grave, mystic contemplation while loiter-
ing " in the reeds by the river." Yet here he was in
this work-a-day world, where the poor man must pro-
ceed to get a living before he can altogether live, —
a world which insists on the logical development that
depends on the material for its first stage and substantial
basis. Mr. Alcott's ideal nature, however, was only
fitted for an ideal world. He was full of love and
trust, and faith and fine insights. Unfortunately faith
and love do not keep the pot boiling, and the fires of
the gods cannot be transmuted to domestic service.
Nor was Mr. Alcott sufficiently great in intellect to
command from the world its material resources in
return for his own bestowal of finer gifts. Agassiz
declared his independence of the market, and asserted
that his time was too valuable to give it to earning
money. But he gave the world that which enriched
its resources, which had its positive value to the econo-
mists as well as its special message to the scholar, and
for him the world of bustling activities was well lost.
Not so Mr. Alcott. He had a message of value, but
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 131
the time was not yet ripe. His theory of the education
of children, which was the most tangible and positive
contribution he had to make to the age of his early
manhood, was regarded as dreamy and unpractical.
It was the development theory, the truth that a little
later haunted the brain of Froebel and of Pestalozzi,
but the busy, practical New England life was not
then ready for this grafting of higher truth. Ex-
cepting with Emerson and Margaret Fuller, Bronson
Alcott, in his earlier life, found little sympathy and
appreciation. Yet his message was one that could
wait. In any retrospective glance over the wonderful
Nineteenth century, the appearance of this purely Greek
nature seems more than ever an anomaly in New England
life. Emerson has wittily said : —
" Unless to thought is added will,
Apollo is an imbecile."
Mr. Alcott was by no means an imbecile, yet it must
be confessed that not much power of will was ever
added to his thought. His purposes were always
nebulous and undefined, and yet so pure and exalted
that they were a tremendous force for the good.
George Eliot, in her " Middlemarch," makes Dorothea
say something to the effect that by desiring what is
good, even if we do not know exactly what it is, we
become a part of its power. This was illustrated in
the life of Bronson Alcott. The story of his early life
is not unfamiliar, — his attendance at a district school,
his experiences as a pedler, — but it was only as he
132 BOSTON DAYS
came to Boston and began to find his own place that
his life began to take on significance.
In June of 1836, some years after his marriage, he
wrote to his mother, saying : " You are associated in
my heart with sympathy forever. I was diffident ; you
never mortified me. I was quiet ; you never excited me.
I loved my books ; you encouraged me to read. You
knew my love for the beautiful, and you cherished
it. I am sure that I owe not a little of my serenity of
mind, hope, and trust in the future to you,"
When Mr. Alcott met and married Abigail May
(a sister of Rev. Samuel May), he found the ideal
complement of his nature. They were married in
King's Chapel, in Boston, in May, 1830. Miss May
was the daughter of Colonel Joseph and Dorothy
(Sewall) May, born in October, 1800, a woman of
singular beauty and force of character. Mrs. Alcott
quite understood the life which she was entering
on her marriage. Soon after that event she wrote to
her brother : " INIy husband is the perfect personification
of modesty and moderation. I am not sure that we
shall not blush into obscurity and contemplate into
starvation." There was in Connecticut an educational
fund of $1,000,000 which Mr. Alcott — not an edu-
cated man in the college sense, not a man possessing
at that time any social or financial influence — resolved
should be used for higher educational purposes than had
heretofore been the custom, and as a lofty purpose en-
forces its own right of way he succeeded in efiljcting this
decision. Education, indeed, in the broad sense of the
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 133
terra, was Mr. Alcott's ideal aim, and there are results
seen to-day in the better training of children that can be
traced to his influence. To speak of the better class of
the young people of his day as not being " educated " is
slightly misleading, for in culture they far exceeded many
of the college-bred men and women of to-day. At the
age of nineteen we find Miss May (afterward Mrs.
Alcott) reading Fdnclon in the original, studying Latin
and botany, and reading Hume, Gibbon, Hallam, Scott,
Locke, and Stewart, taking these authors into her daily
life. But one smiles to read in a passage of her
diary the way in which Mr. Alcott entertained his
fiancee during the engagement. She writes to a
friend : —
" He read to me two interesting articles, — a review of
'Hints for the Improvement of Early Education and
Nursery Discipline ' and one on the ' Management of
Children with a View to their Future Character.' "
A wonderful life began with this new household, — a
life which radiated peace, tenderness, sweetness, and
beauty to tlie community, and finally to all the world.
The potency of a noble ideal is seen in the fact
that Mr. Alcott, when young, unknown, and poor,
with no conceivable influence in the world save that
of his own lofty thought, determined that a Connecti-
cut fund for educational purposes should be used
for higher ends than those to which it had been
devoted, and he succeeded. Soon after their marriage
the Alcotts removed to Germautown, a suburb of
134 BOSTON DAYS
Philadelphia, where Louisa Alcott was born on her
father's birthday (November 29) in 1832.
The friendship of Emerson and Alcott (as notable as
that of Goethe and Schiller) must have begun before
the Alcotts' removal to Germantown, for in 1838 Emer-
son said of his friend : " Alcott is a ray of the oldest
light. They say the light of some stars that parted
from the orb at the deluge of Noah has only now
reached the earth." The autumn of 1839 found the
Alcotts again in Boston, where Mr. Alcott opened
the famous Temple School, which Elizabeth Pea-
body has described. Of his arrangements Mr. Alcott
said : —
" I have spared no expense to surround the senses
with appropriate emblems of intellectual and spiritual life.
Paintings, busts, and books have been deemed important.
I wish to fill every form with significance and life, thus
placing the child in spiritual loveliness."
With thirty pupils at a tuition of $60 per year Mr.
Alcott entered on this work. To have $1,800 a year
looked to him like a competency, and his work was joy,
for in it he expressed his highest conception of life. It is
a sad commentary on the press of that day that the local
papers attacked this ideal school until it had to be sus-
pended, and Mr. Alcott's health broke down with the
disappointment and grief. Emerson, ever hospitable
and generously considerate, invited the Alcotts to
come to his house to recover, and in his note he said :
" If you will come here and get well, we will agree on
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 135
hours of sitting together and apart, and nobody shall be
allowed to annoy you." In October of 1837 Emerson
wrote of Alcott to Dr. Furness : —
" I shall always love you for loving Alcott. He is a
great man ; the god with the herdsmen of Admetus. I
cannot think you know him now, when I remember how
long he has been here, for he grows every month. His
conversation is sublime ; yet when I see how he is under-
estimated by cultivated people I fancy none but I have
heard him talk."
In the "Sonnets," which Mr. Alcott wrote in his
eightieth year, he thus describes the early reading of
his wife: —
" My lady reads, with judgment and good taste,
Books not too many, but the wisest, best,
Pregnant with sentiment sincere and chaste,
Rightly conceived were they and aptly dressed.
These wells of learning tastes she at the source, —
Johnson's poised periods, Fenelon's deep sense,
Taylor's mellifluous and sage discourse.
Majestic Milton's epic eloquence, —
Nor these alone do all her thoughts en'gage,
But classic authors of the modern time,
And the great masters of the ancient age.
In prose alike and of the lofty rhyme :
Montaigne and Cowper, Plutarch's gallery,
Blind Homer's Iliad and his Odyssey."
The children of Mr. and Mrs. Alcott were Anna Bron-
son, born in 1831 ; Louisa May, in 1832; Elizabeth, and
May, born in 1834 and 1840. The third daughter was
the "Beth " of " Little Women," and died in early girl-
hood. May Alcott became an artist, and married in
136 BOSTON DAYS
Paris a Swiss gentleman, M. Nieriker. A year later
she (lied, leaving a little daughter named Louisa May,
for her aunt Louisa, who immediately adopted her, and
during all her childhood the little girl was in Concord
with her mother's family, the especial pet and darling of
her aunt and grandfather. On Miss Alcott's death her
father came, taking the little maid with him to his Swiss
home in Geneva. The eldest daughter, Anna Bronson,
married Mr. John Pratt. She died leaving two sons,
one of whom was adopted by his aunt Louisa, and his
name legally changed to Alcott.
The two brothers, Mr. Alcott and Mr. Pratt, the sons
of Anna Alcott Pratt ; and Miss Louisa May Nieriker,
the daughter of May Alcott Nieriker, are the only liv-
ing grandchildren of Mr. Alcott, whose name and life
continue to be among the present vital forces in New
England life.
The husband and wife read together from Aristotle,
Plato, Bacon, Carlyle, Shelley, Sismondi, and various
other authors. The sonnet in which (in his advanced
age) Mr. Alcott describes Elizabeth Peabody is reminis-
cent of her association with his school, and it is fairly a
portrait of the great-souled woman : —
" Daughter of Memory! who her watch doth keep
O'er dark Oblivion's Uxnd of shade and dreani,
Peers down into the realm of ancient Sleep,
Where Thought uprises with a sudden gleam
And lights the devious path 'twixt Be and Seem.
Mythologist ! that doth thy legend steep
Plenteonsly witli opiate and anodyne,
Inweaving fact with fable, line with line,
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 137
Entangling anecdote and episode,
Mindful of all that all men meant or said, —
We follow, pleased, thy labyrinthine road,
By Ariadne's skein and lesson led :
For thovi hast wrought so excellently well,
Thoii drop'st more casual truth than sages tell."
In liis schoolroom Mr. Alcott placed the busts of
Plato, Socrates, Shakspeare, and Milton, a head of
Jesus in high relief, and other works of art, Emerson
said of it : " When Alcott had made the room beautiful
he looked at his work as half done."
The way in whicli the people of those days wrote the
most lengthy letters to each other constantly, and
the way in which they wrote their daily journals by the
yard, so to speak, suggests that time must have been
far more unlimited than now. Probably the simplicity
of ways and means had much to do with this. The
diaries of Emerson, Alcott, Miss Peabody, Margaret
Fuller, etc., contain the most abstruse reflections, as,
for instance, in one entry of Alcott's in 1856 he begins
by noting that he has had a long conversation with
" L. G." regarding the ante-terrestrial life, and he runs on
for pages on this subject. It is not, however, tliat
life is the less noble or exalted now, in this new cen-
tury, than at that time ; it is rather that we are trans-
lating tlie abstract into the practical realization ; that
the dreams of the past have become the deeds of to-day.
An evening is not passed in discussing the origin of the
myth of Ceres after the fashion of Margaret Fuller and
her associates, but rather, perhaps, there is discussed
the way to improve tenement-houses or to establish
138 BOSTON DAYS
vacation schools, or to bring the teaching of music
within the reach of every one, and this translation of
theory into practical activities is by no means retro-
gressive, but progressive instead. The rich and beauti-
ful past of Boston has flowered in a still richer and
more beautiful present.
Somewhere about 1840 " The Dial " appeared, and the
contributions of Mr. Alcott excited no little ridicule.
In the "Memoirs" of Mr. Alcott written by Mr.
Sanborn and Dr. Harris this passage occurs : —
' ' Our apparent failures are often the greatest success ;
and there is nothing, not even the Crucifixion, which the
levity of mankind cannot hold in derision for a time.
Great was the laughter in Boston, and lively, no doubt,
the village cachinnation of Concord, when the Boston
' Post ' daily burlesqued Alcott in ' The Dial,' and Emerson
in his lecture-room ; when Dr. Holmes, at the festivals of
Harvard College, laughed at Edmund Quincy, at Garrison
and Phillips, as —
" Men such as May to Marlborough chapel brings,
Lean, hungry, savage, an ti-every things,
Copies of Luther in the pasteboard style — "
Or, with more copious rhetoric specially barbed for
Alcott and Emerson, recited this —
" With uncouth words they tire their tender hmgs,
The same bald phrases on their hundred tongues ;
' Ever ' 'The Ages ' in their page appear,
' Alway ' the bedlamite is called a ' Seer ; '
On every leaf the ' earnest ' sage may scan,
Portentous bore ! their ' many-sided ' man —
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 139
A weak eclectic, groping vague and dim,
Whose every angle is a half-starved whim.
Blind as a mole and curious as a lynx.
Who rides a beetle, which he calls a ' Sphinx.' "
Mr. A Icott's experiment at Fruitlands — some twenty
miles from Concord — has become historic. The phi-
losopher made a great distinction between the products
that " aspired," or grew in air, as wheat and fruits, and
those which basely and ignominiously grew in the
ground, as beets and potatoes. The latter he considered
unfit for food. Emerson wrote of this experiment :
" Alcott and Lane are always feeling of their shoulders,
to find if their wings are sprouting ; but next best to
wings are cowhide boots, which society is always
advising them to put on. It is really Alcott's dis-
tinction that, rejoicing or desponding, this man always
trusts his principle, whilst all vulgar reformers rely on
the arm of money and the law."
A little later Emerson again wrote : —
" Last night in the conversation Alcott appeared to
great advantage, and I saw again, as often before, his
singular superiority. As pure intellect I have never
seen his equal. The people with whom he talks do not
ever understand him. . . . Yesterday Alcott left me,
after three days spent here. I had lain down a man and
had waked up a bruise, by reason of a bad cold, and was
lumpish, tardy, and cold. Yet could I see plainly that
I conversed with the most extraordinary man and the
highest genius of the time. He is a man. He is erect;
he sees, let whoever be overthrown or parasitic or
blind."
140 BOSTON DAYS
Mrs. Cheney has said that while Theodore Parker
admired Alcott and recognized his value, he found no
help from him on account of their different intellectual
methods. The Alcotts returned to Concord from the
Fruitlands experiment, and about 1845 established
themselves in the Orchard House, near Emerson, and
adjoining the Wayside, Hawthorne's home. Thoreau,
about this time, built his hut on Walden Pond, and
there located himself. A series of "conversations"
(which seemed to be the favorite amusement of the
day, their opera, their theatre, as it were) were held,
in which Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker, Dr.
Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and Alcott took part.
In one of these conversations Mr. Alcott said : —
" The desire for wealth has its good side also. Cali-
fornia, with all its greed of gold, will become poetical ;
but what men desire is not the true wealth, although
commerce has been and is our most adventurous missionary
and civilizer. Trade imports things which minister to
the lower nature, but we want an importation of all good
things, so as to form the perfect man and the great nation.
Let the Oriental scriptures come to us as well as the
silks, the tea, and the diamonds, — let them be translated
for the common benefit of mankind, so that we may trace
the stream of inspiration to its sources."
Of late years the " Oriental scriptures " have come
to American life and their greatness has become rather
generally familiar. The present age is not a sordid
material one, but is rather the heir of all the ages and
freighted with still richer treasure than that of a half-
century ago.
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 141
It is sometimes asked, " What did Mr. Alcott leave
as tangible results of life ? He made no special con-
tribution to literature ; he founded no institutions."
The reply may be that Mr. Alcott was to the century
a source of the purest and most potent influence which,
though diffused like the air and hardly crystallized into
language or literature, is yet, like the atmosphere, a
most potent and indispensable power in the general
life of humanity. Influence is the most spiritual form
of power, and that of this ideal and pure-hearted man
permeates the life of Boston to-day and radiates, indeed,
so widely that to it no limits may be assigned. JNIr.
Alcott and his family continued to pass most of their
life in Concord. When Louisa Alcott's genius first
began to make itself felt, money for the first time flowed
in to make life easier in a household whose altars were
always consecrated to truth and aspiration. Mr. Frank
B. Sanborn has said : —
" Wherever Alcott dwelt the altars of learning stood
and were served with daily worship, for he was the most
studious of mankind, as well as the most radical and
reformatory."
The Alcott household life was vividly interpreted in
the pages of Miss Alcott's "Little Women," and it
there lives and radiates its beautiful influence to gene-
ration after generation.
" Alcott had singular gifts," said Emerson, " for
awakening contemplation and aspiration in untaught
and in cultivated persons." How strangely introspective
142 BOSTON DAYS
were these lives, and how much more indeed did they
get out of life than those who never pause long enough
to be steeped in an impression !
When the Alcott family took up their residence in
Concord, in 1857, in the "Orchard House," the Haw-
thornes were in Europe, not returning until three years
later. In the spring of 1858 Louisa Alcott writes in
her diary : —
" Came to occupy one wing of Hawthorne's house (once
ours) while the new one was being repaired. Father,
mother, and I kept house together ; May being in Boston,
Anna at Pratt Farm, and, for the first time, Lizzie ab-
sent. . . . July, 1858. Went into the new house and
began to settle. Father is happy ; mother glad to be at
rest ; Anna is in bliss with her gentle John ; and May
busy over her pictures, I have plans simmering, but
must sweep and dust, and wash my dish-pans awhile
longer till I see my way."
In the " Memoirs " of Bronson Alcott Mr. Sanborn
says of this period in the Alcott fortunes : —
" These first years of family life at the Orchard House,
although not years of outward prosperity, were a season
of great importance for the literary activity and the per-
sonal enjoyment of the Alcott family. The early circle
of friends who had found Concord so delightful from
1840 to 1848 was still unbroken by death, — for only
Margaret Fuller, who was shipwrecked in 1850, had
passed away ; and Hawthorne, after his long I'esidence in
Europe, was returning to spend the rest of his life at
Concord. Emerson was in his most active career as a
public teacher by lectures and discourses ; Thoreau also
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 143
lectured frequently, and was making those observations
on Nature and Man which since his death have filled so
many volumes ; and Ellery Channiug, after a short ab-
sence in New Bedford, where he edited a newspaper, had
returned to Concord, and was living in the immediate
neighborhood of Thoreau. Mrs. Ripley, that learned
lady, who read Greek for pleasure, dwelt in the Old
Manse, with her daughters near her ; and Elizabeth Hoar,
since her father's death in 1856, was occupying his hos-
pitable house, and joining in the studies and pursuits of
her friends, young and old."
When Mr. Alcott was about to make a trip abroad,
Emerson thus wrote of him to Carlyle : —
" About this time, or perhaps a few weeks later, we shall
send you a large piece of spiritual New England, in the
shape of A. Bronson Alcott, who is to sail for London
about the 20th of April, and whom you must not fail to
see, if you can compass it. A man who cannot write,
but whose conversation is unrivalled in its way, — such
insight, such discernment of spirits, such pure intellectual
play, such revolutionary impulses of thought ; whilst he
speaks he has no peer, and yet all men say ' such par-
tiality of view.' I, who hear the same cliarge always
laid at my own gate, do not so readily feel that fault in
my friend. But I entreat you to see this man. Since
Plato and Plotinus we have not had his like. I have
written to Carlyle that he is coming, but have told him
nothing about him. For I should like well to see Alcott
before that sharp-eyed painter for his portrait, without
prejudice of any kind."
The "Orchard House" where the Alcotts lived so
long is one of the homes cobwebbed with memories.
144 BOSTON DAYS
The stately trees vocal in the evening wind ; the orchard
embalmed in the " Concord Days " of Mr. Alcott ;
*' May's Studio," where sweet May Alcott sketched and
painted and dreamed; the shaded grounds where the
four " Little Women " played, — all make up a beauti-
ful picture that still lives in memory. Associated with
this home are those exquisite and touching poems of
Mr. Alcott and of Miss Alcott when the shadow of
sorrow fell, and the artist daughter and sister had gone
from them to that far, fair country, where flowers are
fadeless and where love is deathless.
" It was but yesterday
That all was bright and fair
Came o'er the sea
So merrily,
News from my darliiig there.
Now o'er the sea
Comes hither to me
Knell of despair,
' No more, no longer there.'
" Ah, gentle May !
Could'st thou not stay ?
Why hurriest thou so swift away ?
No, — not the same.
Nor can it be,
That lovely name,
Ever again what once it was to me.
" Broken the golden band,
Severed the silken strand,
Ye sisters four !
Still to me two remain,
And two have gone before ;
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 145
Our loss, her gain.
And He who gave can all restore.
And yet, why,
My heart doth cry,
Why take her thus away ? "
When one reflects that these tender, beautiful lines
were written by the silver-haired sage in his eiglity-first
year, the purity of his life is realized anew in being thus
in tune with " the holiness of perfect thought."
In his latest years he told in verse the story of his
life, from the time the *' mild schoolmaster" wooed his
love, fair Abby May, and led his bride out of the old
King's Chapel to begin their wedded life together;
through the years wlien children came to crown his
life ; through the beautiful friendships which that hos-
pitable home invited ; and closing with the last touch-
ing lines read over the lifeless form of his friend, Mv.
Emerson. The " Love's Morrow " commemorated tlie
death of his daughter May in the far foreign land, and
the coming of her baby daughter to his heart and home
is lightly touched in these simple stanzas : —
" Voyager across the seas,
In my arms thy form I press ;
Come, my baby, me to please,
Blue-eyed nursling, motherless.
" Safe, ye angels, keep this child, —
Lifelong guard her innocence ;
Winsome ways and temper mild,
Heaven, our home, be her defence !"
In one of his sonnets to Emerson occur the lines, —
10
146 BOSTON DAYS
" Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend !
And lifelong hath it been high compliment
By that to have been known, and thy friend styled."
One addressed to Margaret Fuller says of her life, —
" Charming all other, dwelling still alone."
Professor Harris is addressed as, —
" Interpreter of the Pure Reason's laws
And all the obligations Thought doth owe,
These high ambassadors of her great cause."
As the Christian of old marked the year with prayers,
Mr. Alcott marked his years with his poems, which tell
all the story to the reader who holds the key. Of old
John Brown he would speak in earnest words of his
martyr-spirit.
"He knew just what the result would be to him,"
said Mr. Alcott, " and he was ready for the sacrifice ;
nor do I believe freedom would ever have triumphed as
it did without the aid and the inspiration of his life."
The fame of Bronson Alcott is not that of the literary
man in the exclusive sense of creative literature. It
was more archetypal, — the man who stood for the idea
itself, for the pure thought, and who was less concerned
with its expression. Emerson's estimate of Mr. Alcott
as far and away the greatest man of his time is one that
the ages will justify. Dr. Harris and Mr. Sanborn con-
cur largely with this judgment. The more deeply one
studies the shaping, all-determining power of thought,
the more does one come to say with Emerson, " In
majesty Alcott exceeds."
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 147
The Alcott family were a living illustration of the
truth that poverty cannot greatly hinder the higher
progress of life when there is affluence of the spirit.
The divinest gifts are free to all.
" 'T is heaven alone that is given away, —
'Tis only God may be had for the asking."
The childhood of Louisa Alcott was one of singular
force and beauty. " I go to sleep repeating poetry, —
I know a good deal," she had recorded in her diary at
the age of nine. At sixteen she began to handle a
pen, and she received five dollars for a story in the
" Saturday Gazette " — which went to buy a shawl for
her mother. In these early years she heard the lectures
by George William Curtis ; Theodore Parker invited her
to his Sunday evening reunions, where she met Wendell
Phillips, Garrison, Dr. Hedge, Mrs. Howe, the Whip-
pies, and Sumner. She heard Mr. Whipple's lecture
on "Courage," — which revived her own. She heard
a reading by Fanny Kemble ; and passed Sunday at the
Emersons. " I can't do much with my hands," she
writes in her journal about this time, " so I will use my
head as a battering-ram to make a way through this
rough-and-tumble world." She records the time in
which she read the life of Charlotte Bronte and says :
" Wonder if I shall ever be famous enough for people
to care to read my story and struggles." Of Emerson
she writes, too, about this time : " Father is never happy
far from Emerson : the one true friend who loves,
understands, and helps him."
148 BOSTON DAYS
All these experiences and thoughts and efforts
brought Miss Alcott up to her twenty-fifth year, when
the family removed to the " Orchard House " destined
to be their first permanent home. A few years of con-
stant struggle passed by, and in 1867 Mr. Niles, of
Roberts Brothers, asked Mhs Alcott to write a girl's
book, and this was the initiative of the great success
of her life, " Little Women." She had herself no idea
of the magnetism, the vitality, that was in it. " We
really lived most of it," she said, " and if it succeeds,
that will be the reason of it."
In literary Boston, Miss Alcott was a unique per-
sonality. To the distinctively literary guild she is even
still something of a puzzle in that for one thing she
left no " correspondence," in the usual sense of the
author. Her letters were restricted to the limits of her
family and personal friends, rather than ranging over
epistolary communings with others of her guild. Her
life left her little leisure after the duty next her was
done, and it was in her character to fulfil faithfully this
" duty lying next " before making any excursions into
flowery fields beyond.
Her stories are transcriptions rather than creations,
and if the Alcott family life had not been what it was,
the " Little Women " and " Little Men " and the other
delightful stories could never have been written. For
they were the literary flowering of outward and actual
experiences. Coming directly out of life, Miss Alcott's
books appeal to life. It was the spell of that vital
magnetism of which she held the secret. All this time,
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 149
instead of giving herself over to creative visions, Miss
Alcott's chief concern was for the liousehold needs, —
the coat required for the philosophic father, the warm
wrap for the worn and gentle mother, the hat for
" Amy," the gown for " Beth," the shoes for herself.
The demands of the household life encompassed her
round about. The marvel is that she could have writ-
ten at all, only — and this clause contains the key and
the clue — only that this was a household of idealism
and ideals, and thus there was always in the very
atmosphere that spiritual stimulus wliich makes the
hardest things in life easy and the rougli places smooth.
" Visions," well said George Eliot, " are the creators
and feeders of the world." Some of the more arti-
ficial writers or critics of writers who do not suffi-
ciently relate literature to life assert that Miss Alcott's
stories lack this or that, and are not " literature." Yet
her books are translated into more than a half a dozen
languages ; they are widely read in half a dozen countries,
and her name is a household word where the names of
some of these superfine critics will never be dreamed of
or heard.
Miss Alcott appealed to the higher qualities of the
spirit in our common humanity, and the response was
universal. She had an infinite capacity for affection,
great love for the people, an exquisite tenderness, keen,
practical good sense, and a fund of humor that enliv-
ened daily life. Here is an extract from a letter written
to her mother in 1868, that well illustrates these
qualities : —
150 BOSTON DAYS
"It's clear that Minerva Moody [by which name she
called herself] is getting on in spite of many downfalls,
and by the time she is a used-up old lady of seventy or so,
she may finish her job and see her family well off. A
little late to enjoy much, maybe, but I guess I shall turn
in for my last long sleep with more content in spite of the
mental weariness than if I had folded my hands in ele-
gant idleness, or gone into fits of despair because things
moved so slowly."
Louisa Alcott was indeed, a great woman, a great
character ; and her literary work, extensive and valuable
as it is, was still but one of her many forms of expres-
sion. If the true purpose of literature is to invigorate
and to elevate life, then, indeed, did she fulfil this high
purpose. She was a thoroughly noble woman. Not of
the type of the traditional saint or martyr, — she was
very human, and to the last found an eager and impetu-
ous temper, needing wise control, to be among her
marked traits ; but the quality of her life was noble.
Never, in herself or in others, could she consent to the
ungenerous or the trivial. The entire atmosphere of the
Alcott home was that of aspiration. There was no
poverty of the spirit, — the only form in which poverty
is hopeless.
The story of Louisa Alcott's life is one of the most
tender and touching in all the literature of biography.
In one thing, especially, her life was unique, — in that
it was one of the widest human relatedness. She was
always the friend, the helper, the caretaker. By taste
and temperament her father was detached from ordinary
'-^
/
Louisa M. A /cot I
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 151
affairs. He was formed for all high and beautiful
things, for conversation, for philosophic meditations.
He essayed teaching. ]Many of his ideas were truly
great ones in educational science, yet they lacked that
power to relate themselves to existing conditions which
makes such ideas of immediate value. Mrs. Alcott
was a woman of remarkably clear mind, fine perception,
lofty ideals, and practical tact. The Mays were all ex-
ecutive in their nature and Miss Alcott combined many
of the ancestral traits of the Alcotts and the INIays.
She was the perfect flower of a mixed heredity. She
could do anything and everything, — make a bonnet,
wash dishes, cut and make clothing, nurse the sick,
cook, scrub the floor, act in private theatricals, write
verses, be the life of a social assembly, or write a book
of which fifty thousand copies were sold before it was
placed on the market at all. How much more than a
" literary woman " alone, was this woman of literature,
this generous, noble spirit who came to this world not
to be ministered unto, but to minister. I am sure that
we will not think less of her when, after unexpectedly
receiving $100 for some literary work, she writes in her
journal : —
'' So the pink hyacinth was a true prophet, and I went to
bed a Imppy millionaire, to dream of flannel petticoats
for my blessed mother, paper for father, a new dress for
May, and sleds for my boys."
Louisa Alcott lived a far larger life than the mere
" literary " one of the traditional author. No human
152 BOSTON DAYS
need appealed to her in vain. She was a great favorite
socially. As a raconteur she had hardly a rival. Her
dramatic vividness and her fund of humor made her
the most inimitable of story-tellers. And her sympathy
was as strong as her courage ; and these, united with a
hopeful and most sunny disposition, made her a most
responsive and delightful friend.
Fame has its inconveniences, but Miss Alcott was
too simple and sweet and genuine not to enjoy hers.
So much love was poured out to her all over the land
that she could not fail to feel its spontaneity and
beauty. " I asked for bread and got a stone — in the
shape of a pedestal," she would say laughingly, but the
letters and gifts and adoration of her vast constituency
touched and pleased her always.
After the appearance of " Little Women " her fortune
seemed assured ; yet success is a thing always making
and never made. It has no finality. It is progressive,
or it is nothing. So with Miss Alcott the conflict con-
tinued. She would fly from Concord and shut herself
up in an upper floor room which she called " Gamp's
Garret," in a tall house iu some retired nook in Boston,
where for weeks she would write, emerging only at twi-
light, until the book in hand was completed. It is a
most curious study to note the constant interweaving
of the ideal and the practical in her life.
Mrs. Alcott had a natural literary gift, as her beauti-
ful letters to friends and her diary records reveal. But
the wife of an idealist must, perforce, often refrain from
hitching her wagon to a star and perhaps drive to the
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 153
market-place instead. Yet slie would not have had
him otherwise. There are other qualities which create
happiness in a home than the ability to grasp the
coin of the realm. It cannot be claimed for Mr.
Alcott that he was dowered with great genius, but
rather that his was a very unique personality. It was
a nature singularly pure, sweet, and trustful, with no
little unconscious but never offensive egotism ; hos-
pitable to all high and generous thought, but almost
totally deficient in what Emerson calls " the useful,
reconciling talents."
The life of the Alcott family is indeed a unique
chapter in New England history. The period covered
by the life of Bronson x\lcott was the period of New
England's greatest literary activity, the period in which
ideas were formed that helped to shape the destiny of
the nation, and to influence all the future. During
Mr. Alcott's life Garrison, Sumner, Emerson, Theodore
Parker, Margaret Fuller, and Lydia Maria Child lived
and died. Their senior, he survived them all. He occu-
pies an unrivalled place in history and literature. Not,
strictly speaking, a man of letters, he had affinities for
all literature and scholarship. Not a reformer, he had
the spirit of reform, and did much to inspire reformers.
One of his own finest expressions is in this para-
graph : —
"Thought feeds, clothes, educates. The idealist is the
capitalist on whose resources multitudes are maintained.
The idealist gives an insight into life deeper than that of
any other school of thought, and an age deficient in ideal-
ism is an age of imperfect and superficial attainment."
154 BOSTON DAYS
The graves of the Alcotts — the five low stones mark-
ing the last resting-place of the father, mother, and
daughters — is one of the most impressive objects in the
cemetery of Sleepy Hollow. Here is the earthly close
of a household life that represented the purest and most
perpetual form of the ideal life. Here they lie — the
low stones bearing only initials. "A. B. A., 1799-
1888," marks the grave of Amos Bronson Alcott, whose
watchword of life was indeed that "Thought feeds,
clothes, educates." "A. M. A., 1800-1870," marks
that of Abby jMay Alcott, his wife. " E. S. A.," 1835-
1858," " M. A. N., 1840-1879," and " L. M. A.," 1832-
1888," mark the graves of the daughters, Mrs. Pratt,
the married daughter, being buried in another lot by
her husband. On Miss Alcott's grave, however, as a
concession to public interest, is a little slab with
" Louisa M. Alcott " inscribed over the spot where
lies all that was mortal of one of the noblest of
women. Her books have been translated into half a
dozen languages. Their influence is constantly increas-
ing. Wherever high thought and noble purpose and
spirituality of aspirations are held dear, will be loved
and revered the name of Alcott, made forever great, in
all that aids spiritual development, by the father and
daughter whose lives were singularly united in affection
and in all high aims.
Meantime at "The Wayside" the Hawthorne life
was like a page from the richly illuminated missals in
the ancient library in Siena. In Sophia Hawthorne's
diaries we find such passages as these : —
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 155
" September, 1860.
"Julian illuminated till tea time ; and after tea I read
to both him and Rose a chapter in Matthew, told them
about Paul. Rosebud has been drawing wonderfully on
the blackboard recognizable portraits of Mr. l]enoch and
Julian. . . . We all met at the Aicotts' at tea time.
Mr. Alcott was sweet and benign as possible, and Mrs.
Alcott looked like Jupiter Olympus. . . . Elizabeth Hoar
spent the whole of yesterday morning with me. AVe
talked Roman and Florentine talk. She thought our
house the most fascinating of mansions. She is always
full of Saint Paul's charity. On the Roman table is a glass
dish of exquisite pond lilies, which Una brought from the
river ^this morning ; and out of the centre of the lilies
rose a tall glass of superb cardinal flowers."
And again : —
" January, 1862.
" Mr. Thoreau died this morning. The funeral services
were in the church. Mr. Emerson spoke. Mr. Alcott
read from Mr. Thoreau's writings. The body was in the
vestibule covered with wild flowers. We went to the
grave. Thence my husband and I walked to the old
Manse and Monument. Then I went to see Annie Fields
at Mr. Emerson's. ... I read (Christ the Spirit). I
read about Alchemy and Swedenborg."
The Hawthornes have a most interesting history.
Jnlian Hawthorne, in his biography of his parents, has
by no means " spoiled a story for relation's sake," but
has related the strange traits of his ancestors. Witch-
haunted Salem produced much uncanny living. The
great romancer had his peculiarities, as is well known,
though these were largely counteracted by his wife, —
156 BOSTON DAYS
gentle, wise, sweet Sophia Peabody, who caine of a
family eminently sane and harmoniously attuned, Mrs.
Hawthorne was even more than the perfect wife ; she
was the heaven-appointed guardian of her husband's
genius, and it is no exaggeration to say that but for her
exquisite qualities the marvellous romances of Haw-
thorne, wliich are the very inflorescence of American
literature, would never have been written. The genius
of Hawthorne was of too subtle and delicate a nature
to have flourished in an uncongenial atmosphere, and it
was his wife who made possible the most perfect condi-
tions for his art. In 1844 she wrote in a private letter
to her sister of Hawthorne's delicacy of genius : —
" He waits upon the light in such a purely simple way
tliat I do not wonder at the perfection of each of his
stories. Of several sketches first one and then another
came up to be clothed upon with language after their own
will and pleasure. It is real inspiration, and few are
reverent and patient enough to wait for it as he does. I
think it is in this way that he comes to be so void of
extravagance in his style and material. He does not
meddle with the clear, true picture that is painted on his
mind."
Nathaniel and Sophia (Peabody) Hawthorne had
three children, — Una, Julian, and Rose. The elder
daughter was gifted but unbalanced, and she died in
London at a comparatively early age. Julian Haw-
thorne began early to make a name for himself in
literature, and his work is constantly before the public.
Rose became the wife of George Parsons Lathrop,
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 157
a writer of ability who was truly a son to the elder
Hawthorne in the sense of being his best interpreter.
Nothing in this line has ever equalled Mr. Lathrop's
" Study of Hawthorne," which is fairly a hand-book,
indispensable to the lover of his great romances. Rose
Hawthorne was a great beauty as well as a woman of
charming gifts and most winning personality, and she
still retains much of that beauty of coloring and win-
some grace, her Titian gold hair, and beauty of
expression.
Mrs. Lathrop has the literary gift of her family, and
to fugitive magazine work she has added a book
(" Memories of Hawthorne "), in which she has given
to the world revelations of her father that no one else
could have given, and which are indispensable to a
clearer understanding of the man who is unquestionably
the greatest romancist in the English tongue. IMrs.
Lathrop had a store of letters to draw upon, — letters
written by her mother and her aunt, the celebrated
Elizabeth Peabody (who in her later years was
called " Tiie Grandmother of Boston "), to a large
number of the most noted people of their day.
The Peabodys were a genial and cordial race, with
literature, art, and social intercourse as " the three
gracious deities" of their home, with the daughters
all attractive yet different, — Elizabeth "profoundly
interesting," Mary considered to be exceptionally
"brilliant," and Sophia "lovely." On their marriage
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody took up
their residence in the " Old Manse," forever immor-
158 BOSTON DAYS
talizeci in jNIr. Hawthorne's " JMosses." And what days
are those revealed in Sophia Hawthorne's letters from
the Old Manse! — when Emerson comes, "with his
sunrise smile, " Ellery Channing, " radiating light," and
Elizabeth Hoar, " with spirit voice and tread." Surely
a precious heritage were these letters to Rose Haw-
thorne Lathrop, and exquisitely has she used them in
her fascinating volume.
The Hawthorne family are a marked example of the
curious persistence of individuality, which in some of
them has been so strong as only to be termed eccen-
tricity. IVIadam Hawthorne, the mother of the great
romancist, betook herself to her own room on the upper
floor of her Salem house and did not descend the stairs
again for two years. She dressed exclusively in white
and isolated herself from the world. A sister of
Nathaniel Hawthorne carried out her intense individu-
ality through life, and he, too, was a man who walked
apart from the world. He had the isolation of his
temperament as well as that of his rare and delicate
genius. His life appears like a spiritual drama.
As the scenes change, from the night in Salem,
when Hawthorne returned to his home after his dis-
missal from the Custom House, discouraged, weary,
sad, and his wife exclaimed cheerfully, " Now you can
wn'ite your book ; how ft)rtunate ! " — from that scene,
which was the initiatory phase of his immortal ro-
mance, " The Scarlet Letter," through the vicissitudes
of their life in Concord, in the Berkshire hills, and then
in Liverpool and Loudon and Paris and Italy, — the
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 159
panorama is one of singular interest and charm. It has
been left for later years more fully to reveal the exqui-
site nature and the high gifts of Sophia Hawthorne. As
is well known, she was one of three gifted sisters, —
the others being Mary, who married Horace Mann, and
Elizabeth Peabody, the great philanthropist and thinker,
who died unmarried at the age of ninety-four. Mrs.
Hawthorne herself had the literary gift, and had she fol-
lowed her clue she, too, would have been an author of
distinction. As it was, she might well have said : —
" My life is the poem tlicat I would have writ ;
But I could not both live and utter it."
In December of 1842 Mrs. Hawthorne writes : ^ —
"My dear Mart, — I hoped I should see you again
before I came home to our Paradise. I intended to give
you a concise history of my Elysian life. Soon after we
returned my dear lord began to write in earnest, and then
commenced my leisure, because till we meet at dinner, I
do not see him. I did not touch a needle all summer and
far into the autumn, Mr. Hawthorne not letting me have
a needle or a pen in my hand. We were interrupted by
no one, except a short call now and then from P^lizaljeth
Hoar, who can hardly be called an earthly inhabitant;
and Mr. Emerson, whose face pictured the promised land
(which we were then enjoying), and intruded no more than
a sunset or a rich warble from a bird. One evening, two
days after our arrival at the Old Manse, George Hillard
and Henry Cleveland appeared for fifteen minutes on
their way to Niagara Falls, and were thrown into rap-
tures by the embowering flowers and the dear old house
1 " Memoirs of Huwtlioi'up," liy Rose Hawthorne Lathrop.
160 BOSTON DAYS
they adorned, and the pictures of Holy Motliers mild on
the walls, and Mr. Hawthorne's study and the noble
avenue. We forgave them their appearance here because
they were gone as soon as they had come, and we felt very
hospitable. We wandered down to our sweet sleepy river,
and it was so silent all around us and so solitary that we
seemed the only persons living. We sat beneath our
stately trees, and felt as if we were the rightful owners
of the old abbey which had descended to us from a long
line. The tree-tops waved a welcome, and rustled their
thousand leaves like books over our heads. But the
bloom and fragrance of nature had become secondary to
us, though we were lovers of it."
Hawthorne died (in May, 18G4) in New Hampshire,
as will be remembered ; and when his body was brought
home for burial the casket was carried directly to the
church. The townspeople transformed the entire inte-
rior into a bower of bloom with apple blossoms, so that
wiien Mrs. Hawthorne entered she said it looked to her
like a heavenly festival.
In INIr. Longfellow's commemorative poem on Haw-
thorne he thus pictures the scene : —
" The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,
And the great elms overhead
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms
Shot through with golden thread."
The burial of Hawthorne, as pictured by Mrs. Whipple,
one of his nearest friends, was a beautiful and pathetic
scene. The casket was taken to the Concord Church,
and there the Saturday Club came to pay the last trib-
ute of respect. Longfellow, Agassiz, Emerson, Holmes,
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS l6l
Whipple, Lowell, Peirce, and Fields sat side by side.
As the simple services closed, they all, moved by simul-
taneous accord, rose and bent for a last look above the
dead friend. The little concourse of people all walked
to Sleepy Hollow. Only one carriage, that bearing
Mrs. Hawthorne, was in tiie jDrocession. As Agassiz
entered the cemetery he stopped and gathered a little
bunch of violets, which he dropped on to the casket as
it was being lowered, and each member of the Saturday
Club cast into the open grave a spray of arbor vitw.
At this time JNIr. Longfellow thus wrote to Mrs.
Hawthorne : ^ —
June, 1864.
Dear Mrs. Hawthorne, — I have long been wishing
to write to you, to thank you for your kind remembrance,
but I had not the heart to do it. There are some things
that one cannot say ; and I hardly need tell you how
much I value your gift, and how often I shall look at the
familiar name on the blank leaf, — a name which, more
than any other, links me to my youth.
I have written a few lines trying to express the impres-
sions of May 23rd, and I venture to send you a copy of
them. I had rather no one should see them but yourself,
as I have also sent them to Mr. Fields for the " Atlantic."
I feel how imperfect and inadequate they are ; but I trust
you will pardon their deficiencies for the love I bear his
memory. More than ever I now regret that I postponed
from day to day coming to see you in Concord, and that
at last I should have seen your house only on the outside!
With deepest sympathy, yours truly,
Henry W. Longfellow.
1 " Life of H. W. Longfellow," by his brother.
162 BOSTON DAYS
Mrs. Hawthorne wrote in reply : ^ —
Concord, July 24, 1864.
My dear Mr. Longfellow, — Your kind note and
profoundly affecting poem moved me so much that it has
been very difficult for me to reply. This you will entirely
understand. We are both now entered fully into the
worship of sorrow, and comprehend all its conditions.
It is impossible for me to express the emotion with
which I saw you, — on that wonderful day, that was
made to seem to me a festival of life, — at the head of the
line of loving friends, going up to the Mount of Vision.
I have not seen you since the dread epoch of God's mys-
terious dispensation to you. As it was, I did not see your
face, but only the form and the white hair waving in the
wind. I thought I had always sympathized with you;
but that day I first knew what you had suffered. I under-
stood the depths and heights of bereavement. Remember-
ing also my husband's most affectionate regard for you, it
was very sweet and grateful to see you there. I earnestly
wished that I could convey to you my sense of these
things.
My dear Mr. Longfellow, the last Sunday Mr. Haw-
thorne was at home, he was sitting in this little library with
Julian ; and I, in another room, suddenly heard J. begin
to read aloud a passage from "Evangeline" beginning
'' Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder,"
and ending with the end of the poem. It broke on the
perfect silence with singular power. At the close, Mr.
Hawthorne said, " I like that," — and then there was again
silence. We have often recalled that incident since. With
Evangeline we have been enabled to murmur, " Father, I
1 " Life of II. W. Longfellow," by his brother.
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS l63
thank you." I suppose you know how very much Mr.
Hawthorne loved this poem ; and it was remarkable that
Julian should happen to open to it on that last day he
saw his father, and read that particular passage, with no
forethought.
The poem that you send me has such an Eolian deli-
cacy, sweetness, and pathos, that it seems a strain of music
rather than written words. It has in an eminent degree
the unbroken melody of your verse. The picture of the
scene you have now made immortal.
" Its monument shall be your gentle verse."
I cannot suppose that you would wish, now that All is
gone, to come to this house, no longer a palace since the
king has left it. But if you are ever in Concord, and
would not feel too much saddened to enter these deserted
halls, I should most gladly welcome you as one of his
chief friends, tenderly valued. His visits to you in Cam-
bridge used to be a great enjoyment to him. He always
spoke of them as peculiarly agreeable. For the last years
he had stood reverent, silent, and appalled before your
unspeakable sorrow.
With great regard, sincerely yours,
Sophia Hawthorne.
Emerson thus wrote to Mrs. Hawthorne : —
" JulJ^ 1864.
.... "The very selection of his images proves Behmen
poet as well as saint, yet a saint first, and poet through
sanctity. . . .
" I have had my own pain in the loss of your husband.
He was always a mine of hope to me, and I promised my-
self a rich future in achieving it some day when we should
164 BOSTON DAYS
both be less engaged to tyrannical studies, and unreserved
intercourse with him. I thought I could well wait his
time and mine for what was so well worth waiting. And
as he always appeared to me superior to his own perform-
ances I counted this yet untold force an insurance of a
long life. . . .
" Ralph Waldo Emerson."
After Hawthorne's death his family returned to
London, where Mrs. Hawthorne and her ekler daughter,
Una, died. The only son, Julian Hawthorne, returned
to his own country and has made a name in literature
which is being perpetuated by the genius of his daughter
Hildegarde, who, as a poet and story-writer, is worthy her
distinguished ancestry. Mrs. Lathrop (Rose Hawthorne)
embraced the Catholic faith, in which she found a rap-
ture of comfort and of leading, and, under the name of
a rSligieuse, consecrates her life to the care of the suf-
fering, finding in her self-abnegation the sublimest
sweetness and joy.
The dream of Mr. Alcott that an Academe might be
established for conversational teaching of philosophy
and literature fulfilled itself, as dreams have, indeed, a
way of doing, in the establishment of the School of
Philosophy in Concord, in 1878, which continued its
summer sessions into the middle eighties, closing only
with the close of Mr. Alcott's life. The story of this
school is one of the inimitable chapters of New Eng-
land history. When this nebulous idea that had so
long haunted the platonic brain of Mr. Alcott assumed
actual form of realization, it was to him the opening of
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS l65
a new heaven, for his sole idea of a terrestrial Paradise
was that of conversation " where congregations ne'er
break up." His choice circle of friends — Mr. Sanborn,
Dr. William T. Harris, and others — sympathized in his
vision, and longed to gratify him by its realization. Dr.
Harris had a little before resigned his important work
in St. Louis as the Superintendent of City Schools
and lecturer at Washington University, to go to
Concord and live near Emerson and Alcott as friend
and neighbor during the remainder of their lives, and
had established his family in the " Orchard House "
formerly occupied by the Alcotts. Here was the
chamber where Louisa Alcott's " Little Women " was
written ; here the scenes haunted by the " Little
Women " and " Little Men ; " here the chamber occupied
by May Alcott with her sketches of Flaxman's graceful
figures, that were sacredly preserved by Dr. Harris, as
they covered doors, panels, window-sills, and casings.
Next to the Alcott home on the Lexington road, was
the house which was formerly the home of Nathaniel
Hawthorne, " The Wayside," and which was then
occupied by his daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs.
George Parsons Lathrop.
At this period Miss Alcott was much in Boston,
engaged in her literary work, and Mr. Alcott made his
home with his married daughter, Mrs. Pratt, who lived
in another part of Concord. Mr. Sanborn, Dr. Harris,
Emerson, Prof Benjamin Peirce, and Mrs. Cheney joined
in the purpose to initiate Mr. Alcott's cherished ideal,
and the first session of the Concord School of Philoso-
166 BOSTON DAYS
phy opened in the Orchard House on July 15, 1879,
the programme including a Salutatory from Mr. Alcott
and a course of ten lectures on " The Power of Per-
sonality ; " ten by Dr. Harris on " Philosophic Know-
ing ; " a course by Mrs. Cheney on " Art ; " by Dr.
H. K. Jones on " Platonic Philosophy ; " by David A.
Wasson on " Social Genesis and Texture ; " by Professor
Peirce on " Ideality in Science ; " by Colonel Higginson
on " American Literature ; " Dr. Thomas Davidson on
the " History of Athens ; " one lecture from Emerson
on " Memory ; " a course of three by Mr. Sanborn on
"Social Science;" one by Rev. Dr. Bartol on "Educa-
tion ; " and readings from " Thoreau's Manuscripts " by
Mr. Harrison G. 0. Blake.
The success of these conferences was so assured that
the next year saw the building of the little Hillside
Chapel in the Orchard House grounds, and the school
opened with the following programme, which is pre-
sented as typical of those of all the succeeding
summers : —
Mr. A. Bronson Alcott. — Five Lectures on Mysticism:
1. St. John the Evangelist. 2. Plotinus. 3. Tauler and
Eckhart. 4. Behmen. 5. Swedenborg. Mr. Alcott also
delivered the Salutatory and Valedictory.
Dr. H. K. Jones. — Five Lectures on The Platonic Philosophy,
and five on Platonism in its Eelatiou to Modern Civiliza-
tion : 1. Platonic Philosophy ; Cosmologic and Theologic
Outlines. 2. The Platonic Psychology ; The Daemon of
Socrates. 3. The Two Worlds, and the Twofold Con-
sciousness ; The Sensible and the Intelligible. 4. The State
and Church ; Their Relations and Correlations. 5. The
Eternity of the Soul, and its Pre-existence. 6. The Im-
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS l67
mortality and the Mortality of the Soul; Personality and
Individuality ; Metempsychosis. 7. The Psychic Body and
the Material Body of Man. 8. Education and Discipline of
Man ; The Uses of the World we live in. 9. The Philosophy
of Law. The Philosophy of Prayer, and the " Prayer
Gauge."
Dr. William T. Harris. — Five Lectures on Speculative Phil-
osophy, namely: — 1. Philosophic Knowing. 2. Philo-
sophic First Principles. 3. Philosophy and Immortality.
4. Philosophy and Religion. 5. Philosophy and Art. —
Five Lectures on the History of Philosophy, namely :
1. Plato. 2. Aristotle. 3. Kant. 4. Fichte. 5. Hegel.
Rev. John S. Kedney, D.D. — Four Lectures on the Philosophy
of the Beautiful and Sublime.
Mr. Denton J. Snider. — Five Lectures on Shakspeare : 1. Phil-
osophy of Shakspearian Criticism. 2. The Shakspearian
World. 3. Principles of Characterization in Shakspeare.
4. Organism of the Individual Drama. 5. Organism of the
Universal Drama.
Rev. William H. Channing. — Four lectures on Oriental and
Mystical Philosophy : 1. Historical Mysticism. 2. Man's
Fourfold Being. 3. True Buddhism. 4. Modern Pessimism.
Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney. — 1. Color. 2. Early American Art.
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. — Modern Society.
Mr. John Albee. — 1. Figurative Language. 2. The Literary
Art.
Mr. F. B. Sanborn. — The Philosophy of Charity.
Dr. Elisha Mulford. — L The Personality of God. 2. Prece-
dent Relations of Religion and Philosophy to Christianity.
Mr. Harrison G. 0. Blake. — Readings from Thoreau's
Manuscripts.
Rev. Dr. Cyrus A. Bartol. — God in Nature.
Rev. Dr. Andrew P. Peabody. — Conscience and Consciousness.
Mr. Emerson. — Aristocracy.
Rev. Dr. Frederic H. Hedge. — Ghosts and Ghost-seeing.
Mr. David A. Wasson. — 1. Philosophy of History. 2. The
Same.
168 BOSTON DAYS
The Faculty was composed of Mr. A. Bronson
Alcott, Dean, Mr. Emery, Director, and Mr. F. B.
Sanborn, Secretary. These three, with Dr. William
T. Harris, Dr. H. K. Jones, Miss Peabody, Mrs.
Cheney, INIr. Snider, Dr. Kedney, Dr. Holland, or any
of these and other lecturers who might be in Concord,
constituted the Faculty for the time being; but the
permanent and active members were Mr. x\lcott, Dr.
Harris, ISIr. Emery, and Mr. Sanborn. The aim was,
as Mr. Sanborn stated, "to bring together a few of
those persons who, in America, have pursued, or desire
to pursue, the paths of speculative philosophy ; to en-
courage these students and professors to communicate
with each other what they have learned and meditated ;
and to illustrate, by a constant reference to poetry and
the higher literature, those ideas which philosophy
presents."
The little chapel was almost as primitive as the
groves where Plato taught. There were wide spaces
between the rough boards of the walls where creep-
ing vines and greenery found hospitable entrance and
twined their way in with a decorative effect- The
busts of Plato, Pestalozzi, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
and A. Bronson Alcott were placed about, and a mask
of Anaxagoras hung upon the wall, while over the
mantel was an engraving of the " School of Athens."
Other engravings and photographs, which were changed
from time to time, added to the classic attractions.
Upon a low platform in a wide alcove stood the table
at which the lecturers placed themselves, and camp
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 169
chairs, arranged rather for comfort than in geometrical
figures, furnished the seats of the audience.
The accessibility of the hillside in its alluring shade,
from the chapel, in which the mercury not un frequently
stood at ninety degrees, — without in the least disturbing
the eloquence of the philosophers, — enabled the less
philosophic mind occasionally to escape through the
open door and enjoy a brief interlude in which to pull
himself together for furtlier draughts of knowledge from
the sages. During a five hours' discourse upou the
" Genesis of the Maya," or of " Reminiscence as Related
to the Pre-existence of the Soul," there was, to the
unregenerate mind not fully initiated, a certain mundane
joy in a brief vacation from these high themes, and it
was found that on returning it was possible to rect)gnize
the point to which the lecturer had conducted his
hearers with no perceptible loss of its deep significance.
In these days Dr. Bartol was a prominent figure, and
his essays (not unfrequently more than three hours in
length), were delivered in a peculiar chanting tone,
with a rhythmic effect to which his fragile body corre-
ponded, swaying with every inflection and emphasis like
a leaf fluttering in the breeze. Mr. Alcott usually went
to sleep during these incantations, and Miss Elizabeth
Peabody, who always sat faithfully through every half
day of the four to six weeks' sessions, also relapsed, at
intervals, into apparent slumber, from which she would
suddenly arouse herself with a movement that sent flying
in various directions her bag, handkerchief, note-books,
pencil, and all her various belongings which those of
170 BOSTON DAYS
the younger and non-distinguished persons sitting near
considered it an honor to scramble about and pick up
for her. When it came to the discussion of the theme,
however, it always turned out that Miss Peabody, half-
blind, nearly deaf, and wholly asleep, had yet heard
everything that was said to much better advantage than
any one else in the audience.
Dr. William T. Harris, the present National Com-
missioner of Education, whose eminence as a scholar
and a philosophic thinker has conferred new exaltation
and dignity on his high office, had achieved, even at this
time, a wide recognition and following both in Europe
and in our own country, as tlic leading exponent of
Hegelian philosophy and the founder and editor of a
journal not less unique than " The Dial," a periodical
that made itself a pre-eminent aid to scholarly culture
and the finest insight, — " The Journal of Speculative
Philosophy." This magazine made a profound impress
upon the thought of the day. Devoted essentially to
philosophic thought, it also contained some of the
clioicest literary criticism of the time. The reputation
of Dr. Harris had preceded him, and for some years
before the establishment of the School of Philosophy,
he had been from time to time invited to lecture in
Boston, where he was always received with ardent friend-
ship and joyful recognition. Of the eminent character
of the services of Dr. Harris, Dr. Cyrus Northrop,
President of the University of Minnesota, in his address
before the Yale Bicentennial Celebration (October 22,
1901) said: —
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 171
" He is a philosopher. He founded and has edited the
' Journal of Speculative Philosophy,' the first journal of
the kind in the English language, if the language of
philosophy can properly be called English ; and yet he did
not lose his common sense, his clear way of stating things,
his power of suggesting new thoughts and plans to
teachers and thus getting them out of the ruts, nor his
ability to awaken enthusiasm in teachers for their work.
Above the roar of the mighty flood of so-called pedagogical
learning with which our country is being inundated, the
clear good sense and philosophical suggestions of Mr.
Hai'ris never fail to reach the understanding of teachers
and to prove most helpful to them. His views on educa-
tion are always sound, and the great multitude who
listen to his words and in turn repeat them in substance
to a still greater multitude, make his influence on the
education of the people beyond calculation. Let him be
honored as he deserves for what he has done and what he
is doing. The government at Washington honored itself
when it made Wm. T. Harris Commissioner of Education,
and whatever the party in power he should be retained
in his present office as long as he is able to serve the
cause of education as well as he has done in the past."
Dr. Harris is perhaps the most able and sympathetic
of the interpreters of Emerson, and he has always
discriminated carefully between the organic unity
required in the drama or the novel, and the logical
unity demanded in the prose essay. In Emerson's
essay entitled " Experience " he felt that the dialectic
art was strikingly revealed. " In this wonderful piece
of writing," said Dr. Harris in reference to this essay,
"we have a compend of his insights into life and
172 BOSTON DAYS
nature arranged in dialectic order. The first phrase
brings us to the consciousness of illusion."
Miss Alcott used laughingly to say that she " fled the
town " when the philosophers began to arrive ; but for
a great number of other people, apparently, it was the
time to fare forth to classic Concord. All in all there
was an element of comedy, as well as of the serious
pursuits of the scholar, in these Concord summers. Mr.
Sanborn often looked on with a suspicious twinkle in
his eye ; but the exquisite courtesy of all the leaders in
this modern Academe — Mr. Alcott, Dr. Harris, Mr.
Sanborn, and the lecturers who came and went — was
not the least of the charm that impressed itself upon
the devotee, and perhaps, indeed, upon even the camp-
followers, who were by no means wanting.
" Thou knowest not what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed hath lent."
For there were cranks attracted to the "School of
Philosophy " like moths to a light, and they were not
invariably of the order of whom Dr. Holmes affirmed
that they " turn the wheel of the universe." Yet
largely the classic town was thronged with scholarly
and aspiring truth-seekers, who, if not of an order to
precisely set the lazy, sluggish Concord River on fire,
were at least serious and reverent, and were largely
composed of the choicest minds of the country. The
audience, not unfrequently, was only less remarkable
than the leaders who graced the platform. Saint and
sage were attracted to this unique centre of speculative
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 173
thought. It was considered the greatest of privileges
to hear the remarkable lectures of Dr. Harris, — a privi-
lege for which the scholar and thinker would gladly
cross ocean or continent: Emerson's beautiful person-
ality made immortal the two summers during which he
was often present, but when the third summer session
came it was to include memorial tributes to the seer
who had just withdrawn from the visible communion of
these choice spirits. Mr. Alcott was universally beloved
and his " conversations " and his presence inspired a
curiously intense interest ; and Mr. Sanborn, with his
classic learning, his wide literary grasp and exceptional
power of penetration'and insight, his wit, his mercurial
brilliancy and magnetic charm of manner, was a potent
factor in attracting a significant concourse to the little
hillside chapel.
While Dr. Harris expounded Speculative Philosophy,
Dr. Hiram K. Jones, the celebrated Platonist, took for
his province Platonic Philosophy under the heads of
" The Platonic Idea of Deity," " The Platonic Idea of
the Soul," " The Platonic Idea of the World, or the
Habitation of the Soul," and " The Platonic Idea of
History."
Hiram K. Jones, M.D., LL.D., came from Jackson-
ville, 111., where he was the founder and the president
of the Plato Club, and he was regarded by students of
that ancient worthy as the leading Platonist in this
country. His lectures sometimes approached five hours
in length, and there were those among the audience who
would slip out of the little door into the shade and
174 BOSTON DAYS
fragrance of the hillside greenery, for a vacation inter-
lude during the prolonged process of the good doctor's
delivery of his insights into the Platonian realm. The
attentive listener would hear him saying : —
' ' All corporeality is related to a somewhat, of which it
is corporality or body, as shadow to substance. From
the thinker, is a spiritual power. Only spirit feels and
thinks and moves and knows; and man only by means
of corporeality. And man feels and thinks and moves in
view of, and in relation to, three aspects of reality, —
physics, metaphysics, and divinity — by means of three
orders of corporeality — as instruments therein respec-
tively of the three orders of knowing."
Again, the learned Doctor would be heard announc-
ing, — his words falling with the measured and slightly
metallic sound of a phonograph : —
" Man does not first think tree or animal shape, and
then fumble about till he finds one, but he is first sentient
of these forms by their image and impress upon his physi-
cal sensorium, and thereupon arise the motion and form
of his thought and science concerning those natures.
And likewise in his psychical and spiritual sensoria man
does not first think essence, soul, God, and then grope
around in the limbo of ignorance and inexperience until
he has found one of these forms, but he is first sentient
of their form by means of the impress and reflection of
the images of these natures in his psychic and pneumatic
sensoria ; and toward these impressions spring the motion
and form of his thought and knowledge concerning super-
physical and super-essential natures."
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 175
Sometimes, indeed, an irreverent couple would leave
these Platonic expositions of the " physical sensorium "
and " spiritual sensoria " and be oflF for an hour's row on
the Concord River, — whose current is so sluggish that
Hawthorne said he swam across it every day all one
summer without being able to determine which way it
flowed, — but as the lectures of Dr. Jones were, like
the quality of Japanese pictures, such as to permit
approach from any angle of vision, — upside down, or
divided anywhere ; any part, despite mathematical laws,
being equal to the whole, — they lent themselves to the
charming possibilities of being taken in sections. In-
deed, the irreverent and unplatonic mind was not un-
frequently found to insist that a part was better than
the whole of the good doctor's discourses, whose length
suggested the infinite leisure of the Eternities rather
tlian the limits of an ephemeral summer's day.
The session of the School of Philosophy for the
summer of 1881 opened with a poem by Mr. Edmund
C. Stedman, that afterward enriched the pages of the
"Atlantic Monthly." In 1882 the poem was by Mr.
Sanborn, — an ode of classic beauty, entitled, " The
Poet's Countersign." Mr. Sanborn is a Harvard man, of
the class of 1855, and has been for many years widely
known throughout the country as a leader in social
economics and for his counsel upon the management
of charities, the care of the insane, and kindred topics
as well as for his brilliant literary work. He was long
the Secretary of the American Social Science Associa-
tion ; he was Inspector of Public Charities for the State
176 BOSTON DAYS
of INIassachusetts, and has for many years been the
Boston correspondent of the " Springfield Republican."
He was the literary executor of Theodore Parker, the
Unitarian preacher, and had many of his papers. He
wrote the life of Henry D. Thoreau, which was pub-
lished in the " American Men of Letters " series, and his
biography of John Brown is one of the great contribu-
tions to American literature. The opening of Mr. San-
born's " Ode " is full of beauty, when the poet finds that
"... another unretuniing spring hath passed,"
and one canto is as follows : —
" Along the marge of the slow-gliding streams,
Our winding Concord and the wider flow
Of Charles by Cambridge, walks and dreams
A throng of poets, — tearfully they go ;
For each bright river misses from its band
The keenest eye, the truest heart, the surest minstrel hand, —
They sleep each on his wooded hill above the soxTowing laud.
Duly each mound with garlands we adorn
Of violet, lily, laurel, and the flowering thorn, —
Sadly above them wave
The waiL'ng pine-trees of their native strand ;
Sadly the distant billows smite the shore.
Plash in the sunlight, or at midnight roar, —
All sounds of melody, all things sweet and fair
On earth, in sea or air.
Droop and grow silent by the poet's grave."
Mr. Alcott's " Salutatory " for each session was always
very characteristic : he welcomed the audience to the
pleasant town and to the mental delights of Hillside
Chapel. He spoke of the absorbing beauties of divine
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 177
philosophy, — a subject which embraces eternal truth,
righteousness, and beauty. There were but few orna-
ments at the chapel, for they believed that a holy life is
the only true beauty, as the eye itself, not what it sees,
is beautiful. God is the true philosopher, he would
continue, and is philosophy Himself. He would quote
Hierocles, a commentator of Pythagoras, who said :
" Philosophy is the purification and perfection of
human nature, — its purification because it delivers us
from the temerity and folly that proceed from matter,
and because it delivers our affections from the mortal
body, and its perfection because it makes it recover its
original felicity by referring it to the likeness of God."
Philosophy addresses the intellect, the affections, the
will, Mr. Alcott would add. It has in its heart religion.
A philosopher is a lover of truth.
Dr. Harris gave during one session a series of lectures
on " Socrates and the Pre-Socratic Philosophy,"
Aristotle's " De Anima," " Gnosticism and Neo-Platon-
ism," " Christian Mysticism," " Philosophy of the
Bhagavad Ghita," and one or two lectures on Art.
" Philosophic knowing is to be distinguished from
ordinary reflection," one would find him saying, in his
musical vibrant voice, " through the fact that it sets up
one principle as the explanation of the world, while
mere reflection is content to find subordinate unities,
and to make classifications and generalizations. Ordi-
nary science seeks unities and tries to piece together the
fragments of experience and to trace facts to principles ;
but philosophy is more ambitious, and undertakes to
12
178 BOSTON DAYS
find one principle for all facts. Say what we will of
the pride of the human intellect, and of the desirability
of humility, we find, after all, that the deepest interest
of the human mind lies in the question which relates to
the ultimate principle. The subordinate principles are
not so important, — we can appeal from them to the
higher ; but the absolute principle of all, — that is
something that concerns the origin and destiny of all
human beings. In this respect philosophy corresponds
to religion, and both are conversant with the absolute
principle." In his lecture on Aristotle Dr. Harris gave
this fine and most valuable passage : —
" Aristotle's work on the Soul, although a small book,
has made a great impression on the thiuking of mankind.
It is a treatise in three parts, having thirty chapters in all,
and could be printed entire on a hundred pages octavo,
with large clear type. It contains the application of the
highest doctrines reached by Greek speculation to the
knowledge of what is most interesting to man, — his
spiritual nature. In whatever department Aristotle
worked he reached distinctions that were fundamental,
and gave them technical names of such aptitude that the
scientific mind of all subsequent ages has gladly adopted
them. To state the first elements of any science relating
to man or to nature, is very nearly to talk the language
of Aristotle. To use a thinker's technique, is, of course,
in some measure to accept his view of the world. Dante,
in the fourth canto of the ' Inferno,' calls Aristotle the
' master of those who know,' — that is, of all who pursue
science. So it has happened in this book on the Soul
especially, that Aristotle's distinctions and definitions have
formed the nucleus of all spiritual theories in psychology.
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 179
It is therefore profitable for us to go over the inventory
of his thoughts when we are studying the history of phi-
losopliy, and investigating the origin of ideas current in
our times and weighing their value."
Scotch philosopliy when expounded by President
McCosh of Princeton became a weighty matter in-
deed — to the hearer, if not to the lecturer. During the
several summers many of the same lecturers were heard
in each session, and some new ones gave variation to the
themes. On one evening Mrs. Julia Ward Howe lec-
tured on " Dante and Beatrice," and among those present
were Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Miss Ellen Emerson,
and Miss Louisa M. Alcott. Mrs. Emerson was a slight
shy, silent figure in black, with her soft white hair show-
ing under her dark, cavern-like bonnet like a fringe of
finest floss. Mrs. Howe's lecture was a noble and
beautiful interpretation of the power of idealized love
to lead to spiritual heights and holiest inspiration.
Never has the sublime meaning of Dante's immortal
poem been more wonderfully revealed than it was that
evening by the fine insight and classical thought of
Mrs. Howe. Her picturing of Dante's vision of Bea-
trice was a representation so artistic and so impressive
that painting or drama could hardly have enhanced its
vivid power.
Mr. Sanborn, lecturing on "The Oracles of New
England," spoke in this beautiful way of " The Sphinx "
of Emerson : —
" I have been wont to consider this (the Sphinx) as the
most remarkable oracular poem in literature," said Mr.
180 BOSTON DAYS
Sanborn; " far more so, even, than that brief compend of
the Bhagavad Gita which Emerson published twenty-five
years ago in the first number of the ' Atlantic Monthly,'
under the name of ' Brahma.' Out of that poem you can
only unfold by evolution a certain number or form of the
Totality, but ' The Sphinx ' has implied in it the Totality
itself, so far as this world of man is concerned. I expect
to live long enough," he continued, " to see professorships
established even at Harvard and Yale to explain this poem,
as professors have for so many years been explaining
Plato's ' Timoneous ' and Aristotle's ' Work on the Soul.' "
The summer of 1881 found Elizabeth Peabody in
Pennsylvania, unable to betake herself to the Platonic
and Socratic platform, and to Mr. Alcott she wrote as
follows : —
"Dear Mr. Alcott, — Here I have before me the
programme of the Concord School, the bill of fare a ban-
quet of the gods, which I must miss because my material
body is at odds with my psychic body (I wonder if Dr.
Jones can explain why ?) . . . . I may be wound up to go
another ten years, perhaps, not half dead, but alive and
capable. And therefore I feel it necessary to say that
you must get some one else to take my place, and since
you want a paper on Dr. Channing let me advise you
to ask Mr. Rowland G. Hazard, who once published a
lecture on the ' Philosophical Character of Dr. Channing,'
with whom he was, from early youth, in philosophic con-
cord, having so attracted Dr. Channing by the metaphy-
sical insight he showed in his maiden essay on language
that Dr. C. took great pains to discover his identity that
he might advise him to pursue as a life work his researches
into yet unspoken truth."
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 181
Miss Pcabody proceeded to say that she had wished
to speak, not on Dr. Channing or Margaret Fuller, as
Mr. Alcott suggested, but on the ideal of the School
of Philosophy itself.
Tiie next season (1882) she came, an aged woman of
unwieldy figure, Avhose cap was always falling off, and
whose bag, pencil, and spectacles, as before noted, fur-
nished constant employment to her votaries in collecting
and picking them up from tlie floor. Lovely, golden-
haired Mrs. Lathrop (Rose Hawthorne) was the de-
voted attendant of her aunt Elizabeth. The Lathrops
were living that summer at the Wayside, whose grounds
joined those of the Orchard House, on whose hillside
lawn the chapel was built. Miss Peabody was in a
state of exaltation and beatitude during these lectures.
Her hearing was impaired, but she occupied a seat near
the lecturer, and she contributed to the discussion
thoughts of essential value.
Untidiness of dress was always, one is forced to con-
fess, one of Miss Peabody's characteristics. Not un-
cleanliness, but untidiness. It arose, it may be, from
her utter unconsciousness of self. Miss Helen M.
Knowlton, the artist, and the biographer of her friend
and master, William Hunt, relates this amusing
incident : —
"I was in a street car," says Miss Knowlton "and
Mr. , sitting by me, whispered the question as to
whether I knew Miss Peabody. I replied that I did not,
and he said : ' That is she in the other corner, but don't
look for a minute.' The caution came too late, for as he
182 BOSTON DAYS
named her I glanced that way. It was in the days of
hoops, and she sat serenely and meditatively in her seat,
her hoop skirt flying up before her, disclosing a black-
and-red petticoat and white stockings, but she was per-
fectly unconscious of any disarray in her appearance."
Mrs. Hawthorne, on the contrary, was a model of
neatness and exquisite taste. Miss Peabody's care-
lessness of personal attire was always a trial to the eyes
of Emerson, who demanded neatness and order about
him. It was probably due to a certain lack of executive
and applied power. In fact, with more power on the
plane of the visible and material, Elizabeth Peabody
would have left a deeper impress upon her time than
she has, as she would have fornmlated her work and
related it more definitely to the needs of humanity.
Transcendentalism, however, did its work in its asser-
tion of the absolute supremacy of the spiritual over the
material. That was what it stood for, and that is the
inheritance that it left to the future. The present
theosophical and metaphysical thought — the Christian
science and spiritualistic trend in general — is but the
same transcendental thought appearing under other
names and conditions. The essential idea is the same
in all. It is the assertion of man's diviner powers;
the confident assurance while dwelling temporarily amid
material tilings, he is essentially a spirit, living a spiritual
life.
In 1887 Miss Peabody published her last book,
"Evenings with Allston, and Other Essays," and her
preface to this collection of scattered papers which had
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 183
first appeared in " The Dial " was singularly clear and
forcible.
There are no words strong or vivid enough to convey
any adequate impression of the abounding love that was
the keynote of the nature of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.
She was essentially a spirit of love, of enthusiasm for
humanity, and for the diviner phases of progress.
" How rich she was ! " well said Mrs. Howe at the last
services, held in the beautiful atmosphere of the
" Church of the Disciples," on her death. " How rich
in love, how rich in sympathy, how rich in interests ! "
She loved every one. Her nature was a fountain of
infinite tenderness and the most exalted and exquisite
beauty of feeling and of appreciation. She was pecu-
liarly fitted to enter into the kingdom of heaven. She
lived in it while on earth and made this celestial joy in
the entire atmosphere of her life.
Among the memorable visitors to Concord in the
early summers of the school, was Julia Romana Anagnos
(Mrs. Michael Anagnos), the eldest child of Dr. and Mrs.
Howe, a woman whose beauty and charm radiated like
sunlight in the air. Mrs. Anagnos embodied her im-
pressions of the school in a fanciful little sketch called
" Philosophse Qusestor " and in this we find her saying
of one lecture on the Buddhist faith : —
"Genially as they enjoyed the noble essay, the
audience did not seem converted to a wish for annihila-
tion. On the contrary, they appeared extremely flourish-
ing, and went to a musical party that very afternoon.
The music gave rise to philosophic discussion, quite as
184 BOSTON DAYS
eagerly attended to as the art which called it forth. No
piece was considered complete without the ringing out of
a silvery voice in exposition of its meaning ; and the
blending of the metaphysical with the artistic and social
thought-factors on this occasion was felicitous in the
extreme."
As a liberal education in tlie beauty of courtesy, the
School of Philosophy must be especially remembered.
The unbounded mental hospitality for opposing views ;
the infinite toleration of the leaders, Mr. Alcott, Dr.
Harris, Mr. Sanborn, or any lecturer of the day, — Mrs.
Howe, Dr. Jones, Mrs. Cheney, President McCosh, or
younger lecturers, as Julian Hawthorne, who spoke
once on the structure of novels, and George Parsons
Lathrop, who gave a series of these lectures on " Color, "
their liberality toward opposition or even ignorance, the
gentle benignity and serene patience of Dr. Harris, who
was always especially being questioned by persons in the
audience, — all this spiritual loveliness of atmosphere
must forever remain in memory as an added illustration
of the profound truth involved in Tennyson's lines : —
" For manners are not idle, but the fruit
Of loyal nature and of uol)le mind."
The work of the school was destined in various ways
and through various channels to stand for a great liber-
alization of ideas in all the radiant activity of study,
thought, and expression, which communicated itself to
the outer world and whose results and effects continue
in ever widening influence. The " truth once uttered "
is indeed like
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 185
" A star, iiew-horn, that drops into its place,
And which, once circling in its placid round,
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake."
In the April of 1882 Emerson, the beloved, passed on
into the life more abundant, and the quiet town, whose
associations have made it the classic spot in America,
received a new consecration when, near the graves of
Hawthorne and Thoreau, was made the grave of
Emerson. It was a notable company that met in
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and strewed the twigs of pine
taken from the trees that Thoreau had planted, over
the casket.
Of the family were Mrs. Emerson and her daughters,
Mrs. Forbes and Miss Ellen, Dr. Edwai'd Emerson,
and other relatives. Among the friends present were
Mr. Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, George William
Curtis, Dr. William T. Harris, Elizabeth Peabody, ^Miss
Longfellow, Mrs. Agassiz, Thomas Wentworth Higgin-
son, President Eliot of Harvard, Mrs. Annie Fields,
Henry James, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple, Dr.
and Mrs. Hedge, J. Eliot Cabot (who was afterwards
Emerson's biographer). Dr. Asa Gray, the famous
botanist, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Louisa Alcott, Pro-
fessor Ilorsford, Charles Eliot Norton, Mrs. John A.
Andrew, Rev. Dr. Bartol, and Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe.
The simple services were appropriate to the life and
faith of him whom they commemorated. At the house
Rev. Dr. Furness, Emerson's lifelong friend, read
Tennyson's poem, " The Deserted House " : —
186 BOSTON DAYS
" Life and thought have gone away,
Side by side,
Leaving door and windows wide,
Careless tenants they.
Come away, for life and thought
Here no longer dwell ;
But in a city — glorious,
A great and distant city — have bought
A mansion incorruptible.
Would they could have staid with us! "
Two stanzas from Longfellovr's poem " Resignation,"
which five weeks before had been read at his own
funeral, were repeated over Emerson.
The plain wooden pulpit was covered with pine
boughs ; and a beautiful harp of yellow jonquils, the
gift of Louisa Alcott, was placed in front. The Emer-
son School sent an open volume composed of flowers,
the last page of which was of white lilies with the word
"Finis" in blue forget-me-nots. The rich glow of
jacqueminot roses and of scarlet and white geraniums
lined the pulpit stairs, while above on the wall hung
one single emblem, — a laurel wreath. The funeral
march from Chopin, and " Pleyel's Hymn," by request
of the family, were rendered on the organ. James
Freeman Clarke entered the pulpit and Judge Hoar
stood by the coffin. In a brief address, he said after
referring to the universal sorrow on both continents :
" But we, his friends and neighbors, feel that he was
ours. He was descended from the founders of the town.
He chose our village as the place where his lifeloug work
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 187
was to be done. It was to our fields and orchards that
his presence gave such value; it was in our streets, in
which children looked up to him with love and the elder
did him reverence. He was our ornament and pride. . . .
O friend, brother, father, lover, teacher, inspirer, guide !
is there nothing more for us to do than to give thee our
hail and farewell?"
Selections from the Scriptures were read by Dr.
Furness, and the chief address was given by James
Freeman Clarke, who said, in part : —
" It is not for me, it is not for this hour, to say what
ought to be said of the genius which has kindled the fires
of thought in two continents. The present moments
belong to reverential love. We thank God here for the
influences which have made us all better. The voice now
hushed never spoke but to lift us to a higher plane of
generous sentiment. The hand now still never wrote
except to take us out of ' our dreary routine of sense,
worldliness, and sin ' into communion with whatever is
noblest, purest, highest.
"That day dawned anew when the sight of the divine
truth kindled a light in the solemn eyes of Channing and
created a new power which spoke from the lips of Emer-
son. Yet the young and hopeful listened with joy to this
morning song ; they looked gladly to this auroral light.
When the little book 'Nature' was published, it seemed
to some of us a new revelation. Mr. Emerson then said
what has been the text of his life, ' Let the single man
plant himself on his instincts and the great world will
come round to him.' He did not reply to his critics. He
went on his way, and to-day we see that the world has
188 BOSTON DAYS
come round to him. He is the preacher of spiritual
truth to our age. . . . The first time I saw him I went
with Margaret Fuller to hear him preach in the church on
Hanover Street. Neither of us then knew him. We sat
in the gallery and felt that a new influence sweet and strong
had come. . . . One summer afternoon we came to Con-
cord and had a meeting in his parlor. There was George
Ripley, admirable talker, most genial of men, and Orestes
A. Brownson, full of courage, intelligence, and industry,
who soon went over into the Roman Catholic church, and
James Walker, of whom Mr. Emerson once said to me,
' I have come to Boston to hear Dr. Walker thunder this
evening,' Theodore Parker, and many others. Days of
enthusiasm and youthful hope, when the world seemed so
new and fair, life so precious, when new revelations were
close at hand, as we thought, and some new Plato or
Shakspeare was about to appear. We dwelt in what
Halleck calls ' the dear charm of life's illusive dream,' and
the man who had the largest hope of all, yet joined with
the keenest eye to detect every fallacy, was Ralph Waldo
Emerson. We looked to him as our master, and now the
world calls him its master, — in insight, judgment, charm
of speech, unfailing courage, endless aspiration. We say
of him as Goethe said of Schiller: 'Lo, he went onward,
ever onward for all these years — then, indeed, he had
gone far enough for this earth. For care is taken that
trees shall not grow up to heaven.' His work, like that
of the apostle, was accomplished by the quantity of soul
that was in him, — not by mere power of intellect, but
' by pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kind-
ness, by the Holy Spirit, by love unfeigned, by the word
of truth, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand
and the left.' "
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 189
Those present felt the deeper significance in these
lines from one of his own poems : —
" Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know
What rainbows teach and sunset show ?
Voice of earth to earth returned.
Prayers of saints that inly burned,
Saying, ' What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent ;
Hearts are dust, heart's loves remain ;
Heart's love will meet thee again.'
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found."
After the prayer the venerable Mr. Alcott stepped to
the side of the coffin and read the following sonnet of
his own : —
" His harp is silent ; shall successors rise,
Touching with venturous hand the trembling string,
Kindle glad rapture, visions of surprise.
And wake to ecstasy each slumbering thing ?
Shall life and thought flash new in wondering eyes,
As when the seer transcendent, sweet and wise,
World-wide his native melodies did sing.
Flushed with fair hopes and ancient memories ?
Ah, no ! that matchless lyre shall silent lie,
None hath the vanished minstrel's wondrous skill
To touch that instrument with art and will :
With him winged poesy doth droop and die ; —
While our dull age, left voiceless, must lament,
The bard high Heaven had for its service sent."
The beautiful courtesy that characterized Mr.
Emerson was a gift and a grace to all who met
or passed him. It was different even from that fine
lyo BOSTON DAYS
breeding of cultured society, and liad about it the
purely angelic atmosphere. His presence was more
than the refined courtesy of polite life ; it was in itself
a benediction. " While some persons pin me to ^the
wall with others I walk among the stars," he has
written. In his presence, truly, one walked among the
stars. It is rare to find this exquisite quality of
presence in such a degree as characterized Mr. Emerson,
but it is also felt in Dr. William T. Harris, whose exqui-
site, gentle courtesy seems to enfold one in the same
atmosphere of angelic ministration, quickening intel-
lectual thought, exalting spiritual perception, till life is
seen on its mount of transfiguration.
The loss of memory from which Mr. Emerson had
suffered for some years was most touching. After the
funeral of Longfellow, which he attended, he said to
his daughter, IVIiss Ellen, " That gentleman whose
funeral we have been attending was a sweet and beau-
tiful soul, but I forget his name." One of the touching
things said on learning of his death was the remark of
Mrs. Lucy Stone, that " Mr. Emerson has found his
memory now."
The grave of Emerson on the crest of Sleepy Hollow
is marked with a vast boulder of rose quartz. A bronze
tablet bears the inscription : —
RALPH WALDO EMERSON,
Born in Boston, May 25, 1807.
Died in Concord, April 27, 1882.
" The passive master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o'er him planned."
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 191
By his side now lies his wife, and the grave of the
little son Waldo, in whose memory he wrote the
" Threnody," is next his own. On this stone is
the inscription : —
WALDO EMERSON,
Died January, 1844,
Aged five years and three months.
" The Hyacinthine boy for whom
Morn well might break and April bloom,
The gracious boy who did adorn
The world where into he was born."
The Emerson Memorial lectures of the Concord
School of Philosophy were fitly collected into a volume
edited by Mr. Sanborn, which is one of the finest con-
tributions to literature as well as to the study of the
genius and character of Emerson.
Mr. Sanborn's own noble lecture initiated these me-
morial tributes, and in this address we find him saying of
his lifelong friend and neighbor, who leaned upon him
almost as a son : —
" It is not given to us, and to few men can it be given,
to measure the height and depth of Emerson's genius,
either as poet or as philosopher. But there is an aspect
of his philosophical character which we cannot too often
dwell upon, — his flowing, unfailing courtesy to all men,
his hospitality to everything that bore the upright face of
thought, his deep sympathy and fellowship, beneath an
exterior sometimes cold, with all that was human and
aspiring. His friend Jones Very once said, in an essay
on poetry too early forgotten : ' The fact is, our manners,
or the manners and actions of any intellectual nation,
192 BOSTON DAYS
can never become the representatives of greatness. They
have fallen from the high sphere which they occupied in a
less advanced stage of the human mind, never to regain
it.' But this remark, like almost everything in daily
American experience, found its constant contradiction in
Emerson; whose manners represented nothing else than
greatness, and that not in a dazzling, overpowering way,
but with the sweetness of sunlight."
Mrs. Cheney and Mrs. Howe spoke of Emerson with
great felicity of appreciation. " He had power to take
people into realms of thought and life," said Mrs.
Howe. Dr. Harris, in a finely critical discussion of
Emerson's prose, said : —
"The essay on The Over-Soul treats of succession,
surface, and reality, under other names ; that on Spiritual
Laws, on reality and subjectiveuess ; that on Fate treats
of temperament and succession ; those on Worship,
History, Gifts, Heroism, Love, and such titles, treat of
subjectiveuess. His treatises on concz'ete themes use
these insights perpetually as solvent principles, but
always with fresh statement and new resources of poetic
expression. There is nowhere in all literature such sus-
tained flight toward the sun — a flight, as Plotinus calls
it, of the alone to the Alone — as that in The Over-Soul,
wherein Emerson, throughout a long essay, unfolds the
insights, briefly and adequately explained under the topic
of ' surprise ' in the essay on Experience. It would
seem as if each paragraph stated the ideas of the whole,
and then again that each sentence in each paragraph
reflected entire the same idea."
Dr. Bartol discussed " The Nature of Knowledge —
Emerson's Way." For more than an hour he held the
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 193
large audience spellbound with the magic of his thought,
saying, in part : —
" An old apology makes a bishop say to a sceptic,
' How can we guard our unbelief ? ' I bad thought to
speak of the nature of knowledge, but Emerson's death
and your appointment of this memorial day makes im-
possible any theme that his spirit does not postpone into
an illustration. I feel the magnetism from the name of
one never accounted unbelieving, save by such as he had
soared out of sight of into the heaven of faith. If I can
bring back for a moment that light of our day which
Emerson was, it will be a sober joy ; for to have lived in
the same time with him, to have been his friend and
shared his love, not demonstrative because loath to ask
any return, is a memorable privilege.
"Emerson had no code, or system, or creed : no com-
prehensive, practical view of principles, but only keen,
single perceptions, fatally certain within whatever field
he surveyed and brought his perfect instrument or brain
theodolite to bear. He was an insulated sun, as was
Milton, Dante, Wordsworth, — an island rather than a
star; and as Homer, Shakspeare, and Goethe were not,
and the mighty Browning is not. His style is crisp and
insular: he himself is a robe without seam, all of one
piece : his leaf is a carcanet. His thoughts are a selection
of beads to be strung, all belonging together, by their
perfect shape and hue. But the best lines are like a
succession of rockets, with their fierce sallies, shining
trains, and handsome curves opening wide glimpses of
the sky. His poems and essays are songs, not sym-
phonies, odes and not dramas. But there was a tune in
his mind so constant and sweet that he cared not for
chords and pipes."
13
194 BOSTON DAYS
The poem by Mr. A. Bronson Alcott in memory of
his dead friend was one of the touching tributes ; the
opening lines were : —
" Shall from the shades another Orpheus rise ?
Sweeping with venturous hand the vocal string ?
Kindle glad raptures, visions of surprise,
And wake to ecstasy each slumberous thing 1
Flash life and thought anew in wondering eyes,
As when our seer, transcendent sweet and wise,
World wide his native melodies did sing.
Flushed with fair hopes and ancient memories 1
Ah, no ! his matchless lyre must silent lie,
None hath the vanished minstrel's wondrous skill
To touch that instrument with art and will.
With him winged Poesy doth droop and die.
While our dull age, left voiceless, with sad eye
Follows his flight to groves of song on high."
The School of Philosophy filled the closing years of
Mr. Alcott with heavenly light. Mr. Sanborn — in that
noble " Memoir " of Bronson Alcott, written by himself
and Dr. William T. Harris, — quotes a note written by
Alcott to a friend, in 1882, in which Mr. Alcott says :
"Yes, the school is a delight and a realized dream of
happy hours in days of sunshine. Life has been a sur-
prise to me during these latter years, and I allow myself
to anticipate yet happier surprises in the future still to be
mine."
During the preceding year, as Mr. Sanborn records,
Mr. Alcott — then eighty-one years of age — had made
a lecturing tour of seven months in the West, travelling
more than five thousand miles, and holding conversa-
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 195
tions find lectures at the rate of more than one a day,
and he returned from this journey in radiant health and
witii a thousand dollars that he had earned during the
time.
Of Mr. Alcott's character Mr. Sanborn gives this
admirable judgment : —
" Without any distinguished literary gift and quite
devoid of the training which best fits the literary man
for his task, Alcott yet possessed what many men of let-
ters always lack, — an original and profound habit of
mind, directed toward the most serious questions that can
occupy human thought. In this rare trait he surpassed
ueai'ly all his contemporaries, and equalled those two be-
tween whom he stood in age — Carlyle and Emerson —
and from whom he differed so much in his intellectual
equipment."
Mr. Sanborn is especially felicitous in what he says
regarding the " cheap wit " of which Mr. Alcott was
the target.
" That this hostility and misconception of his real pur-
pose, which was high and beneficent, did not drive our
philosopher into bitterness or insanity is one of the surest
evidences of his intellectual greatness. He continued to
love mankind when they rejected him, for he knew how
transient must be that state of things against which his
simple life was a protest."
Mr. Sanborn quoted Dr. Hedge as saying that Mr.
Alcott was " a spiritual hero," and that in him was a
man "who scorned the bribes of earth, whose spirit
lOti BOSTON HAYS
(Iwi It im tlio lioiglits mul who souu;lit ooiiverso witli (lu>
hoavonlv ami the oionial."
l>r. Harris, who when a rlunior in \a\c CoWe^^v lirst
met Mr. AU'ott, savs of his " i'onviMsatii>ns " : —
'• It was poHiaps dillioiilt for tlioso who attoiidc*! the
c'onvorsations to naiuo anv ono vahiabU^ idea tu" insight
which thoy had gainoil thcro, Init {\w\ foil harnuM\iv)nsly
attractoil to froo-thinkinu", and thoro was a fooling that
i^roat stores of insijiht \:\y bovond what thov had ahoaily
attainoil. That a pors»>n lias witliin him tho ptnvor of
t:;rowth in insii^ht, is tho most vahiabh^ eonviotion that ho
oan ao(|niro. C\MtainlY this was tiio frnit of I\lr. AU'ott's
hibors in tlio Wost. (>rdin;!rily a person Kioks npon his
own wit as a tlxod (inanlitv, and «U)os not try a second
time to nnderstand anything found too dillicult on tlio Hrst
trial. He set people to reading Kmerson and Thoreau.
lie familiarized them with the names of IMato and Py-
thagoras as great thinkers whose ideas are valid now and
to remain valid thronghont the ages."
Tliis School of l^hiloj^ophy may be held as one of the
great eontribntions to the liberali/ation of tlnnight. The
])l»ilosophio exi>ositions of Or. Harris wcm'c oi' nntoKl
significance and bi>antv ; they enlarged the mind and
exalted the spirit oi' all privileged to listen to such
K'ctures. ami they have coniinunicatoil to tlie wi>r1d of
thought an impulse that widens like the swelling waves
of the ocean. l>r. Jones — albeit a trille ineoniprehen-
sible — was a true interpreter of Plato; jMr. Sanborn,
with his liberal and indeed almost exhanstless familiarity
with classics and literature and his charm ami richness
of ex{>ression ; Mrs. Howe's two tinest lectures — now
C()NCORI>, AS\) /IS I'AMOOS Ar/JJlOUS ]<)7
publiHlicd in a little brocliuro called "Modern Society"
— wliicli were (J
cl_^ "-^rv e-^> \/^
i/L O-^^ » <^t«V.c«_>< 'Co XrvC^i,^ "^/voJlL
C^'-t/^*^. ' ^^^ • - vw; i-s^_x -^/voJ^
«-V-^W V>-A>-^ ♦y-V^^-tx-YOvO ^^A_y <^_
,^^tfii^^ «(SLio ^v^<2. ^ vx,ac<^c.cX_ v^.>Y^^^^~
, . ^XQ^-A^c^^ x/\ fwwtr
Orw^^
Ola-c rf ^Cw<(. .A^-A ^CaVI Aje.^^MMJ'
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 203
(wliich we now regard as our American classics) by
Lowell, Longfellow, Wliittier, Hawthorne, Holmes, and
others. One notable letter from Sumner (all whose
letters were most delightful), was especially anmsing in
its description of his announcement to various members
of the Senate of the forthcoming visit of Emerson to the
Capital. The fame of the Concord seer and poet had
not apparently penetrated to the consciousness of these
honorable gentlemen, and there was an inquiry among
them as to who this Emerson could be, — the inventor
of a clothes-wringer, then largely in domestic vogue, or
the author of an arithmetic ? Or what title, indeed,
had he to consideration ? " Most of them have settled
on the theory that he is the inventor of the clothes-
wringer," gleefully wrote Sunnier to Whipple. By
which it must be surmised that the United States
Senate of that decade was less noted for literary than
for political acumen.
Mr. Longfellow, returning fro.m one of his visits to
Europe, thus writes to Mr. Whipple : —
Cambridge, Sept. 7, 1859.
Mt deak Whipple, — Many thanks for your book.
Among my many welcomes home this is one of the
pleasantest. It is, at most, as good as seeing and hearing
you, which I know I shall soon have the satisfaction of
doing.
In Florence I had the pleasure of seeing Ball's statue
of Governor Andrew. It is very successful and life-like,
and I think it will please and satisfy all who are most
interested, and that is saying a great deal.
204 BOSTON DAYS
I am glad to hear that you, also, are engaged upon a
statue of the noble Governor, though in a different style
and material. ''
May all success attend your labors. This is the hearty
wish and also the firm belief of
Yours truly,
Henry W. Longfellow.
Letters from Dr. Holmes attest the gratitude he felt
to Mr. Whipple for his subtle and stimulating criticism.
Letters from Whittier note how, when, after publishing
a poem which he doubted had claim to the name, he
would be reassured by a letter from Mr. Whipple with
its words of appreciation. Dr. Holmes always felt this
strong realization of the sweet debt of gratitude due to
Mr. Whipple, as dozens of his letters indicate. To the
latest year of his life he always visited Mrs. Whipple on
Christmas day, bringing his own gift, save for one year,
when too ill to go out, he sent it, with one of his most
charming letters and a great basket of English holly.
At one time Mrs. Whipple sent him as a gift a nauti-
lus, exquisitely mounted in silver, as a souvenir of his
noblest poem, " The Chambered Nautilus," and in ac-
knowledgment Dr. Holmes wrote : —
January V, 1886.
My dear Mrs. Whipple, — You must be in league
with the Nereids and the Gnomes, who despoil their
cabinets to furnish you with precious objects of the
rarest beauty to furnish you with gifts for your friends.
I do not know how to thank you for this new and beauti-
ful token of your kind remembrance. The nautilus is the
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 205
finest specimen I have ever seen. It is always before my
eyes to remind me of your friendship. If I can find a
place in my simple costume for the pin which bears the
lovely anemonite, it shall go next my heart.
With heartfelt thanks for the exquisite New Year's gift,
the beauty and interest of which are quite captivating, but
which is made still more lovely by the feeling which
prompted you to send it, I am, my dear Mrs. Whipple,
Always faithfully yours,
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Kindest regards and a happy New Year to you both.
"When Hawthorne was first struggling with his genius
and his poverty, Mr. Fields and ]Mr. "Whipple took
counsel together, the result of which was that j\lr.
Fields made a journey to Salem to see Hawthorne and
propose to him to publish a novel which he had written
and which proved to be " The Scarlet Letter." From
that time Hawthorne's fame and fortune were assured.
To the Whipples Louisa Alcott owed her first definite
encouragement in literary work. There are no words
to estimate the value, in a community of literary
workers and aspirers, of a home that radiated such
discriminating encouragement as the criticism and fine
recognition that went out from both INIr. and Mrs.
Whipple. It was one of the most potent factors in
the golden age of American literature.
Mr. Whipple's gift of swift recognition of excellence
was a potent factor in the literary development of all
these earlier years. Di*. Holmes recognized it in a note
which, in his later life, he wrote to accompany a review
206 BOSTON DAYS
of Mr. Whipple's work which he had written, and the
note runs thus : —
296 Beacon St., May 15, 1882.
My dear Whipple, — The first criticism that revealed
to me at once Emerson and yourself was one that in the
multitude of your writings you may have forgotten. I
do not pay any debt in sending you mine, but a small per
cent of it. Always truly yours,
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Mr. Whipple developed literary criticism to a signifi-
cance heretofore unknown in our country. With him it
was the supreme work of his life. All that force and
vividness and keen insight and creative power that
might have poured itself in various other literary
channels was concentrated in his criticism. In his
hands it became indeed a fine art. True criticism
is creation, not disintegration, and this truth is signally
illustrated in Mr. Whipple's writings. His books are
an immense force, a vast and stimulating positive power,
and are thus among the great aids to character-
building.
The complete collection of his works offers a mine of
literature that is a mine of thought as well. His essays
fill nine volumes, and they are comprehensive in their
inclusion of biography, reminiscence, and comment.
Then, too, Mr. Whipple's life was lived in the very
heart of the most interesting literary period of America,
and his was the impressionable temperament to take
swift account and unconscious mental record that later
recorded itself in his exquisite and forcible English.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 207
" Scarcely inferior to Macaulay in brilliancy of diction
and graphic portraiture," wrote Whittier of Whipple,
"he was freer from prejudice and passion and more
loyal to the truth of fact and history. He was a
thoroughly honest man. He wrote with conscience
always at his elbow and never sacrificed his real con-
victions for the sake of epigram and antithesis. He
instinctively took the right side of the questions that
came before him for decision even when by so doing he
ranked himself with the unpopular minority. He had
the manliest hatred of hypocrisy and meanness ; but if
his language had at the time the severity of justice, it
was never merciless. Never blind to faults, he had a
quick and sympathetic eye for any real excellence or
evidence of reserved strength in the author under dis-
cussion. He was a modest man, sinking his own
personality out of sight, and he always seemed to be
more interested in the success of others than in his
own."
The collected works of Mr. Whipple form a unique
and permanent feature of American literature. They
offer a feast of intellect — a kind of splendid celebration
of genius in all its phases — literary, political, philan-
thropic, and scientific. He has written of the Eliza-
bethan literature, of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, the
group of minor dramatists, of Beaumont and Fletcher,
Massinger and Ford, of Spenser and the group of minor
Elizabethan poets, of Sidney and of Raleigh, Bacon,
and Hooker, — a volume which is held as one of the
critical authorities in university study and literary
208 BOSTON DAYS
societies ; a volume that will give any careful reader
a clear grasp and wide knowledge of all the influences
and achievements of the poets and dramatists of this
period. An interesting letter from George William
Curtis, though undated, must have been written about
this : —
Many thanks, dear Mr. Whipple, for the omitted
portions of your article, which I return as you requested.
They are sharp enough, and tickle my heart most mightily.
I shall look forward to reading the article when it comes
out, which will be somewhere in the middle of this month.
I suppose that I never stayed my tongue or my pen from
vituperation, or my mind from a wholesome condemnation
that I did not know justice to be more pleased, but it is
very much temperament, I suppose, as so many virtues
are. We cannot spread our plumage in consequence.
Good bye,
Yours very truly,
George William Curtis.
In the two volumes of " Essays and Reviews " Mr.
Whipple discusses Macaulay, Wordsworth, Byron,
Shelley, Scott, Coleridge, Keats, Elizabeth Browning,
and Tennyson ; Daniel Webster, the American poets,
Rufus Choate, Prescott, Fielding, the British critics and
the elder dramatists ; in his " Recollections of Eminent
Men" are portrayed with the vividness of the vie
iniime Agassiz, Motley, Emerson, Sumner, George,
Ticknor, and Matthew Arnold. In this volume, too, is
Mr. Whipple's great critique on "Daniel Deronda"
and his famous paper on " George Eliot's Private Life."
He writes of his familiar friend, Thomas Starr King, as
Echvhi P. IVhippJe
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 209
no one else has ever done, giving an interpretation of
his character and gifts, and in other volumes he dis-
cusses such topics as " Intellectual Health and Disease,"
" Genius," '' The Ludicrous Side of Life," " The Sale of
Souls," " The Ethics of Popularity," and contrasts the
English and American mind. In a paper on ^' Cliarac-
ter " we find Mr. Whipple saying : " Character indicates
the degree in which a man possesses creative spiritual
energy ; it is the exact measure of his real ability ; is,
in short, the expression of the man." And again we
find this epigrammatic sentence : —
"The great danger of the conservative is his tempta-
tion to surrender character and trust in habits ; the great
danger of the radical is his temptation to discard habits
without forming character. One is liable to mental
apathy, the other to mental anarcliy ; and apathy and
anarchy are equally destitute of causative force and essen-
tial individuality."
Edwin Percy Whipple was born in Gloucester, Mass.,
in 1819, and died at his home in Pinckney Street,
Boston, in 1886. Gloucester is a town of some fifty
thousand inhabitants, on the north shore, thirty miles
from Boston, and has always been known as a centre of
intelligence and standard worth. Coming to Boston in
his early youth, Mr. Whipple met and married Charlotte
Hastings, a woman of noble gifts of mind and heart,
of great intellectual force, of exquisite culture, of
a rare balance of discrimination and sympathy, and a
most accomplished woman of letters and of society. It
14
210 BOSTON DAYS
was a beautiful wedded life, a true spiritual marriage.
Never did man or woman more closely enter into each
other's experiences, more perfectly sympathize with each
other's unspoken thoughts and supplement each other's
powers, than Edwin Percy and Charlotte (Hastings)
Whipple. She gave to him that intellectual compre-
hension which is the rarest gift of wedded life. She
shared his readings, his meditations, his aspirations, his
triumphs. The home of the Whipples was for thirty
years one of the most brilliant social centres of Boston.
Their " Sunday evenings " were noted gatherings, and
have been more truly the salon than almost any other
social entertainments in the city. Mrs. Whipple's rare
tact and grace, her vigorous intellectual power, her
artistic skill in social groupings, made these evenings
the inflorescence of refined and intellectual social inter-
course. In her parlors would gather such men and
women as the Emersons, the Plawthornes, Longfellow,
Sumner, Rufus Choate, Agassiz, Dr. Holmes, Benjamin
Peirce, the Alcotts, Dr. and Mrs. Howe, Starr King,
Whittier, Colonel Higginson, Helen Hunt, and many an-
other. No foreign celebrity visiting Boston found his
stay complete without a visit to the Whipples, and this
not by the attractions of luxury, the elaborate pomp of
ceremonial splendor ; not by " gold and white " dinners
and " pink " lunches, and elaborate receptions in rooms
filled with an unmeaning crowd ; but by the simple and
exquisite grouping of men and women who were simple,
noble, gifted, and sincere ; who stood for something in
the world.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 211
The home of tlie Whipples, where Mrs. Whipple still
lives, is a modest three-story brick house witli plain
square windows and old-fashioned entrance. From the
hall open two parlors, which have been the scenes of
those famous and brilliant Sunday evenings. Back of
these is the library, well stored with volumes which
look as if they had been the every-day property of
a book-loving household. The house is within two
minutes' walk of the State House and of the Athenaeum
Library, of which Mr. Whipple was an habitue. He
was an omnivorous reader and absorbed a book, as it
were, on the moment. He often changed the book on
his card twice in one day. In the brilliant circle of
men in which Mr. Whipple stood, his place was unique
and strongly individual. His was a brilliant, electric
nature, scintillating with wit and swift flashes of rep-
artee ; instantly responsive, full of dramatic sympathy
and play of imagination. Mr. Whipple's presence was
an embodied inspiration, and his qualities were the key
that unlocked natures widely different from his own
and from each other. The mystic serenity of Emerson,
the genial sweetness of Longfellow, the sombre, imagi-
native isolation of Hawthorne, were all responsive to
this keen, brilliant mind, whose insight and power made
it the remarkable force it was in American literature,
and he thus became inseparably identified with our
noblest period of letters. No purely creative genius for
romance or poetry has been a more important factor in
the development and progress of our national culture.
For the critic, as the poet, is born and not made, and
212 BOSTON DAYS
our great critics arc even fewer and more rare than
are our great poets. He had, for literary criticism, a
positive genius. He brought to it the noblest and truest
qualities, — those of swift spiritual insight, — an insight
so keen that it was a species of mental clairvoyance, a
most sensitively delicate and appreciative apprehension,
and a power of dramatic sympathy that has seldom
been equalled in any literature. His great critique on
" Daniel Deronda " was as if a magnifying glass had
been placed above those complex human motives and
passions which George Eliot so marvellously dramatized,
and we were invited to approach and behold them. It
was a criticism that elicited profound gratitude from
George Eliot and Mr. Lewes, that gratitude felt by the
great mind to one who enters into its work and recog-
nizes it truly. It is not easy to estimate the influence
on a young school of literature of such a mind as this.
Acute, analytical, swift to recognize and foster genuine
merit, or to check that which was superficial and false,
Edwin P. Whipple was an elemental power. He
entered into real relations with men. Starr King,
George William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, Bayard
Taylor, were among the friends and comrades of his
young manhood. His reminiscences of those days scin-
tillated with glancing wit and irresistible picturing.
There was a movement on the part of Charles Sumner
and other friends to give Mr. Whipple the degree of
LL.D. from Harvard, — less common then than now, —
and this letter from Edward Everett (then President of
Harvard) to Mr. Sunnier refers to the matter : —
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 213
Cambridge, July 21, 1847.
Dear Sumner, — Yours of the 19th reached me yester-
day. I consider Mr. Whipple fully entitled to the degree
of A. M. Mrs. Sydney Smith told me she thought his
article on her husband the most just she had read. I fear
it is too late to make the arrangement this year. The
overseers meet to-morrow to receive the proposal of
candidates for honorary degrees. One special meeting of
the corporation having been already called this month, I
should hardly have ventured to try to gather them from
their dispersion at their dinners for another extra meeting
to-day. Indeed, I suppose it would have been impossible
to convene them. The overseers meet thus early because
they are requested by a standing rule of their body to hold
all questions of honorary degrees under advisement for
thirty days.
I am, dear sir, with much regard,
Sincerely yours,
Edward Everett.
To Charles Sumner.
If, as Emerson has said, " nothing is secure but the
energizing spirit," this spirit depends on that intense
form of energy generated by mutual sympathy and
recognition and love, as unfailingly as electricity is
generated by a dynamo. The liberation of spirit that
thus manifests itself in an affluence of poetry and
romance was its power to the force generated by that
mutual sympathy which in the Boston group continually
expressed itself in copious correspondence, and in the
verse of occasion that perpetually made festa of birth-
days, arrivals, and departures, and that poured its con-
solation and uplifting prayers when death and sorrow
214 BOSTON DAYS
invaded this choice circle and invested the transition
with that light which Dante saw. The union of the
closest sympathies of social intimacy and the power of
poetic expression in the gifted group is remarkable.
Emerson once said to Miss Peabody, " I am not a great
poet, but whatever there is of me is a poet ; " and this
temperament — which is always that of the finer insight,
the swift sensitive perception, the vital response, — is
marked among all his circle.
" 'T is the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights which the soul is competent to gain,"
says Wordsworth, but the Boston literati of the age
when all the air was fame apparently dwelt habitually
on the heights.
Mr, Whipple was a very genial letter-writer, and to a
friend who had sent him a birthday token he wrote :
Boston, April 20, 1885.
Dear : I trust you will not consider m}' non-
acknowledgment of your birthday gift when I approached
the mature age of sixty-six as any sign that I was insen-
sible to your kindness and attention. It was my only gift
on the occasion of the 8th of March, but the truth is, that
when I awoke on the 9th of March and saw your bloom-
ing daffodils I found that a chill I had taken the day or
two before had doomed me to a month's illness. I recog-
nized the appropriateness of your present ; for who can
ever forget the lines,
" Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty."
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 215
But then, you know, the winds of this March blew
from some Scandinavian Inferno, and for a fortnight my
strength withered as fast as the flowers, and lettei'-writiug
was impossible.
I write now with a new cold, spitefully added to the old,
to thank you most cordially for your kindly remembrance.
The root from which the flowers grew is still vital, and
will flower again when I am more capable of expressing
my pleasure in the beauty of your gift.
Mrs. Whipple, I need not say, joins me in all good
wishes, and I remain, as ever.
Very sincerely yours,
Edwin P. Whipple.
Mr. Whipple struck the keynote of his literary work
by a paper on Macaulay which appeared in the *' Boston
Miscellany" in February, 1843. English essayists read
this criticism from a new and unknown hand with
surprise and admiration, and Macaulay himself wrote to
the young critic an appreciative and complimentary
letter. His future was now determined. At twenty-
four years of age this young man, whose education had
been the keen absorbing of miscellaneous opportunities
rather than the regulation training of academic life, was
fairly launched upon a tide of work than which none
was more needed in a new and growing country, and
for which no one had his peculiar fitness.
When Mr. Whipple's book entitled " Success and its
Conditions," first appeared, Kate Field wrote a notable
critique on it, saying that the book is one to conjure
with, and that among all the brilliant galaxy of the
Boston authors of the golden age Mr. Whipple stands
216 BOSTON DAYS
as the most earnest and unassuming of men. One must
dig him out of his shell, she continued, to find the rich
kernel of head and heart that are always true to prin-
ciples and friends, always generous to brother authors,
always just to political adversaries. None but a true
man could have written his fine prose poem on " Jeanne
d'Arc," Possessing a terse, vigorous style, critical acu-
men, a richly stored mind, and intellectual integrity,
continued Miss Field, Edwin P. Whipple is thoroughly
competent to handle any subject he touches. It is the
divine fire of youth's enthusiasm and illuminates the
world, and he is right in declaring that " wherever we
mark a great movement of humanity we commonly
detect a young man at its head or at its heart."
There was an atmosphere of sympathy in that home
on Pinckney Street where the Whipples kept their altar
fire burning, to which all tlie galaxy of this golden age
constantly turned. The genial humor of the perpetual
letter-writing of the day reveals itself in this note from
the great astronomer, Professor Peirce, enclosing tickets
to his own course of lectures before the Lowell Institute :
Cambridge, 1879.
My dear Whipple, — I should not have expected such
an indiscreet promise from so wise a man and the hus-
band of so wise a woman, but in hopes to lighten the
burden of admiration which you have carelessly awarded,
I enclose three tickets. May some good fortune assist
you to some friend of weak intellect who may relieve you
of your responsibility. With kindest regards to Mrs.
Whipple, I am Ever your sincere friend,
Benjamin Peirce,
/t
296.Be«oon Street. ^-/(J^-?^ . /'^
y/^'^ /'^'TtZ^ ^'z^*^..^ ^^r^<^,_^^ ^>^A^^^^i::^i^^
' //^"^^ ^'^'^^^,/^JL >^^-*-k^ >W^
<^^^A..^>^^^ ^^tz^ ^^'■^-^-^^<- ^-^^^^-^ ^^:^
A^^^-'-^Tx^^iyi-^-iy^
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 217
When Dr. Holmes had finished his brilliant and
powerful work, " A Mortal Antipathy," to an appreci-
ative word of Mr. Whipple's he thus replied : —
November 23, 1885.
My dear Whipple, — I have twenty-two letters before
me with " immediate " marked on the margin, but I mast
write a line to thank you for your most welcome and
generous letter. I needed a kind word from a friend
whose judgment I could rely upon, and I have it. I was
somewhat tired after finishing my memoir of Emerson,
and plunged into this study as a soldier after the march
goes head-first into a swift and cold current. I did not
know whether it would chill me to death with the sudden
change of temperature from a life history to a fiction, or
dash me to pieces on the rock of impossibility, for I feared
I could not make my gyration seem probable enough to
interest anybody.
The pleasant words of your letter and the approval of
Mrs. Whipple as well as yourself have made this stormy
day the sunniest I have seen for a long time. The mag-
nificent nautilus Mrs. Whipple gave me is always before
my eye and keeps her in ever fresh remembrance.
I am, my dear Whipple, always yours,
Oliver AVendell Holmes.
Agaiu;, in another letter, referring to Emerson, Dr.
Holmes writes : —
December, 1883.
My dear Whipple, — I am sorry that you have lost
sight of your first article on Emerson. I think it was in
the " Times " of that day that I saw the article that I was
thinking of. I have a complete set of the " North Ameri-
can Review " and Indices, so that I can lay my hands
218 BOSTON DAYS
at once on the two articles in that periodical. If you can
spare or lend me a copy of the one in " Harper's" I shall
be much pleased to receive it; but if not convenient, I
will get it at the shops or from one of the other Public
Libraries. I have never forgotten the impression your
first article on Emerson produced on me, and I wish I
could find it now. Faithfully yours,
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
An interesting coincidence in comparing Emerson to
Franklin that occurred between Dr. Holmes, Matthew
Arnold, and Mr. Whipple is thus touched upon in a
letter from Dr. Holmes : —
296 Beacon St., Dec. 31, 1883.
My dear Whipple, — A thousand thanks for your most
interesting and valuable article on Emerson. To think
I should have thought I was the first to couple Emerson
with Franklin. My poem in the '• Atlantic " in which the
conjunction occurs was all printed and corrected before
Matthew Arnold delivered the lecture in which he married
the two names, and now it seems that we were both
jump-up-behinders.
Well, I was honest, and no doubt he was. I can only
claim that I put a pair of wings on the old gentleman
who was a rather heavy cherub. I have no doubt we steal
(conscientiously) a great deal more from each other than
we are aware of. You, at any rate, have furnished more
people with good printable notions than you will ever get
credit for, and I have no doubt that before I get through
with Emerson I shall innocently borrow so much from
you that if my pockets were turned inside out you could
find a whole scrap-bag full of your own property.
Always faithful!}',
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 219
All amusing little story of Mrs. Stowe belongs to
these days. It seems that a dame of high degree who
lived in Arlington Street which was called then " very
far out," was to give a grand reception for Mrs. Fanny
Kemble. Mrs. Stowe had come in town from some
outlying place, — Andover, perhaps, — to pass the day
with Mrs. Fields, who invited her guest to remain and
go with her to the festivity. Mrs. Stowe made some
objection regarding her little black gown as not being
suitable, which Mrs. Fields overruled with the promise
of some of her own laces and adornments, and Mrs.
Stowe, who never thought twice of her clothes, accepted
the suggestion and remained.
The evening came, and literary and fashionable
Boston flocked to the drawing-rooms of the hostess,
where Mrs. Kemble, in an elaborate costume of
purple and silver brocade, was enthroned in the
semi-royal state that was second nature to her. The
guests were brought up and duly presented to the
heroine of the fete, but Mrs. Stowe meantime had
escaped to a quiet nook, where, with Edwin P.
Whipple for an audience, she was deeply absorbed in
recounting her experience with the Brownings, whom
she had met many times in Europe, and with whom slie
had enjoyed many interesting conversations. From time
to time the hostess came up, as the hostess always
feels it her duty to break up an absorbing Ute-a-Ute,
and drag her victims to be presented to some stranger,
but INIrs. Stowe refused to be interrupted, and the time
sped by. Mrs. Kemble left early, and she and Mrs.
220 BOSTON DAYS
Stowe did not, therefore, meet at all. At last when the
evening was over and the ladies were in the dressing-room
putting on their wraps, Mrs. Stowe was asked by some
one her impressions of Mrs. Kemble. " Why, was Mrs.
Kemble here ? " she explained, having utterly forgotten
the purpose for which Mrs. Fields had entreated her to
remain. " I should have thought she would have asked
to be presented to me ! "
The naivete amused Mrs. Stowe's friends, for never
was there a less conscious woman ; but she had just
returned from Europe, where every one, from the
crowned heads and the duchesses to the untitled, was
anxious to meet her, and the impression remained on
her mind.
The Boston of those days dined at two o'clock
and had "tea" at night. There was a leisure and,
indeed, one must concede an elegance, too, of social
life that had its choice quality. The reminiscences of
the Boston whose social festivities were enriched by the
presence and participation of Longfellow, Lowell, Emer-
son, Professor Peirce, Motley, Starr King, and a host of
others of gifts and rare quality are more and more
interesting as they recede into a very definite past.
Dr. Holmes was perhaps less apt to be found in purely
social meetings than in the semi-ceremonial gatherings,
and a note of his runs thus : —
296 Beacon St., November 15.
My dear Mrs. Whipple, — It was very kind in you to
ask Mrs. Holmes and myself, but we are both very shy
about going out evenings. I hope you had a pleasant
Mr.1. Ediiin P. Whipple
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 221
time, and know that you and Mr, "Whipple can never fail
to find good company, as you will be sure to make it.
Faithfully yours,
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Prof. Benjamin Peirce was one of the most inti-
mate of the choice circle that gathered around the
Whipples. The great astronomer and scientist was
identified with the Harvard Observatory over a long
period of years, and he was not only a great scientist,
but a great man ; one whose exaltation of nature made
him one of the most important leaders in the advance-
ment and elevation of human progress. His life stood,
not only for achievement, but for the radiation of influ-
ence. The quality of his genius was so lofty that one
who comes now to approach him through his writings
alone is amazed to find how incommensurate with his
greatness is the general recognition.
Professor Peirce was one of that remarkable galaxy
of brilliant men born in New England during the first
quarter of the century. His father, the elder Benjamin
Peirce, had been a Harvard man before him, and was
for many years the college librarian. His mother was
a woman gently born and bred and of no little literary
culture. Benjamin Peirce was born in Salem in 1809,
almost contemporary with Dr. Holmes, and he gradu-
ated from Harvard in 1829, James Freeman Clarke and
Dr. Holmes being among his classmates. For some two
years after this he was a teacher in the famous school
for boys at Round Hill, Northampton, Mass., where
222 BOSTON DAYS
Motley passed his early school-days. In 1833 he was
given a tutorship at Harvard, and soon afterward was
made university professor of mathematics, and natural
philosophy. In 1842 he was made the Perkins professor
of astronomy and mathematics and he gave a service of
fifty years to Harvard before his death in October of
1880, in the seventy-second year of his age.
This mere outline of facts and dates offers little sug-
gestion of his lofty intelligence, his enthusiasm for
wisdom, his impressive personal influence, and his
insight into spiritual laws. It was the latter, indeed,
that made his life and work so rich, and that invites
contemplation.
In his mathematical work Professor Peirce was held
to rank with La Place and Euler. He extended the
field of mathematical research. He infused into the
science of numbers speculative vitality, imaginative
power, and an artistic selection. In a series of text-
books entitled, " Curves, Functions, and Forces," he
made a permanent impression upon the methods of
teaching all over the country. It is he who introduced
infinitesimals into elementary mathematics, and thus
even his text-books bear the stamp of his own personal
force. He prepared the lunar tables for the nautical
almanac of 1852. For the succeeding four years he
was engaged in the investigation of the rings of Saturn,
and he discovered and demonstrated that they were not
solid, but fluid, and were sustained by the planet's
satellites. Professor Peirce was engaged in the United
States coast survey from 1867-/4. Among his books
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 223
that followed this period are tliree that are singularly
imbued with philosophic thought, although they are
strictly mathematical and scientific works, dealing vari-
ously with Mechanics, Physics, and with Morphology.
While these are eminent hand-books for the specialist,
they are also deeply fascinating to the general reader.
" Every portion of the material universe," he says, " is
pervaded by the same laws of mechanical action which
are incorporated into the very constitution of the
human mind."
Honors and troops of friends attended his life. He
received the degree of LL.D. both from the University
of North Carolina and his own alma mater ; he was
elected an associate of the Royal Astronomical Society
in London, of the Royal Society, an Honorary Fellow of
the Imperial University at St. Vladimir, and a member
of the Royal societies of Edinburgh and Gottingen. It
is an open question if any other of the great men of his
time aroused such personal enthusiasm as did Professor
Peirce, who was beloved to the point of an idolizing
affection. He was so responsive, so sympathetic, and,
above all, so inspiring. He stimulated the best in every
one who came near him, and what more marvellous
power can there be than this ? His sympathetic in-
clusiveness of interests included pure literature, the
drama, the opera, to a degree that on poem, or play, or
lyric artist his criticism was almost equally valuable.
One of the noblest sermons of Phillips Brooks is
entitled " The Symmetry of Life," in which he speaks
of the length and breadth and height of life : the
224 BOSTON DAYS
length, ill the life of activity and thought and self-
development ; the breadth, in that diffusive tendency
which is always drawing a man outward into sympathy
with other men, and the height — " in its reach upward
toward God." And then, picturing ideal manhood, he
emphasized the symmetry in these words : —
" It must be that forever before each glorified spirit in the
other life there shall be set one goal of peculiar ambition,
his goal, after which he is peculiarly to strive, the struggle
after which is to make his eternal life to be forever dif-
ferent from every other among all the hosts of heaven.
And yet it must be that as each soul strives toward his
own attainment he shall be knit forever into closer and
closer union with all the other countless souls which are
striving after theirs. And the inspiring power of it all,
the source of all the energy and all the love, must then
be clear beyond all doubt; the ceaseless flood of light
forever pouring forth from the self-living God to fill and
feed the open lives of his redeemed who live by him.
There is the symmetry of manhood perfect. There, in
redeemed and glorified human nature, is the true heavenly
Jerusalem."
This ideal suggests the realization of Professor Peirce .
Strong in his own personal work and aims, broad in his
sympathies with his fellow-men, and ever and always
aspiring toward the divine, — what wonder that his life
leaves an influence that is destined to extend still more
widely. It was good for all to be brought in touch
with such a man. Rev. Dr. Bartol says of him that he
belonged to the same class of minds as Newton, Kepler,
Swedenborg, and Plato. His books are characterized
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 225
by work involving such profound thought, sucli mar-
vellously speculative apprehension of divine laws, that
they open to the reader undreamed vistas of spiritual
life.
With any reminiscence of Dr. Peirce must be asso-
ciated the memorial poem written of him by Dr. Holmes,
— a poem singularly full of intimations of the sublimity
of the heavens : —
" For biiii the Architect of all
• Unroofed an planet's star-lit ball ;
Through voids unknown to worlds unseen
His clearer vision i-ose serene.
*' With us on earth he walked by day ;
His midnight path, how far away !
We knew him not so well who knew
The patient eyes his soul looked through.
" To him the wandering stars revealed
The secrets in their cradle sealed."
It was an event in the history of progress when
Professor Peirce delivered, before the Lowell Institute,
in 1877-78, a course of lectures on " Ideality in
Science," which he afterward repeated before the
Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In the opening one
he says of the computation of the geometer that, " how-
ever tedious it may be, it has a loftier aspiration. It
provides spiritual nourishment ; hence it is life itself,
and is the worthy occupation of an immortal soul."
These lectures were fortunately published in a vol-
ume (" Ideality in Science "), so that they are readily
accessible. What a wonderful passage is this ! —
15
226 BOSTON DAYS
" What is this which Ave call fact ? It is not a sound ;
it is not a star. It is sound heard by the ear ; it is a star
seen by the eye. In the simplest case it is the spiritual
recognition of material existence. . . . There are even
physical facts of which the knowledge is wholly mental
and of which there is no direct evidence to the senses.
It is undoubted that there are sounds which are inaudible
to some ears and colors which are invisible to certain
eyes. It is equally undoubted that there are innumerable
vibrations coursing through space which make no sensi-
ble impression on any auditory or visual organ, or on any
human nerve. Such facts, known through our powers of
reasoning, are to us non-existent, except as pictures on
the imagination."
And again : —
" What is man? What a strange union of matter and
mind ! A machine for converting material into spiritual
force. A soul imprisoned in a body ! . . . The body is
the vocal instrument through which tlie soul communicates
with other souls, with its past self, and even, perhaps,
with its Grod. Were the communication between soul and
soul direct and immediate there would be no protec-
tion for thought; and there would be no such thing as
personality and individuality. The body is needed to
hold souls apart and to preserve their independence as
well as for conversation and mutual sympathy. Hence
body and matter are essential to man's true existence.
The soul that leaves this earthly body still requires in-
corporation. The grandest philosopher who has ever
speculated upon this theme has told us that there are
celestial bodies as weU as bodies terrestrial."
Such a voice is not silenced by death, and the work
aud influence of Professor Pcirce are constantly widening.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 227
The interblending of the little coteries and groups of
the choice spirits that made the golden age of American
literature is interesting to note. Lowell and Long-
fellow were neighbors and friends in Cambridge ; there,
too, lived Charles Eliot Norton, who, of all Lowell's
circle, was the nearest to the poet, as Sumner was to
Longfellow ; Emerson and Alcott, closely conjoined, not
merely by locale, for social sympathies know nothing of
geographical relations, but by ties of spirit ; Dr. Holmes
and James Freeman Clarke in responsive accord ; and
with all these and others, in harmonious mutual blend-
ing, Mr. Whipple was intimately associated as critic and
friend.
The most important literary event in the last half of
the Nineteenth century was the founding of the " At-
lantic Monthly," which was christened by Dr. Holmes.
The new periodical, first seen as in vision by Mr.
Francis Henry Underwood — the literary adviser for the
publishing house of Phillips and Sampson in Boston —
was suggested by Mr. Underwood to the publishing
house. The idea incited the sympathy of Mr. Phillips
and he resolved to give a dinner at the Parker House
(on May 5, 1857) to consult the writers on whom the
project must chiefly rely for a corps of contributors.
The guests invited were Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell,
Motley, Dr. Holmes, Whipple, and J. Eliot Cabot, — a
"brilliant constellation of philosophic, poetic, and his-
torical talent," as Mr. Underwood recorded. Mrs.
Stowe's co-operation was immediately sought. Her
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " had been published in 1853, and
228 BOSTON DAYS
" Dred " was at this time about being issued. Her
story called "Tlie Minister's Wooing" opened in the
" Atlantic " in December of 1858. Mr. Lowell ac-
cepted the editorship ; and when Emerson inquired as
to whether the contributions were to be signed, Mr.
Lowell replied in the negative but added: "You will
be quite helpless, for your name is written in all kinds
of self-betraying anagrams all over yours."
The initial number of the new magazine which was
destined to inaugurate an era in American literature and
which has always kept faith with its high ideals, was
enriched with four poems of Emerson's, — " Bralima,"
"Days," "The Romany Girl," and "The Chartist's
Complaint." It seems that this group was sent in order
that Mr. Lowell might select one from them ; but he
published all and said, "I will never be so rapacious
again till I have another so good a chance."
Mr. Scudder in his biography of Mr. Lowell notes that
of all these poems it was " Brahma " that seized upon
the imagination, and he quotes Mr. Trowbridge as say-
ing that it was " more talked about and puzzled over
and parodied than any other poem of sixteen lines
published within my recollection." Lowell himself
said of this poem that the line, —
" When me tliey fly I am the wingd ; "
" abides with me as an intimate," and that " meaning is
crammed into it as with an hydraulic press." The initial
number of the " Atlantic " was also made memorable
by containing Mr. Whittier's "Tritonius," and in
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 229
the second number appeared " Skipper Ireson's Ride."
Later came the serial publication of that inimitable
creation by Dr. Holmes, " The Professor at the Break-
fast Table," followed by " The Poet at the Breakfast
Table." Colonel Higginson contributed prose romance
and poems ; Richard Grant White first published in the
"Atlantic" his Shakspeariau criticism; Mr. Lowell's
"The Biglow Papers " first appeared in the " Atlantic ; "
Harriet Prescott (later Mrs. Spofford) arrested atten-
tion with her story " In a Cellar ; " and poems from
Longfellow, essays and criticism by Mr. Whipple, and a
story called " Pink and Blue " by Abby Morton Diaz
contributed to the blaze of glory with which the new
venture was invested.
In 1861 Mr. James T. Fields succeeded Mr. Lowell
as the editor of the new magazine.
About the time of the founding of the " Atlantic
Monthly " there was inaugurated the " Saturday Club,"
among whose members were Emerson, Hawthorne,
Longfellow, Motley, Whipple, Whittier, Agassiz, Prof.
Benjamin Peirce, Sumner, R. H. Dana, Dr. Holmes,
Governor Andrew, Charles Eliot Norton, Henry James
(the elder), James Freeman Clarke, Judge Hoar, Pres-
cott, and later still. President Eliot, Howells, Aldrich,
and Phillips Brooks. The scoffers — for there always is
a scoffer — termed this club " The Mutual Admiration
Society," to which Dr. Holmes retorted that " if there
was not a certain amount of mutual admiration, it was
a great pity and implied a defect in the nature of men
who were otherwise largely endowed."
230 BOSTON DAYS
The poems and essays of Emerson continued to
appear frequently in the " Atlantic ; " and regarding a
paper by Mr. Whipple — which Cornelius Conway Felton
of Harvard mistook for one of Emerson's, — Professor
Felton wrote to Emerson as follows : —
Cambridge, April 21, 1858.
My dear Mr. Emerson, — I have this moment read
an article in the '"Atlantic" which is attributed I presume
truly to you, on " Intellectual Character," and while the
impression of its admii-able depth, style, reasoning, and
purport is fresh upon me, I want to express to you my
thanks for it and my sense of the importance, the un-
speakable importance, of the principles it develops. I
wish the article could be printed as a hand-book — a
revised pamphlet — and a copy of it placed in the hands
of every student in every college, and in that of every
man and woman, — the great college of society. I do
not know that I have ever read an essay which contained
more sound, healthy, practical truth tersely expressed.
It will benefit minds of every stage and every age. I
have just turned the half-century corner and I feel that
I may apply its philosophy for the future ; and if I had
fallen in with a similar exposition of such a doctrine
thirty years ago I should have had thirty more years of
intellectual benefit. One of the consolations of a long and
tedious but not utterly disabling illness such as I have just
been passing through is that it gives one freedom and time
to read, pause, and inwardly digest (when one can digest
little else) portions of the great masters of thought, — an
essay of Bacon, — a tragedy of ^schylus, — the sixth
and twenty-fourth books of the Iliad, — a passage from
Montaigne, a canto of Dante, an Introduction of Agassiz,
or such a paper as " Intellectual Character."
^ /^t.e^Wl/^ /f^o
/d ^d€4r»^^ /r^^^^^-^^^^^^ if^
/ Xc /^^^t-Z^^i^c^
Jk —
/^
^ir''X.c^.-*f^^ ^feU^
/
A-z^^ <^^^»-7^-?t^ f/i-t:^-
^J^'^'*^ C^X J'Ju^tt^-^^^
fZ/l^fU'^^U ^7n^ /^ /te^Z'^^'i!^^ /^-/T^^ /^^A^^ /^- 1
//>^<^^^ <^.fi-^^o^ yZ BOSTON DAYS
really one of the greatest complexity. The key to
much that Dr. Brooks would do, at any one time,
would be found in some future — perhaps far future —
time. This fact suggests one profound truth of human
life. Just in proportion to its spiritual development,
life is twofold. And it is not only that one phase of
it is lived constantly on the plane of the spiritual and
in contact with unseen forces and unseen companion-
ships ; but, what adds to the complexity of this most
curious and often most baffling problem of life is, that
the life in the unseen and in the seen are not con-
temporaneous, but that the one precedes the other,
and determines and constrains the individual often to
do that which, at the moment, he himself knows not
why he does ; the action, while perfectly conscious, yet
being, at the moment, almost automatic.
There were two qualities of almost equal potency in
the character of Dr. Brooks, — patriotism and piety.
The latter, it might be thought, would go without
saying regarding a man in his sacred office, yet the
piety of Phillips Brooks was so entirely the life of the
spirit lived out in practical every-day affairs that it had
little in common with that more formal religion —
"... scrimped and iced,
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ."
It was the piety that said : " Come, live in the spirit.
That is the only life. Not a life of sacrifice and sad-
ness and seclusion, but the life of all fulness of purpose,
all greatness of achievement, all gladness and joy. Do
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 335
not forsake your business, your profession, but be by
so much more the better merchant, engineer, lawyer.
Christian manhood is only manhood developed to its
utmost capacity. Manhood has not attained its normal
possibilities until it is Christian manhood." This was
the same spirit with which Phillips Brooks galvanized
into living power truths too often held as abstract as a
proposition of Euclid.
The life of Phillips Brooks fell naturally into three
periods, — that of preparation, that of the rector of a
great and notable parish, and that of the Episcopate.
In each of these periods we see those two determining
qualities, patriotism and piety, alike pre-eminent.
As rector, the work of Phillips Brooks was never
bounded by the limits of Trinity parish. His church,
the community, and the general progress of the day are
the threefold points from which his work must be
estimated. Nor can the ministry of this great preacher
be exclusively claimed even by the Episcopal Church.
His work was in those deeper regions of life and
thought where varying opinions find a common basis
of truth and rest on the universal. The catholicity of
Phillips Brooks was a positive force which impressed
itself marvellously upon the age.
When he entered upon the pastorate of Trinity
Church, he found his field to lie in one of the most
conservative and intensely aristocratic parishes of
America. He resolved that, although by the parish
laws the church must still be one of rented pews
rather than free, it must still rise to the true spirit of
336 BOSTON DAYS
Christian courtesy and hospitality. Nor were his
efforts in vain, for Trinity became noted for its marked
courtesy and generous hospitality, — a hospitality, in-
deed, that so overflowed all considerations of the right
of possession that it came to be laughingly remarked
that the unfortunate pew-owners seemed to be the only
persons who could not be accommodated in the church,
and who had no rights that the public were bound to
respect. By the rector's desire a row of chairs was
placed around the chancel, and several long seats
added in rows on either side, all free to the occupants,
" and as many as can come and sit in my pulpit with
me are welcome," characteristically asserted the rector.
It came, indeed, to be a great problem at Trinity as to
the possible accommodation of the throngs that crowded
the church — aisles and corridors and the very steps of
the altar — to hear Phillips Brooks. A large propor-
tion of these would gladly have purchased seats could
they have been obtained, and there was, on the part
of many, great hesitation about crowding into a
church where they must, perforce, depend upon hos-
pitality or chance for seats. But whenever Phillips
Brooks was to be heard, the people must go. Whether
in the luxurious and beautiful interior of Trinity, or in
the bare, if venerable and historic, precincts of Faneuil
Hall, or a south end " opera " house, — it mattered
little. The large proportion of women over men, which
is a feature of Boston, obliged the great preacher to
exclude them entirely when he gave courses of Lenten
lectures to business men, or the women would have
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 337
entirely pre-empted the church. The Boston woman
usually asserts her " rights," to say nothing of her
privileges; but on these memorable occasions she was
remanded to feminine seclusion.
Perhaps no man has ever more truly and faithfully
fulfilled the duty of speaking the truth in love than
Phillips Brooks. In a remarkable degree he combined
the widest and tenderest charity towards human nature,
and a power of holding before it the divine ideal by
which its conduct must be measured. The true realism
of life, he would say, is not that base realism which
only records the failures and limitations of man, but
that which also takes into account his higher possibil-
ities. A man's life is committed to the world, and here
two intensely vital things come together. " It is the
meeting of these two intensely living things," Dr.
Brooks would say, "this meeting of the universe of
facts and truths and of this living nature of man, with
his conscience and intellect, that makes the complica-
tions of life, and it is out of these, too, that the dangers
of life must proceed." The lessons that he presented
in this remarkable discourse were, first, that " there is
no condition in this world, no matter what privileges
and safeguards are thrown around it, that can liberate
a man from the constant watching of his own integrity
and the truthfulness of his soul." And, again, he
taught that the man who knows the danger by which
he is surrounded must be filled of tenderest charity, of
deep consideration, and of the largest possible indul-
gence for the nature of those who, surrounded by the
22
338 BOSTON DAYS
same danger, have fallen into the depths from which he
happily has saved himself.
Dr. Brooks was eminently social in his nature. He
had a fund of humor which reveals itself in his letters,
of which a volume has been published, and he was
swift in epigram and repartee. He was the most ac-
cessible of men. After he became bishop, his private
secretary, the Rev. Dr. William Henry Brooks (who,
though bearing the same name, was not related to
him), suggested that he must have office hours, in order
to secure any time for himself. He replied that a
clergyman or layman " when leaving his business to
consult with me, not knowing of the observance of
office hours (should there be such), might find his time
wasted, and be disappointed of the desired interview.
No, I am not willing to have office hours. If people
wish to see me, I ought to and will see them,'' he
concluded.
Dr. William Henry Brooks notes that " on another
occasion, when some one spoke to him of the great con-
sumption of his time in receiving the almost number-
less calls of persons who desired his counsel and
assistance, and the wear and tear of his strength which
must follow in consequence, he replied with great
emphasis, 'God save the day when they won't come
to me.'"
In February of 1891, Bishop Paddock of Massachu-
setts died, and the clamor which arose that he should
be succeeded by Dr. Brooks has not yet faded from
the public memory. At the diocesan convention in the
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 339
following May he was elected by so large a majority
that it was made unanimous ; during the ensuing
summer the choice was contirmed by the House of
Bishops, and on Oct. 14, 1891, Dr. Brooks was con-
secrated bishop in Trinity Church, in all the splendor
of that elaborate and brilliant ceremonial.
When the rector of Trinity became the bishop of the
diocese, the only change was seen in the constant
deepening and broadening of his consecrated power.
His eloquence, his fervor, his profound spirituality,
were conjoined with the same simplicity of manner,
directness of purpose, zeal for humanity, and love for
his country, that always made his teaching so im-
pressive. He kept his faith in the divine element in
man. He could arouse and inspire because he brought
to bear that eternal force of positive affirmation. It
is the force to which humanity responds. " It is the
belief in the redeemable qualities of man which is the
most potent spell in the University of Christ," said
Bishop Potter in his personal address to Dr. Brooks on
the occasion of his consecration as bishop, ''and,"
added Bishop Potter, "as it seems to me, you have
never lost it out of yours."
In his work as bishop. Dr. Brooks was ftiithful,
earnest, and thorough, rather, perhaps, than methodical.
He was very careful in keeping appointments, and
absolutely sincere in his expression. The response " I
will do it if I can," from Bishop Brooks, did not mean
" I will do it if, at the time, I feel inclined," but con-
veyed the literal significance of the words. He was
340 BOSTON DAYS
too imaginative, too spontaneous a man to be given
over wholly to routine, and lie was apt to write his
sermons when the spell came upon him, rather than in
any specific hours. The morning was usually his best
time to Avrite, — the time when he felt his thought the
clearest and deepest.
Before entering on the duties of the Episcopate he
attended personally to his large correspondence. Every
letter, note, or request, no matter how ill-timed it might
be, received its adequate reply in his clear, concise chi-
rography, characterized by his marked courtesy. It is
a study in human nature to know some of the extraor-
dinary things on which Bishop Brooks was consulted.
A woman in Minnesota who wanted a pension, a man
in India who desired some information regarding a
registry in a church in Montreal, are but specimens of
the requests, foreign to his province, that rained down
upon him. " So far as is possible," remarked the
bishop's secretary, '' Dr. Brooks fulfils all the things
asked of him. We spent a good deal of time to get the
registry matter at Montreal traced up, and multitudes
of things that a man less busy — less great — than the
bishop would refuse or ignore, he gives attention to.
It is all the work of humanity."
His personal service was as untiring as his courtesy
was infinite. At one time a poor clergyman from
abroad was in Boston and, beside his limited resoiu'ces,
he was also in ill health. Bishop Brooks entertained
him in his own home, went with him to New York, and
saw him safely aboard the steamer, and this to a stran-
-5^
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 341
ger who had no claim on him, as many would have said,
and was not even of his own denomination. Bishop
Brooks lived that brotherhood of man that the most
advanced thought of to-day holds as its ideal.
To the Episcopate of Massachusetts Bishop Brooks
brought such spiritual vitality as to regenerate and re-
create it. He was always joyful in his work. His
meat was to do the will of Him who sent him. He
rejoiced in the inestimable privilege of bringing sym-
pathy and uplifting and a larger sense of duty to man.
His messages were delivered with a magnetism and a
force that proved them heaven sent. His personal holi-
ness of character was felt in all the community and it
served as an object lesson to teach that the Redeemer
liveth — liveth as an ever-present force in the affairs
and the purposes of life. The teaching of Phillips
Brooks was one full of hope and spiritual energy be-
cause, while recognizing the sinfulness of sin, he saw
always the divine possibilities in humanity and God's
purpose in its development. " Never be afraid," he
would say, "to bring the sublimest ideal to the most
insignificant act."
While Trinity parish was the beloved centre of the
work of Dr. Brooks, it radiated over the entire city.
It was so vital, so pervasive, it so diffused itself like the
sunlight, it touched life at so many points, and every-
body's life at some point, that it is no exaggeration to
say that his sudden death left Boston empty and dark
without his presence. Every one felt that he had lost
a personal friend. " Those who trust us educate us,"
S42 BOSTON DAYS
said George Eliot. Phillips Brooks trusted humanity.
He believed in it ; and because he appealed to that
which is best and noblest in every man, he never
appealed in vain.
Press and pulpit poured out their utterances over the
uplifting example of Phillips Brooks. The best ethical
thought of the day was inspired by his life and work ;
and of all there was perhaps no expression more price-
less than that in the sermon preached on Bishop Brooks
by the Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon Ames, in the Church
of the Disciples, who, in this memorable discourse,
said : —
"The best is yet to come. All that Bishop Brooks
has done for good during his thirty-four years of public
service is small compared with the cumulative effect and
growing outcome of his word and his life. The spiritual
power which he received from a hidden source he has
transmitted to the world ; and that power is here to stay.
It is to be a permanent and continuous working force in
human hearts and in human affairs. Every man's influ-
ence is just like himself, and it flows on like a widening
stream, mingling with other influences, and modified in its
effects by time and circumstances, yet ever holding the
same general direction and working to the same general
result."
Bishop Brooks was no mystic or visionary by nature.
He had far less of that tendency to see visions and to
dream dreams than might have naturally been looked
for in one whose life was consecrated to spiritual pur-
suits. Yet he was an omnivorous reader of occult and
mystic lore, and the mysticism of Emerson had no more
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 343
appreciative devotee than himself. Dr. Allen records
that in his college days Dr. Brooks was deeply interested
in the Sibylline Oracles, and that he " became fascinated
by that moment in ancient history when Alexandria led
the world of thought." This tendency to mystic thought
was developed in Dr. Brooks to the higher expression
of that spirituality which relates itself to practical life
in guiding and controlling its issues. There is every
reason that the name of Phillips Brooks should be
invested with moral magic, as it stands pre-eminently
for the practical power of ideal purposes.
Spiritual force is the supreme potency, — a force as
much greater than electricity in its creative power as
electricity is more potent than the dullest clod, — and
out of the life of Bishop Brooks was struck the electric
spark that lighted a thousand watchfires.
"When in human experience the psychic life is
wholly given up to its supreme office of suggestion and
radiation," says Professor John H. Denison in his very
remarkable work on " Christ's Idea of the Supernatural,"
" it not only feeds the spirit with visions, but, exalted
in turn by the spirit and surcharged with spirit force, it
acts upon matter in a direct, causative way ; it radiates
the creative causative spirit." All the great work of
humanity is an example of this truth, that spiritual
energy creates its visible expressions. The entire envi-
ronment of the universe is calculated in unerring cor-
respondence with moral perfection. To the degree in
which this truth is realized, life is successful and happy ;
and he who thus lives is upborne by invincible powers.
3i\- BOSTON DAYS
The stars in their courses fight for him. Tlie winds are
his messengers, and the clouds his chariot. To the
degree in whicli he falls below the moral standard, he
encounters friction and trial. We talk of this life and
the next, but tlicre is only one life; and, as Bishop
Brooks once said, " Death is not the end of life, but an
event in life."
Spirituality of life is a condition, not a creed ; a ser-
vice, and not a spectacle ; a life and not a litany. The
great problem of life to all is : How shall one grow in
sympathy, and tenderness, in generosity, and in consider-
ation ? How shall one feed on high thought and noble
aims? How shall one be swift to discern and to avail
himself of those opportunities for usefulness to others
which are the best channels of his own growth ? How
shall one hold clear and close relation with the divine
energy ?
" Be one of the conquerors ! " said Balzac. " The uni-
verse belongs to him who wills and loves and prays ;
but he must will, he must love, he must pray — in a
word, he must possess wisdom, force, and faith ! "
All phases of progress — art, painting, sculpture,
architecture, and poetry, tiie mysticism of Emerson, the
speculation of to-day — had no more sympathetic sharer
than Phillips Brooks. His attitude toward all modern
phenomena was respectful in its questioning and in its
readiness to accept any real genuine aid. He saw that
the dominant note of the age was touched in its search
for spiritual truth. " Learning may have its traditional
dangers," he would say, " but their cure lies not in
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 345
ignorance ; life itself has its dangers, but their cure lies
not in suicide."
Dr. Brooks had served in his office as bisliop of the
diocese but fifteen months wlien he was called to the
Unseen World. On the day of the burial (Jan. 20,
1893) the people were astir from six in the morning
until the shadows of the early winter twilight fell over
the lily-laden mound in Mount Auburn where all that
was mortal of the dead prelate was reverently laid.
During the ceremonies at the church business was sus-
pended, stores and offices generally closed, and the busy
streets bore a deserted look.
Within Trinity the services were as beautiful as they
were simple. The chancel was a dream of Paradise in
its great cross of Annunciation lilies against a full back-
ground of palms and greenery. The masses of flowers, —
lilies, roses, and one wreatii of scarlet carnations (for
the Harvard colors, the crimson), included a book of
white rose-buds with " The Light of the World " writ-
ten across in purple immortelles. The casket, covered
with lilies and palm branches tied with royal purple,
was borne by eight Harvard men, — young athletes
chosen for the sacred honor. It was followed by the
honorary pall-bearers from among the most distin-
guished men of Boston. The long procession of sur-
pliccd priests, comprising all the clergy of the diocese
and visiting clergy, marched through the cloisters and
down the broad aisle to the chancel, while within the
altar waited a group of bishops, and the scene strangely
like that of the consecration of Dr. Brooks as
K) BOSTON DAYS
bisliop, liftcen months before. During this service
nuMuoriul services were also iield in a neighboring
Baptist church by its pastor, the Uev. Dr. Philip Moxoni,
and in the new " Old South " Congregational (.luirch
by the Rev. George A. Gordon. All tlistinctions of
creed and sect were obliterated, and " Our Bishop "
was the expression on the lips of those of all denomi-
nations and of those of no denomination at all.
'Vhc last service seemed to be a sacred festival of life
rather than lamentation for death. As the casket under
its royal purple pall laden with lilies and palms was
borne from Trinity on the shoulders of the young
Harvard men, the sun suddenly shone out from the
clouds of a gray day, lighting up the pictured windows
in radiant glory, while the triumphal nmsic of the
immortal hynm filled the air : —
" For all Tliy saints that in Thy glory rost."
Outside in Copley Square thirty thousand people
waited for hours and reverently united in repeating the
Lord's Prayer. Thirty thousand voices joineil in
singing : —
" O God, ouv lu'lp in ages past,
Our hope in years to oonio "
Amid the great assend)lage there was a general
recognition of the truth so forcibly expressed by the
beloved bishop that
" Heath is not the tiid of life but an event ;'/( life."
The funeral cortc'gc to ]\b>unt Auburn mimbered six
hundred carriages, and on its way nnide a dt5tour
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY .S47
through the groiiii(l.s of Jfurvard, wliero two tliouHand
undorgraduatcH stood on either .side with bared and
b(jwed heads as the long procession passed.
Wiien Dr. IJrooks resigned Iiis reetorship to aeccpt
the work of the l^jpiseopute, Trinity CJmreh invited the
Itev. Dr. I*]. Winchester IJonahl, of New York, to be-
come his successor. Dr. Donald's ministry has been of
a noble order, and one phase of his thought has found
literary expression in a book called " The l']xpansion
of Religion," — a collection of the notable lectures
which he delivered before the liowell Institute. The
succession of Dr. Donald to the rectorship has been
rendered the more tender in ties between people and
pastor in that Dr. Donald was the beloved friend of
Dr. Brooks, who earnestly hoped he would accept the
invitation to Trinity. Fortunate, indeed, is the church
in securing the noble ministry of its present rector, so
splendidly endowed, not only with learning, culture,
and profound intellectual genius, but also with those
still rarer (puilities of insight, syni[)athy, and vision.
In his commemorative address on Jiishop Jirooks, Dr.
Donald thus finely presented the results of the great
work of his predecessor : —
"Phillips Brooks opened the doors of tlie Episcopal
Church to thousands who had long and honestly regarded
her as too stiff and formal and foreign an ecclcsiastieism
for a genuinely alert, spiritual nature to live in. The
years, as they go by, only reveal more clearly how great
were his services to our church, simply as an ecclesiastic.
He made the Church American in her essential eharac-
348 BOSTON DAYS
ter, and stripped off the last remaining semblance of
an exotic. It will never be thought wonderful that
his spirit lives in Trinity Church, and it would be a
reversal of all spiritual history if the grave in Mount
Auburn treasured all of him that was ever vital. No !
His great example still stimulates emulation, his faith
in Christ as his Saviour — the only faith once for all
delivered to the saints — has been transmitted, and we
find it easier to believe because he once lived."
The life of the great and beloved bishop stood con-
spicuously for the great truth, — that the life of the
spirit is the only life worth living ; that it may be as
truly lived in the midst of tlie restless activities of the
day, in the busy haunts of men, as in a monk's cell,^or
on the lonely heights of Mt. Carmel. Furthermore, the
life of Phillips Brooks is an unanswerable testimony
that this life of the spirit may be so lived as to be in
touch with the world's activities, to be in familiar and
friendly relations with men of business and affairs, and
to maintain mutual respect. His life speaks with a
thousand tongues to tell us the more spiritually ideal
life is, the more truly practical and helpful it may be.
An interesting feature in the Boston life of the last
decades of the Nineteenth century was the organization
of the " Society to Encourage Study at Home," founded
by Anna Eliot Ticknor, the daughter of George Ticknor,
the Spanish professor at Harvard and the author of a
history of Spanish literature. In 1830 Professor Ticknor
bought the house at the corner of Beacon and Park
streets, which already had a history, one association of
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 349
it being that it was the house where Lafayette was
entertained during his visit to Boston. Here Professor
Ticknor lived until his death, in 1871. The march of
trade pre-empted the house and forced his daughter to
transfer her household gods to a new home on Marl-
borough Street. The life in the Ticknor home was
that of literary and social prominence. The narratives
that come down of that leisurely life of the first half
of the century in Boston reveal its forcible contrast
with tlie rush of the present. These were the years
when people still held to somewhat primitive customs ;
when there was leisure for culture and for the real
companionship which " society " does not always
supply. The art of conversation flourished — one
which is not invariably among the fine arts of the pres-
ent. New books were events, and were mucli talked
over. In this atmosphere of leisurely thought Miss
Ticknor grew up and to her exquisite literary culture
she added something of the passion of the philanthro-
pist. " The Society for the Encouragement of Study at
Home " was founded in June of 1873. Its nature can
best be described as an ideal university, one having
no material form, no visible expression, no location, no
codes or restrictions. Virtually, it said to every person
who wished to study and improve : " Begin ; I will
loan books to you ; I will correspond with you ; I will
teach you all that may be taught by letters."
Here was a gentlewoman of the highest social recog-
nition, a woman of large wealth, of liberal tastes and of
leisure, who wished to contribute her share of aid to the
350 BOSTON DAYS
world. Far better than to merely give inouey, she gave
her thought, her time, her culture. No conceivable
amount of checks donated to organized charities could
begin to equal the good that Miss Ticknor did through
this extended reaching out to whomsoever desired to
enjoy these privileges. The plan, too, was self-limiting,
self-distributive. It did not offer benefits where they
were not appreciated. It gave to all who responded.
It was offered freely like the kingdom of heaven, and it
is a question if ever there were a more heavenly benefi-
cence. With the death of Miss Ticknor, the society
ceased to exist and its collection of books was presented
to the Public Library.
The literary fame inseparable from the name of Ticknor
is pleasantly continued by a young and gifted writer,
Caroline Ticknor, the granddaughter of the noted pub-
lisher. Miss Ticknor's stories abound in humor and are
full of a sunshiny charm that fascinates every reader.
One of the great works done during the last quar-
ter of the Nineteenth century in higher education for
women, was that of Elizabeth Gary Agassiz, the wife of
the great naturalist. Mrs. Agassiz has always been so
deeply occupied in the essentials of the work itself that
she has not encouraged any public comment ; but it is
to her that Radclifte College practically owes its exist-
ence. There was organized in Boston and Cambridge,
in the seventies, a society for the collegiate instruction
of women, of which Mrs. Agassiz was the president.
It was this society that prevailed upon Harvard profes-
sors to give instruction to women students, and thus
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 351
led to the establishment of what was so long known as
the Harvard "Annex." Step by step the innovation
went forward. It gained by excellence and not by
exhortation. Finally, in 1894, a charter was obtained,
and the " Annex " became a woman's college, — Mrs.
Agassiz, President Eliot, Prof. Chas. Eliot Norton, Pro-
fessor Goodwin, Professor Childs, and others leading the
movement. Many thought at the time that it should
bear the name of Agassiz College. Mrs. Agassiz pre-
ferred the present uame, which was suggested in a
curious way. Anne Radcliffe, of England, — afterward
Lady Moulson, — had given to Harvard the first scholar-
ship the college had ever received from a woman. The
fact came to light accidentally (only that such accidents
are doubtless due to direction and not to chance)
in papers that disclosed the fact to a student who
was searching in the library for something quite
different.
Radcliffe will become to women what Johns Hopkins
is to men, — a special place for post-graduate work, with
every facility for the most advanced research into astron-
omy, physics, art, literature, and languages. Radcliffe
will, in time, and in no very distant future, inaugurate a
new standard of culture for American women, one whose
influence will be national and all-pervading.
The companionship and influence of such a woman as
Mrs. Agassiz is of inestimable advantage to the students
of Radcliffe, and indeed the finer forces and finer influ-
ences everywhere prevail. The culture is symmetrical,
and not the least of the advantages of this college is the
352 BOSTON DAYS
habit of good society which the young womeu acquire
from the prevailing associations.
Boston, like Paris, has her Quartier Latin, where
the most interesting things happen. There is a semi-
Bohemian region in which are located several studio
buildings and other artistic or semi-literary headquarters,
which is a part of the city that is very much alive. On
the new land, the buildings all new, it is yet adjacent
to and adjoining the old part of the city. It is not far
distant, geographically, from the fashionable portion ; it
is within a half dozen blocks of Commonwealth Avenue,
of Beacon Street ; but while these thoroughfares are
monotonously quiet, with the decorous rows of private
residences, broken now and then by an apartment hotel
that vies with palaces in luxurious fitting-up, this
artistic Latin-like quarter abounds in students who
pour out of its clubrooms or restaurants in great
numbers ; with artists, men and women, who perhaps
live in their studios, make their matutinal coffee over
a gas stove, and dine at a restaurant; it abounds in
lecturers ; in the followers and practitioners of occult
science and mental healing ; in spiritual mediums —
what you will. You will perhaps be accosted on the
sidewalk by a neatly dressed woman with refined
courtesy of manner, who offers you a card bearing the
legend, " Divine Science Home." You may be favored
with a gratuitous copy of " The Prophetic Star-gazer ; "
you may be gently entreated to attend a lecture on the
" Science of Creation from the Standpoint of Vibration ; "
or invited to a course on " Psycho-Physics ; " you may
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 353
be asked if you understand " mental chemistry ; " you
may be invited to the home of " Rest, Recuperation,
and Regeneration ; " you may be informed of the
private lectures given by Siddi Mohammed Tabier ;
you may be privileged to enter into the mystic atmos-
phere of the " Oriental Circle," where you listen to
discourses on the "Gods of Egypt and the Book of
the Dead," " The Mahabharata and the Ramayana,"
or the " Reincarnation of the Vedas." Lecturers in this
region discuss such topics as " Primal Force," " The
Bondage of Mortal Sense," and " The Elimination of
Death. " A daintily gowned young woman sitting in a
club parlor in this region was asked if she believed in
thought-transference. " Oh, I am far beyond that," she
replied airily ; " I am in the sphere of intense vibrations."
There is one house where its fair mistress proclaims
herself a " Daughter of the Druids," and where she
gathers a circle of the faithful about her on afternoons
and lectures to them on "Symbolism." She has a
room fitted up with maps and charts of the most ex-
traordinary description, — the signs of the zodiac ; the
supposed aspect of the universe at different periods of
creation ; the representation of man in various evolu-
tionary stages, and other strange figures whose signifi-
cance eludes the ordinary observer.
" I feel, indeed, that I am in Boston again," remarked
a Bostonian who had just returned from a long
residence abroad. " Think of being stopped on the
street by an epigram. I met Mr. Alger, and he said
to me, ' I have an original epigram I will give you :
23
354 BOSTON DAYS
Justice is the highest human virtue ; but disinterested-
ness is not a virtue, it is the highest delight of a noble
order of mind.' Now when I am stopped on the street
by a man who desires to give me an epigram, I know
that I am in Boston."
The mere incidental conversation of the moment is
not unfrequently bewildering to the un-Bostonian mind.
At the theatre one night, in a pause between two acts,
the question was asked by a friend : —
" Do you know So-and-so ? "
" Only by name," was the reply ; " I have never met
him."
" I saw him to-day," he rejoined ; " we chanced to
meet on Temple Place, and I asked him if he believed
in the personality of God ? He said he never had, but
he had thought more about it of late, and I feel that
he is coming into the higher thought."
There was nothing unusual about this interlude, and
one is not at all sure that if he had not been absent
from Boston for a long time it would even have im-
pressed itself enough to have been recorded in memory.
When constantly steeped in Boston life one becomes so
accustomed to having theological enigmas propounded
in any chance meeting on the street, or profound prob-
lems of sociology, art, ethics — as may be — discussed
on a street car, at a party, or in the interludes of play
or opera, that one takes it all for granted. At all
events, Boston is Boston, unique, unparalleled in its
social flavor. There is a humorous tradition that
Motley and Mrs. Howe, in the interludes of a waltz,
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 355
discussed (and very ably) the problem of original sin
and election, but to what degree this anecdote is
due to invention rather than fact is open to speculation.
With better claim to authenticity is the narration that
Emerson and Margaret Fuller went together to the old
Boston Museum to see Fanny Elssler dance, and that
the sibylline Margaret remarked, "Waldo, this is
poetry ; " to which the seer of Concord solemnly
rejoined, " Margaret, it is religion,"
There is indeed a keynote to Boston life touched in
these little anecdotes which illustrates one of the cur-
rents of speculative thought. " If a Trappist monk
should come to this city, Boston would utilize him as
a lion," remarked the poet and novelist, Katherine
E. Conway, alluding to the momentary enthusiasm
aroused by Father Ignatius in the garb of a mediaeval
monk, who added to the ascetic life the zeal of a
Methodist exhorter, and who, with his closely shaven
head, his monk robe and knotted cord, his beads and
crucifix, and sandalled feet, made a striking figure as
he preached to the crowds that gathered to hear him.
Boston is the paradise of cranks, albeit there may not
be wanting among them some of those who are not
wholly devoid of some device to turn the universe.
Palmistry, astrology, card-reading, crystal-gazing, and
every sort and condition of soothsayer receives a greater
or less degree of patronage, from the fashionable palmist
at ten dollars for an half hour's consultation, to a
"South End" card-reader at twenty-five cents an hour.
At one time " Cheiro " appeared, establishing himself in
356 BOSTON DAYS
a suite in the fashionable Hotel Brunswick, where he
fitted up a room with Egyptian hangings and mystic
emblems into which all Boston poured, eager to pay its
ten dollars for twenty minutes with the seer who volun-
teered to lift the veil from futurity, — while many were
turned away, daily, forced to await a future appointment ;
and through all degrees of life, social and financial, the
interest in the occult is manifested.
Theosophy was first introduced into Boston by a
well-known woman of letters and society who, on lier
return from a period of foreign travel, brought with her
as her guest for tlie winter Mr. Mohini Mohun Ciiatterji,
the noted Hindoo. A limited number of invited friends
met on three evenings a week in her library, to whom
Mr. Mohini explained the Bhagavad Gita and other
sacred writers in the Sanscrit. A little later public
societies were formed for the study of Oriental religion
and the Tlieosophists became a frankly avowed cult.
Mrs. Annie Besant arrived from London, inspiring great
zeal and an increasing following of this trend of specu-
lation. Meantime, Mr. Sinnett's " Esoteric Buddhism"
and "The Occult World" appeared, fairly creating a
furore in the universal greeting and discussion that fol-
lowed. Mrs. Anna Kingsford's books, "The Perfect
Way " an BOSTON DAYS
Dr. John Fiske was one of the most important and
distinguished thinkers whose influence was a determin-
ing one during the last quarter of the Nineteenth century.
His literary life falls easily into two " states " as dis-
tinct from each other as a painter's — that of a com-
mentator on ethical philosophy which occupied him for
the twenty years between 1860-1880, and that of an
historical and political writer in the remaining years
of his life. It is by the latter work that he is the more
widely known, because he brought to bear an origi-
nality, an initiative, and an assured energy on the latter
that is less evident in the former. Dr. Fiske had an
affinity for concrete facts. He was much more at home
in the realm of the visible than in that of the invisible,
and while his intellect was of too clear and fine an
order for him ever to deny or ignore the cloud of wit-
nesses, he was still more easily in touch with things
seen than with those unseen.
Three of the most brilliant men in modern philosophy
are Dr. William James, Prof. Josiah Royce, and (the
late) Frederic W. H. Myers. Mr. Myers was also en-
dowed with the poetic gift, and he had, pre-eminently,
the scientific imagination, with a charm of mind and
manner that always wrought its spell. These three
men are all of the intuitive order. They have divination.
With Dr. Fiske, his power was that of honest labor,
of study and research, — intense persistence, — industry
rather than inspiration, and one remembers :
" All aspiration is a toil ; but inspiration cometh from above,
And is no labor."
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 365
There can be no question, however, but that Dr. Fiske
rendered valuable service to philosophy and even to
some phases of spiritual truth, of whose claim to ac-
ceptance he was hj no means assured. His mind was
singularly free from prejudice, open to truth wherever
he might find it, and his profound and extensive
scholarship gave him the splendid force of his perfectly
trained faculties.
The philosophical work of Dr. Fiske is deeply in-
teresting. Involving no original discovery — as Mr.
Frederic Myers made, for instance, in regard to the
" subliminal " nature of man — it offers a series of
creative interpretation of Darwin and Spencer and
Huxley that has, perhaps, contributed more to popu-
larize philosophy than has the work of any other
single writer.
Dr. Fiske took the discoveries fornmlated by Darwin,
Spencer, and Huxley, breatlied into them a still higher
and deeper truth, stamped it with the impress of his own
vigorous thought, and put it into general circulation.
Is not this one of the greatest of services to con-
temporary progress ?
One of the fine passages from Dr. Fiske is as
follows : —
" One of the greatest contributions ever made to
scientific knowledge is Herbert Spencer's profound and
luminous exposition of life as the continuous adjustment
of inner relations to outer relations. The extreme sim-
plicity of the subject in its earliest illustrations is such
that the student at first hardly suspects the wealth of
366 BOSTON DAYS
knowledge toward which it is pointing the way. . . . All
life upon the globe, whether physical or psychical, repre-
sents the continuous adjustment of inner to outer relations.
The degree of life is low or high, according as the corre-
spondence between internal or external relations is simple
or complex, limited or extensive, partial or complete,
perfect or imperfect."
There are other passages, however, in the context
with which the idealist would hardly agree, as when
Dr. Fiske says that " a true theory is an adjustment of
one's ideas to tlie external facts and that such adjust-
ments are helps to successful living." Where would
progress lie if one merely adjusted his ideas to the
external facts? That is mediaeval. If America had
adjusted her ideas to external facts we should still be
travelling by stage-coach and canals. It is only as
external facts are adjusted to our ideas that man
advances. Thought must shape life. The idea must
work outward and externalize and incarnate itself.
The following paragraph from Dr. Fiske embodies his
fine creative interpretation of evolution : —
" So far as our knowledge of natui'e goes, the whole
momentum of it carries us onward to the conclusion that
the unseen world, as the objective term in a relation of
fundamental importance that has co-existed with the
whole career of mankind, has a real existence, and it is
but following out the analogy to regard that unseen world
as the theatre where the ethical process is destined to
reach its full consummation. The lesson of evolution is
that through all these weary ages the human soul lias not
been cherishing in religion a delusive phantom, but, in
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 367
spite of seemingly endless groping and stumbling, it has
been rising to the recognition of its essential kinship with
the ever-living God. Of all the implications of the doc-
trine of evolution with regard to man, I believe the very
deepest and strongest to be that which asserts the ever-
lasting reality of religion."
There is a vast amount of original discovery that is
not so valuable a contribution to social progress as is
this carrying the theory of evolution on to higher planes
by Dr. Fiske, and it may be that in this single respect
lies the highest, the most useful, and the most perma-
nent value of his honored life.
Through an unforeseen circumstance Dr. Fiske was
lead into the field of historical inquiry. In his early
life when engaged in rather miscellaneous work as
tutor in Harvard, and delighting his friends socially
with his musical talent, Mr. Fiske one day called
on Mrs. Hemenway for a confidential talk regarding
ways and means. How many of the aspirants after
nobler achievement went to this remarkable woman for
counsel and suggestion only the recording angel could
tell. " To live — to have spiritual force — is the
great thing " was one of her favorite sayings ; and
another which she made a guiding rule of her life was :
" God thinks of all beings, so should we ; a lovely spirit
radiates." She was herself always hospitable to all
genuine efibrt and aspiration ; and in her talk with Mr.
Fiske she sought the keynote of his interest and of
his ability. She discussed with him his ethical ideas,
— at which Harvard then looked askance, — his views
368 BOSTON DAYS
of society and its betterment, bis general outlook on
life. Finally sbe told bini of ber deep interest in tbe
" Old Soutb " work, — its courses of lectures and
general activity in promoting and diffusing bistorical
knowledge, and invited him to write and. deliver an
bistorical lecture, adding that he should receive $500
for it.
Mr. Fiske instantly declined — declined perforce, he
said, assuring her that be had neither taste nor inclina-
tion toward historic themes, that history was entirely
out of bis line, and that, in short, such a work was too
foreign to his nature to be possible. But Mrs. Heraen-
way always believed in the great truth tliat there should
be faith in the possibility of impressing others with the
highest views. She was patient because she bad the
vision. She caught the outlook because she lived
always on the heights. So she urged tbe young man to
go home and try his hand at the historical lecture.
Still protesting that he could not, be took his departure.
But he did try; he succeeded to Mrs. Hemenway's
satisfaction if not to his own, and she urged him to
follow this effort with a second one. From this time he
set forth on his excursions into this new field of litera-
ture with tbe result that he achieved an unqualified
success.
Dr. Fiske will perhaps be most permanently remem-
bered as tbe thinker who has bridged tbe gulf between
the Darwinian theory of evolution and the spiritual
philosophy of Hegel, Kant, and Emerson. In one lec-
ture be said : " If the cosmic force of the universe were
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 369
placed on one side and the psychic force of man on
the other, the latter would outweigh the former."
The home of Mrs. Mary Hemenway was in Mount
Vernon Street, on Beacon Hill, — a large, old-fashioned
house of a half century ago, with spacious, sunny
rooms, in which were gathered many rare and beauti-
ful treasures of art in paintings, sculpture, and bric-a-
brac. The family keep her rooms very much as she left
them, and her beautiful presence still seems to pervade
the house.
She is among those who, though vanished into the
unknown, are held in daily remembrance in Boston.
Many of the perpetual benefactions that go on quietly
and regularly year after year, with as little parade about
them as the movement of the solar system, are due to
Mrs. Hemenway. One of these is the system of " Old
South " lectures, as they are locally known — a series
given each summer, in the Old South Church. Mrs.
Hemenway founded these lectures, making them free
to all, — the necessary restriction of the audience being
that each applicant apply, in his own handwriting
with a stamped and addressed envelope for a course
ticket, which is sent by return post. If ever there was
literally a power behind a throne it was Mrs. Hemen-
way. The throne was her multitude of good works ;
the power was herself. She had a very potent rather
than prominent individuality. She possessed the art of
detaching her personality from her philanthropies to a
singular degree. How she contrived during long years
of such active participation in public work to elude the
24
370 BOSTON DAYS
omnipresent interviewer and personal paragrapher is a
mystery. Her name is less widely or less generally
known, than that of multitudes of trivial and insig-
nificant people who contrive some way to be always
flaunting themselves in public view. The character of
Mrs. Hemenway offers a most interesting study.
She was a gentlewoman of an older day. She had a
quiet and gentle dignity of manner, a refinement and a
certain impressiveness of the good sense that distin-
guished her. She would not have been called a
brilliant woman, yet to this great natural poise and
solidity of intellect she added a symmetry of culture in
literature, art, and social life that would have graced
society in any part of the world. In personal ap-
pearance she was plain, although no one could ever
fail to recognize the stamp of the " dame of high
degree " about her. Her face was rather long and thin,
and this aspect was emphasized by the way she wore
her hair, combed down in plain bands over the ears in
the fashion of a bygone age, albeit a little revived at
present. Her costuming had always a certain air of
quiet elegance, and her presence on any social occasion
was one to inspire an interest in learning her views of
life and affairs. She had the presence that inspired one
with a feeling that he would like to talk with her —
or to hear her talk — more freely than the time or place
would allow. To her more intimate circle she was a
most interesting woman. She entered sympathetically
into many phases of life, and whether one saw her as
the grande dame, giving the most elaborate ball of the
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 371
season for her granddaughter, or as the philanthropist,
she was always the central figure.
One very marked trait in her character was the
eminent balance of judgment with which she justly
appreciated, but never over or under estimated, her
wealth.
Mrs. Hemenway had virtual control of a large fortune.
She was the daughter of a wealthy New York merchant
— a Mr. Tileston from whom she inherited large
estates, and her husband, the late Augustus Hemenway,
of Boston, made a large fortune in South American
silver mines. While she appreciated at its value and
held as a responsibility her great fortune, she never
failed to estimate qualities of character as values far
above money. She might shower material blessings as
a friend or neighbor in all conceivable ways of delicate
and valuable gifts, important aid, and benefactions in
general ; but if the friend gave her in return the com-
panionship that she prized, she held herself to be the
debtor, the person who was under special obligation.
This was a very marked as well as beautiful trait in her
character, and illustrates the refined quality of her mind.
If she gave one bread and salt, and he gave her thought,
suggestion, sympathetic companionship, she counted
herself the person who received favors and benefits,
not the one conferring them.
Mrs. Hemenway's philanthropies were very extended
and took largely an educational form. History and
ethnology enlisted her profound interest. It was she
who enabled Mr. Gushing to pursue his studies of the
372 BOSTON DAYS
Zuni Indians, and it was she, also, who made pos-
sible the preservation of that venerable historic relic,
the "Old South," donating, herself, half the sum —
$200,000 — required for saving it, and she alone es-
tablished it as an institute of history with its present
system of mid-summer lectures.
The visit of Matthew Arnold, the distinguished poet
and critic, to Boston in the early eighties was an event
of profound interest. He delivered the three lectures
(which are now published in the volume entitled " Dis-
courses in America ") before large and attentive
audiences ; and in his incomparable critique on Emer-
son he sought to approach truth by the law of ex-
clusion. Emerson was not a great philosopher, he
asserted ; he was not, as judged by Milton's test, a great
poet ; he was not even a great man of letters. The
hearers listened — could one ever forget that hour ? —
in breathless amazement. There sat the majestic form
of Phillips Brooks ; a little farther on, and the keen,
delicate, searching countenance of Dr. Holmes was seen
in profile ; Mrs. Howe's uplifted face with luminous
eyes ; all around sat men and women of world-
renowned fame, and all — perhaps without a single ex-
ception — worshippers of Boston's idol — Ralph Waldo
Emerson. What would happen to Mr. Arnold ? one
inwardly questioned. Would they fall upon him and
rend him — these embodiments of Boston's finest
culture ? One was not half sure that he did not long
that they should, for Emerson was the universal idol,
the star of devotion. But one waited. What would
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 373
Mr. Arnold say ? What did he say ? He said that
Emerson was " the friend and the aider of those who
would live in the spirit." There was the magnificent
affirmative at last, whose force and splendor of signifi-
cance overbore a thousand denials and negatives about
men of letters, or even poets. For the life of the spirit
is the one supreme end for which all live, — the end
toward which all creation travelleth ; nay, it is the only
life ; for when one does not live in the spirit, he does not
live at all ; he merely — exists.
The Lowell Institute, which is always the theatre of
great thought, has always been peculiarly fortunate in
securing among its lecturers the great specialists in
modern science, as well as the most thoughtful critics
of literature and life. Among the great lectures of
recent years must be noted that of Dr. Albert A.
Michelson, the inventor of the " echelon spectroscope,"
by which the measurement of a beam of light may be
obtained, — a new achievement in science. Dr. Michel-
son is one of the younger men who are already leading
authorities on physics. He has made discoveries which
give him the first rank in science. German by lineage
and birth, he passed his boyhood in California and,
entering the Naval Academy at Annapolis, was in the
navy for eleven years after graduating. Before he was
twenty-three he had made original discoveries which
rendered his name familiar to European savants. As
the years passed it became evident that he had work to
do requiring freedom and entire devotion, and he left
the navy for the laboratory. Later he was for three
374 BOSTON DAYS
years professor in Clark University at Worcester, Mass.,
and from thence accepted a chair in the University of
Chicago. His lectures before the Lowell Institute
discussed " Light Waves and their Application," in-
cluding wave-motion, the spectrum analysis, the ap-
plications of light waves to astronomical measurements,
the measurement of double stars, of diameters of
satellites, the possibility of determining the size of
stars, and the effects of magnetism on light.
Professor Michelson has devised an exact and verifi-
able system of measurement by means of light waves.
For this, and for the invention of a still more intricate
apparatus called the echelon spectroscope, the French
government awarded to him a medal, and the exposi-
tion authorities have given him pre-eminence in the
science department. The instrument measuring light
is called the '' interferometer." It was found that the
length of a wave of light of a certain color is always
the same under similar conditions of temperature.
There is no spot on the globe where the interferometer
may not be used to measure off the length of a metre in
light. The red light in a shaft of white sunshine may
be singled out and its progress measured in wave lengths,
and a million and a half of these are found equal to
the length of the metre.
Professor Michelson's interferometer consists of a set
of prisms which divide light into these wave lengths.
He counted fifteen hundred of these waves and found
that it required exactly a thousand times that number
to make the length of the Paris metre.
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 375
His device of the echelon spectroscope, for which he
received the pre-eminence, is the most delicate optical
instrument ever made. It enables science to divide
light ten times more minutely than ever before, and it is
the most important work done in physics in many years.
Professor Michelson demonstrated the practicability of
his spectroscope months before he succeeded in getting
a lensmaker to undertake the work of constructing the
new instrument.
In the scientific museum at Sevres is this interfero-
meter, invented by Dr. Michelson. In his early youth
he was in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Paris for scientific
study, and enjoyed a range of privileges open only
to great scholars. The distinguished Von Helmholtz
called upon him, — an honor enjoyed by few. Noted
savants in Paris gave him the most cordial recogni-
tion. Dr. Michelson's lectures before the Lowell In-
stitute discussed light waves and their interference
and measurement ; the utilization of these waves by
microscope and telescope ; the outline of spectrum
analysis ; the determination of the standard miles and
the measurements of double stars, of the diameters
of satellites and smaller planets, the possibility of
determining the size of stars, the effect of mag-
netism on light, the ether, and the evidence for the
existence of a medium which propagates the light
waves.
Modern science is not only the fairyland of the poet,
but it is the great living fountain of truth out of which
spiritual as well as physical laws are discovered.
376 BOSTON DAYS
It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that there
is nothing in the modern development of science that
is not more or less clearly prophesied in the prose or
the poetry of Emerson. He was the great spiritual seer,
greater than even his most devoted disciple has yet
conceived. It will require the progress of another
century to adequately realize how lofty and far-discern-
ing was Emerson's quality of mind. He was evidently
in spiritual rapport with unseen forces and high intelli-
gences. His works are full of vital hints and rich
suggestions, which are more and more emerging from a
nebulous state into the practical actualities of daily
experience.
For instance, in the discovery of liquid air we have a
transparent, sparkling fluid that boils on ice, freezes
pure alcohol, and burns steel ; one cannot but recall the
prophetic intimation of this in Emerson's line, " Makes
flame to freeze and ice to boil," in a line in his poem
entitled " Spiritual Laws," a part of which runs : —
" Sole and self-commanded works
Fears not undermining days;
Grows by decays,
And by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flame to freeze and ice to boil."
Another of the remarkable courses of scientific lec-
tures before the Lowell Institute was that by Prof.
T. J. J. See, on "Sidereal Astronomy," in which he
announced a new nebular theory. This lecture was
an event in contemporary scientific progress. Dr.
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 377
See is one of the eminent body of astronomers who
made prominent the work at Flagstaff, Arizona, the
Observatory established by Prof. Percival Lowell, and
which is in some respects the most important centre
of late of astronomical activities. Recently Dr. See
was appointed Director of the Naval University in
Washington.
He has announced a new discovery in astronomical
physics which gives to science an absolutely new law,
one that supersedes and, indeed, negatives the famous
nebular hypothesis of La Place, which was that the
luminous bodies are now cooling from a heated and in-
candescent state. Professor See's hypothesis is just the
opposite of this, his theory being that all the starry,
planetary, and nebulous bodies are growing hotter, and
that their temperatures vary inversely to the radii, —
that is, the less the radius, the greater the heat ; the
greater the radius, the less the heat.
It is a tremendous event if a man has now arisen
who discovers a new theory that completely revolution-
izes the astronomical hypothesis that has heretofore
been accepted and held since its first pronmlgation by
La Place. His conception, as finally elaborated, is
that all the celestial bodies first existed in disconnected
matter, which, under the law of gravitation, became
gradually resolved into nebulae and is now on its way
to become solid bodies. La Place conceived that all
matter in its nebulous and pre-nebulous stage is in-
tensely hot, becoming incandescent ; then appearing in
a state of white heat, like Sirius ; then red, like Aide-
378 BOSTON DAYS
baran, and still later becoming black, non-luminous, and
invisible.
During his researches at Flagstaff, Dr. See found
discrepancies in this theory which refused to fit existing
facts. He was making a specialty of the study of
multiple stars; he was engaged in profound mathe-
matical calculations, especially in reference to the dark
twin companion of Sirius, and it was during this pro-
longed period of research that it first occurred to him
that the fundamental idea itself, which he, in com-
mon with all the astronomers since La Place, had
accepted as the foundation of all work, — that this
hypothesis was, in itself, wrong ; and that the true
theory might be that all the attenuated nebulae was in
a gaseous, but not heated, state. Experimenting, then,
on this basis, he found that it fitted in with a constantly
increasing array of facts. He began to believe that the
tenuous nebulae, instead of being in a state of intense
heat, is instead very near the " absolute zero " of
physics, which is some 500 degrees below the zero of
the Fahrenheit scale.
Subsequently, the stages of these bodies were of
increasing heat; and Dr. See pointed out that very
bright stars, as Sirius and Vega, are approaching the
end of their cosmic life, and are on the way to become
dark and invisible. The sun is approaching the state
where it will give off less heat ; but as the change is
yet some millions of years in the future, this fact will
not aflFect the market price of coal. One statement
made by Dr. See peculiarly appeals to the imagination —
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 379
the assertion that the heavens are probably full of dark
bodies that, having outlived their luminous stages, are
not visible, and also of far grander and more vast bodies
of nebulae than have been yet discovered.
If this hypothesis shall prove to be one that is
accepted by modern science and adopted as the working
basis for all future speculative research in astro-physics,
the date of its announcement in Boston, before the
choice and critical audience inseparably associated
with the Lowell Institute, was on the evening of
Jan. 10, 1899, a very memorable date in scientific
history. Not since the lectures of Prof. Benjamin
Pierce in 1879 — twenty years before — had there been
given under the distinguished auspices of the Lo\v^ell
Institute a course of scientific lectures so important as
that on " Sidereal Astronomy " by Dr. See.
Thomas Jefferson Jackson See was born near Mont-
gomery City, Mo., in 1866. His father, Noah See, is a
descendant of an old German family, the name being
originally Zhee. His ancestors came to America before
the War of the Revolution, and some members of the
family did good service in that war. The elder See
was a civil engineer, a man of great intelligence, and a
lover of books. The son was a quiet, thoughtful lad, who
was temperamentally attracted to the intense observation
of natural phenomena. His mathematical instincts
dominated him. He would lie on the ground and
watch the tops of waving trees and try to see in them
a rhythmic harmony. He instinctively counted every-
thing. He lost himself in Humboldt's " Cosmos " with
380 BOSTON DAYS
the most absorbed attention, and he became fascinated
with the work of Helmholtz — who was afterward to be
his instructor, little as the lad could then have dreamed
of the privilege. Yet he did dream of things as won-
derful. The world outside his horizon line haunted his
imagination. In his early teens he decided that he would
go to Germany to study. " The attractions are pro-
portional to the destinies," says Emerson, and Mr. See
proved the truth of this.
It is related that an old Quaker replied to a man
who was describing the admirable system of activities,
by means of which every moment of his time was filled
" And, friend, when does thee think ? " Mr. See found
time to think. It is a privilege that college or uni-
versity cannot invariably insure to its students. The
early opportunities offered to him were meagre, and still
this very lack of outward fulness facilitated in his case
the inner progress. His nature required solitude and
leisure rather than society and exacting demand.
He entered the University of Missouri taking the clas-
sical and scientific courses united, and graduated in
four years with brilliant triumphs. He had made a
constant companion of La Place's " Mechanique Celeste,"
and he then adopted the nebular hypothesis of this
astronomer, with much enthusiasm, little divining that
within ten years his own work would negative its
meaning and prove that its reverse were true. During
his last two years at the university he spent his
vacations at work in its Observatory, and it was there
that he initiated the special interest of his life and began
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 381
to observe and study the problems of double stars. It
occurred to liini tliat no one had ever made research
into their development, and his thesis (which gained for
him the Missouri astronomical medal) took for its
subject " The Origin of Binary Stars."
His dream of entering the University of Berlin was
fulfilled in 1889, and setting out for that city, alone,
without friends, and carrying with him only a letter of
introduction from the Governor of Missouri to the
authorities at Berlin, he was yet admitted to all the
rich resources. During four years he studied under
Helmholtz, Zoller, and others of the great German
masters. During the vacations he travelled in Egypt,
Greece, Italy, and England, and not only familiarized
himself with the noted places of antiquity, but became
acquainted with many celebrated men, among whom
was the younger Darwin.
One of the memorable nights in Boston was that
when the Viking hero. Dr. Nansen, appeared, to describe
the marvellous effects of life in the Polar regions.
A great reception had been given in his honor and
all the enthusiasts of the town who could by any
possibility crowd into Music Hall and its adjoining
corridors, were in evidence. For that moment, at least,
Dr. Nansen was considered to be in many respects the
greatest man of the Nineteenth century.
" His tongue was framed to music,
And his hand was armed with skill ;
His face was the mould of beauty,
And his heart the throne of will."
382 BOSTON DAYS
These lines of Emerson's seemed written to describe
the tall, fair sea-king ; the typical Viking — blond,
slender, tall, and well-built as a pine-tree from his
native northland, with those brilliant, sapphire-blue
eyes, flashing and all-comprehensive, that indicate the
electric temperament which is born to conquer and
prevail. " There are men," says Emerson, *' who, by
their sympathetic attractions, carry nations with them
and lead the activity of the human race. Wherever the
mind of such a man goes nature will accompany him ;
perhaps there are men whose magnetisms are of that
force to draw material and elemental powers, and
where they appear immense instrumentalities organize
around them."
This elixir of power, distilled, who shall say how or
where by some alchemy of mind and soul, seemed the
gracious and lavish dower of Dr. Nansen. The man
was still more fascinatingly interesting than the achieve-
ment. This electric temperament that dominates all
it meets as inevitably as the stone falls by the law of
gravitation ; that magnetizes toward it event and cir-
cumstance and the aid of men and organizes all these
forces into one aim, is a deeply interesting study. One
recalls William Watson's wonderful lines : —
" Spirits, with whom the stars connive
To work their will."
Napoleon once said : " All the great captains have
performed vast achievements by conforming with the
rules of the art — by adjusting efforts to obstacles."
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 383
This describes Dr. Nansen's method. The special idea
on which he based his entire Polar expedition has
hardly been emphasized as yet. It was precisely on
this great truth — to conform with the prevailing laws
— to " adjust efforts to obstacles " that Dr. Nansen
confronted the fact of the ice drift in the polar regions.
Heretofore all explorers had encountered it as an ob-
stacle. Dr. Nansen proposed to take advantage of it as
an assistance. It was merely the decision to row with
the tide and not against it ; to conform with the law
of gravitation, and not oppose it ; to saw with the
grain of the wood and not across it. In its various
applications this law is the key of all successful en-
deavor, and of all happiness. Most people are born with
some predetermined bias of inclination and tempera-
ment, and he is the successful man who follows this
through good report or through evil report, as may be,
through ease or through hardship ; but, in any case,
with fidelity to his star. Whether it '' pays " — in the
cant of the world — is of no consequence. That which
is of consequence is that one should develop the
best that is in him as it is for this cause that he comes
into the world.
" I can live
At least my soul's life, without alms from men,
And if it be in heaven instead of earth,
Let heaven look to it — I am not afraid."
Mrs. Browning's noble words are the most practicable
of counsels. The unhappiness and the misfortunes of
life are largely those that spring from not keeping faith
with one's ideals.
384 BOSTON DAYS
Certainly Dr. Nansen kept faith with his. He
pondered over this fact of the ice drift, and that which
has been the chief and insurmountable obstacle to
previous explorers became to him ways and means, an
ally of nature's. This is the secret of all successful
achievement, — to discern the laws of nature and put
one's self in harmony with them. Men are now learn-
ing to harness the lightning, to make the cataract of
Niagara do labor in New York, and as these natural
forces are taken advantage of, in that proportion does
life become useful, beautiful, and enjoyable. Dr. Nansen
conceived the plan of building a ship that should with-
stand ice pressure and thus float with the tide in that
current that leads to the open polar sea. Navigators
said it could not be done ; that the grind of the ice in
winter, at all events, when the huge masses are like
mountains of granite, would crush any ship ever built.
His reply was to build the " Fram," which withstood
the pressure, and after three years' voyaging safely
returned.
The story of this voyage and the explorations by
sledge after leaving the ship held spellbound the
large and brilliant audience that assembled to assist at
the appearance of the great explorer.
Of the experience when they entered into the frozen
silence of the winter night Dr. Nansen said : —
" Among our scientific pursuits may also be mentioned
the determining of the temperature of water and its
degree of saltness at varying depths ; the collection and
examination of such animals as are to be found in these
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 385
northern seas; the ascertaining of the amount of elec-
tricity iu the air and other things. One salient feature
in all the voyage was the exquisite purity of the air and
the consequent freedom from illness or even lassitude,
which indicates that the human body is far more depend-
ent on good air than has ever been realized."
Describing the scene he gave this vivid picture : —
"Nothing more beautiful can exist than the arctic
night. It is dreamland painted in the imagination's
most delicate tints. It is color etherealized. One shade
melts into the other so you cannot tell where one ends
and the other begins, and yet they are all there. No
forms — it is all faint, dreamy color music. A far-away,
long-drawn art melody on united strings. Is not all life's
beauty high and delicate and pure like this night? Give
it colors and it is no longer so beautiful. The sky is like
an enormous cupola, blue at the zenith, shading down
into green, and then into lilac and violet at the edges.
Over the ice fields there are cold, violet-blue shadows,
with lighter pink tints where a ridge here and there
catches the last reflection of the vanished day. Up in
the blue of the cupola shine the stars, speaking peace as
they always do, those unchanging friends. In the south
stands a large, red-yellow moon, encircled by a yellow
ring and light golden clouds floating on a blue back-
ground. Presently the aurora borealis shakes over the
vault of heaven its veil of glittering silver, changing now
to yellow, now to green, now to red. It spreads, it con-
tracts again in restless change; next it breaks into
waving, many- folded bands of shining silver, over which
shoot billows of glittering rays, and then the glory van-
ishes. Presently it shimmers in tongues of flame over
the very zenith, and then again it shoots a bright ray
386 BOSTON DAYS
right up from the horizon, until the whole melts away in
the moonlight, and it is as though one heard the sigh of
a departing spirit. Here and there are left a few waving
streamers of light, vague as a foreboding — they are the
dust from the aurora's glittering cloak. But now it is
growing again ; now lightnings shoot up, and the endless
game begins afresh. And all the time this utter stillness,
impressive as the symphony of infinitude."
Prof. Percival Lowell, the grandson of the founder
of the Lowell Institute, is an eminent scholar and
traveller. Passing many years in the Orient he
wrote a valuable book called "The Soul of the Far
East," a fine interpretation of its inner life, and when
it was announced that he would give a course of four
lectures on " Japanese Occultism " before the Lowell
Institute a wide interest was aroused. Of late years
Professor Lowell has assumed the directorship of his
own Observatory in Arizona, where he has contributed
to Astronomy many valuable observations.
Another of the great courses of Lowell Institute
lectures was that of Rev. G. Frederick Wright, D.D.,
LL.D., professor of the Harmony of Science and Reve-
lation in Oberlin. His series of lectures on the " Scien-
tific Aspect of Christian Evidences " was one of the
most notable features of the intellectual life of Boston,
and they were indeed of so unusual a character as to
be only described as epoch-making.
The scientist who is a theologian, the tlieologian
who is a scientist, are united in Dr. Wright. His course
was one so exceptional in its character, not only in a
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 387
peculiarly vital and suggestive and stimulating effect on
the mind of the hearer but also in its great fund of
information, as to leave a profound impression on the
audiences. Dr. Wright was born in Whitehall, N. Y.,
in the romantic Lake George region, whose scenery,
doubtless, fostered his inclination to study nature.
With two of his brothers he graduated at Oberlin,
and he filled the chair of Christian Evidences in his
Alma INIater for twelve years, before the creation of
his present professorship, — the chair of Harmony of
Science and Revelation. Before this, however, he
had been settled in his first ministry in a small town
in Vermont, where, in the intervals of pastoral work,
he began studying the geological formation, and
there formulated the theory of the terminal moraine
which he was destined afterward to verify and to
record with such scholarly detail and scientific
authority. Later he was called to Andover, and a
friend condoled with him as being settled in a i)lace
where there was no opportunity for his geological re-
search. "But the opportunity I found in my own
backyard," he said smilingly, "in the rifts of sand."
Dr. Wright's discovery of the terminal moraine (the
limit of the glacial drift) brought him into note among
scientists. Called to Oberlin, he was a distinguished
figure in the Society for Historical Research of the
Western Reserve, and from 1883-86 was occupied in
scientific work for the government. He visited Alaska
in 1886 — just before the tourist period began — and
passed a month encamped at the foot of the INIuir
388 BOSTON DAYS
glacier. The sublimity of the scenery there surpasses all
description, he has said. Constantly there resounds the
deafening crash as huge masses of the glacier break and
fall. It will be remembered that the noted book, " The
Ice Age in America," is by Dr. Wright, and it is one
whose interest rivals that of romance. In the summer
of 1896 he visited Greenland, one of the scientists on
board the ill-starred " Miranda," and in a work called
" Greenland Ice Fields and Life in North America," are
embodied the observations of that momentous journey.
The death of Prof. Benjamin Apthorp Gould of
Harvard, the distinguished astronomer, which occurred
in 1896, removed another of the great lecturers associated
with the Lowell Institute.
It may be remembered that it was Dr. Gould who
founded the Observatory at Cordova, in the Argen-
tine Republic, and devoted forty years to the work of
studying the Southern heavens. The story of his life is
one of singular interest. He was born in Boston (in
1826), and was one of those precocious children of the
earlier New England life. A child who read at the
age of three, who was translating Horace at five, and
writing essays upon electricity and other scientific topics
at the age of ten, graduating from Harvard at nineteen,
and enjoying the friendships of such men as Humboldt
and Gauss before he was twenty-five, — it will be seen
that his was an unusual individuality. In Paris he
studied astronomy under Arago, and returning to
America he entered into work with an energy of vigor
and a power of original insight tliat wrought new
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 389
results. For instance, it was Dr. Gould who first
thought of using electricity to determine longitudinal
distances. He founded (in 1867) the first astronomical
journal ever published in this country, carrying it on
some fifteen years at his own expense. He organized
the Dudley Observatory. But the great and distinctive
work of his life was that done in South America. At
Cordova he founded an Observatory which has grown to
be one of the most superbly appointed of the world.
He has contributed largely to the literature of astronom-
ical science, his most significant work being entitled
" Urananetry of the Southern Heavens." For sixteen
years he devoted himself to studying the Southern
heavens by night and recording by day. He made four
different independent observations of each star before
deciding on the result.
Dr. Gould took his family with him to South America,
and they shared patiently the long exile from home and
friends.
On his return (in 1885) Dr. Holmes was the poet
at a banquet given to him, and some stanzas of this
post-prandial greeting run : —
" Science has kept her midnight taper burning
To greet thy coming with its vestal flame ;
Friendship has murmured, ' When art thou returning ? '
' Not yet ! Not yet ! ' the answering message came.
"Thine was unstinted zeal, unchilled devotion,
While the blue realm had kingdoms to explore —
Patience, like his who ploughed the unfurrowed ocean,
Till o'er its margin loomed San Salvador."
390 BOSTON DAYS
Dr. Gould held an important place among American
astronomers, in that his work has been of the largest
scope and involving discoveries and corroboration of
important tlieories. His work in mapping the Southern
heavens corresponds, indeed, to that of the famous
Argelander in exploring and recording the stars of the
Northern heavens. He was the great pioneer in the
astronomical work of this country ; and his voluntary
exile and unwearied work, amid deprivations and loss
and discomforts, revealed a quality of spirit unusually
brave and heroic.
Prof. Rhys Davids, Ph.D., LL.D., the secretary of
the Royal Asiatic Society in London, gave a course of
six lectures on " Buddhism " before the Lowell Insti-
tute. The special topics to be considered are " Evolu-
tion of Religious Thought in India," " Buddhist Books,"
" The Life of the Buddha," " The Secret of Buddha in
the Circle of Life and the Four Truths," "Mystic
Trance and Arahatship," and " The Ideal of the Later
Buddhism."
Professor Davids is a profound Oriental scholar and
a man of unquestionable authority ; but he expounded
Buddhism as a man would expound Christianity who
judged it exclusively from the time of the early Chris-
tian Fathers.
Still another of the great lecture courses of the
Lowell Institute was that of Prof. Hugo JMUnster-
berg of Harvard on " The Results of Experimental
Psychology," and the Lowell Institute was as crowded
as if the issues of life and death were involved in hear-
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 391
iiig the popular Gerniau professor with the fascinating
foreign accent. Professor Miinsterberg declared that
this science stands now about where physics did in tlie
Seventeenth century, — that is to say, that in the true
sense there are as yet no "results." Its chief result
he finds in the ffict that we know our mental states are
endlessly more complex, and offer more difficulties to the
understanding than any former psychology imagined.
Such statements as this from a learned foreigner capti-
vated Boston, which is everlastingly sure that its own
mental states are far more complex, more profound, and
more vitally important than those of any other com-
munity. Boston was, indeed, so engaged in this fasci-
nating problem of its own mental condition that it
experienced a rapturous joy in hearing them so ably
analyzed from the very latest and most approved scien-
tific point of view.
A course given by Professor James of Harvard on
"Exceptional Mental States" produced a profound
impression, a course whose specific subjects were
" Dreams and Hypnotism," " Hysteria,'' " x\utomatism,"
" ]\Iultiple Personality," " Demoniacal Possessions,"
" Witchcraft," " Degeneration," and " Genius," and
which excited the deepest interest on the part of all
interested in metaphysical speculation and psychical
phenomena.
Under its present curator. Prof. William E. Sedgwick,
the Lowell Institute has entered on a still greater scope
of power and splendor, and its platform represents the
highest results of modern thought in literature, history,
39^ BOSTON DAYS
political and social economy, art, jurisprudence, science,
and ethics.
Boston has always been the most sympatlietic and
hospitable of cities to both the lyric and dramatic stage,
and the critical appreciation given to Rachel, Edwin
Forrest, Fechter, Edwin Booth, and Adelaide Neilson
repeated itself during the last two decades of the Nine-
teenth century when the greatest stars of the latter day
drama, Madame Sarah Bernhardt, Mrs. Agnes Booth
(now Mrs. John Schoeffel), Sir Henry Irving and Miss
Ellen Terry, and Signora Duse appeared from time to
time. Other actors of importance and authentic claim
to histrionic greatness were also seen during this
period, and Boston has been singularly fortunate in
having in her midst a great critic of the drama, Mr.
Henry A. Clapp, whose faithful and brilliant work as
one of the most critical interpreters known to the
modern stage, has been further extended by many
courses of his lectures on the -Shakspearian drama that
have been in the nature of an educational illumination
on dramatic art. Mr. Clapp's finely discriminating
work, both as the critic on the more important presen-
tation of each season, and as the lecturer before the
Lowell Institute and on other platforms, has contributed
immeasurably both to the higher progress of the drama
and to tlie general enlightenment of the people. The
appearance of Signora Duse in Boston was an event of
moment ; considering that her language was far less
familiar than that of French to the average audience,
and that her plays were neither great nor new, the
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 393
interest registered the remarkable power of her person-
ality and the force of her art. Her repertoire was
limited to " Camille," " Fedora," and the two short
plays " Cavalleria Rusticana " and ^' La Locaudrera "
played as a double bill at one performance. The play
of " Camille," though a perennial favorite, has long since
lost the charm of novelty, and "Fedora" is not an
attractive play as a whole, while the two brief plays
were transcriptions of Italian peasant life offering no
charm of scenery or dress, but portraying with match-
less art that phase of Italy.
The contrast of temperament between Signora Duse
and Madame Bernhardt is, if not as wide as a barn-
door, or as deep as a well, at least one to impress
itself.
Madame Bernhardt, electric, vivacious, and Parisienne
to her finger-tips, overflows with observation and com-
ment. She is sympathetic ; she is attuned by tempera-
ment and training to be en evidence. Signora Duse is
remote by temperament. The currents are not in play,
and she is, too, far less cosmopolitan than Bernhardt.
Speaking no English, she finds it difficult to enter into
the life around her. The French feel far less auy bar-
rier of language than do the Italians or Russians. The
French language is so universally that of educated
people the world over that the difference of race is
hardly felt.
In Madame Duse one saw a tall, slender woman, yet
not characterized by the willowy grace of Madame Bern-
hardt: with an interesting presence, but not one of
,394 BOSTON DAYS
beauty or even charm ; with a countenance strong,
mobile, and capable of the most subtle gradations of
expression; black, abundant hair, and dark, luminous
eyes, — eyes that would redeem even positive plainness
into something not unlike beauty. She has the most
expressive face that one may see on the stage to-day.
But all this that is studied at first is forgotten after all,
as the play proceeds. Never was there an artist of
such marvellous, such incredible self-effacement. Her
own personality disappears from her creation as that of
a painter from an ideal figure he had painted on canvas.
Her " Camille " offers, virtually, an original creation, and
has little in common with that of Bernhardt or of
Modjeska. The character is less accented and is held
to a perfectly consistent conception. There is a per-
ceptible shade less of the delicacy and modesty that
characterizes women of the monde rather than of the
demi-monde, though never degenerating into any posi-
tive repulsiveness ; but a suggestion of Bohemianism
which would not be seen in refined life. There is also a
touch of business shrewdness, finally conquered by love,
in her relations with Armand. The death scene is per-
fectly quiet, and the entire effect from first to last is
eminently natural. Her dressing is dainty, rich, and
beautiful, but her gowns are the costumes of the draw-
ing-room and not of the stage. They are artistic, and
not theatrical.
The great seasons of Wagner opera in Boston under
the conduct of Walter Damrosch were events of magni-
tude and of far-reachiug importance. Aside from their
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 395
enjoyment, they offered such store of culture, of stimu-
lus, of imaginative development as only can be gained
from the operas of Wagner,
Walter Damrosch himself is a remarkable person-
ality. Notwithstanding the claim that Alvary, Sucher,
Marie Brema, Rothmuhl, Klafsky, Lilli Lehmann, Heri'
Schott, and Fraulein Gadski made the most wonder-
ful group of Wagner artists the world has known,
it could almost be said that the star of an opera was
Walter Damrosch. Promptly to the minute he was in
his place in the orchestra grasping his baton. From
this moment — 7.30 p. m. — until 12, and in the longer
operas until half or three-quarters of an hour later, he
fulfilled his arduous duties with a perfection of preci-
sion, a universal perception of the movements of each
member of his orchestra and of everything on the stage,
that was extraordinary. Did the fairies bend over his
cradle and lay upon him the spell of rhythmic charmed
success ? Was it as unique in its nature as the magic
fire that surrounds Brlinhilde when she is left to her
long sleep on the mountain ? For this ability to always
be ready, to always fill one's place and do one's work
and be in perfect rhythmic accord with the occasion, is
far more a matter of psychic than of physical power.
It was interesting to watch the conductor as he
wielded the baton. A skilled student in physiognomy
says that Mr. Damrosch has the Beethoven mouth
and the Napoleonic nose. His brow is broad and
square and of an almost classic perfection of outline.
His countenance has the glow and fineness of the in-
.396 BOSTON DAYS
spirational, and the firmness and purpose of the execu-
tive power. A New York critic says that Walter
Damrosch was born with a golden spoon in his mouth.
He was born with something better, of which perhaps
the golden spoon may be typical, — a fund of psychic
energy which manifests itself in persistence of purpose.
When the elder Damrosch died, it seemed incredible
that the son should take up the baton. He was young ;
he was inexperienced ; and to be the leader of an
orchestra of seventy-five musicians demanded something
more than the musical ability alone. It means the
ability to get along well, as the phrase goes, with his
artists ; to preserve discipline among a large body of
men, many of whom were greatly his senior in years ;
it meant, too, preserving artistic enthusiasm and inspir-
ing their personal loyalty. Anton Seidl was in the
field, a formidable rival. Yet conditions are always
conquerable to the conquerors.
Walter Damrosch is the conqueror born. He is a
natural leader. He wins, he pleases, he inspires, he
compels. He has great magnetism and boiiJiomie.
He is generous, ardent, enthusiastic, and high-souled.
He has also a remarkable balance of judgment ; he is
artistic in his ardor, discriminating in his enthusiasm.
He is not carried away by a whim or a fantasy. He
has a large endowment of that common sense which
Gnizot pronounces the " genius of humanity."
All this successful accomplishment of a purpose has
its springs in that intense psychical energy whose mani-
festation is persistence. Herbert Spencer discovered
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 397
that the secret of the universe lies in persistence of en-
ergy ; no less does the secret of individual success. This
persistence of energy characterizes Mr. Damrosch. If he
undertakes anything he achieves it. It may be the im-
possible — but it is conquered all the same. Ways and
means are to him a mere detail. He was born to arrive.
On a night still within the memory of Boston opera-
goers when " Lohengrin " was to be presented and
the Boston Theatre was resplendent with an audience
that thronged its interior even to standing room,
there was an inexplicable delay. Finally, it was
rumored that the hero of the evening had been sud-
denly taken ill, and a substitute was being sought.
The great Alvary, regarding himself as free that night,
had chosen the evening for a pedestrian excursion in
regions where his discovery was hopeless. Four
thousand people were awaiting — not too patiently —
the Knight of the Holy Grail, when Mr. Damrosch,
with the inspiration of his temperament, dashed in a
cab to the Castle Square Theatre, procured at great
financial sacrifice a singer who had familiarized himself
with the role, and the performance was saved. It was
entirely characteristic of Mr. Damrosch's daily experi-
ences. He expects the impossible and finds it. He is
not a conjurer or magician (thougli the results often
seem to indicate a species of magic), but he uses, con-
sciously or unconsciously, as may be, this intense
quality of psychic energy which creates its own results.
It is a potency that has its right of way all through
the universe.
398 BOSTON DAYS
On another memorable night of a Damrosch opera
season, the house was resplendent with beauty, fashion,
and fame. It was thronged from orchestra to upper
gallery by one of those critical and notable audiences
that the Wagner opera always draws in musical Boston.
The curtain rolled up on the stage scene of " Tristan
and Isolde," and a strong cast, with Paul Kalisch and
that great artist, Lilli Lehmann, in the title roles ; with
Riza Ebenschuetz, a new singer, as Brangene, and
that signal public favorite, Eniil Fischer, as King Mark.
Mr. Damrosch looked up with that swift, electric
glance of his which seems to reveal the perfect rapport
that exists between himself and the singers on the
stage as well as between him and his orchestra, and
the great music-drama began.
]\Ime. Lilli Lehmann did not need to add the charm
of novelty to her other attractions, but as it had been
seven years since she was last seen here there was, to
some extent, a new public for her, — a new audience,
who came to see and hear, and who departed conquered,
as she has always conquered her audiences. She is a
remarkable artist, perhaps the greatest in German opera
of any one now living. She has the traditional colossal
figure of Wagner's heroines, but her art is so all-
prevailing that one accepts her Isolde as the ideal one
and asks not that the impassioned princess should be
more youthful and slender.
Such presentations of Wagner's music-dramas are
not merely nor even mostly an amusement. They afford
the most exceptional opportunity for a serious study of
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 399
the latest school of musical art. It does not seem
necessary to pave the path of glory for Wagner with
the slain Italian and French composers. One star
differeth from another in its glory, but to extinguish all
save one vrould be to efface the constellation.
Richard Wagner had a mind that seized, as by intui-
tion, on a poetic or a pictorial idea, and then used it
as the nucleus from which imaginative creation pro-
ceeded. In his earliest childhood he revealed his
creative tendency. " At the age of five, instead of
learning to draw eyes, he began painting life-size
portraits of kings ; at thirteen he began translating
Homer's Odyssey, and accomplished half of it." As a
youth he wrote to a friend that he had no objection to
being attacked for musical theories. " I bring no
reconciliation to worthlessness,"' he said, " but war
to the knife." Like most prophets, he was stoned
metaphorically ; like all poets and artists, he ex-
perienced the deep truth in the lines : —
" Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate,
Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours
Weeping upon his bed he sate ;
He knows ye not, ye Heavenly Powers."
Of the production of " Tristan and Isolde," that im-
passioned tragedy of love and death, what words can
ever picture one especial performance given of it under
Mr. Damrosch with Klafsky and Alvary in the title
roles and Marie Brema as "Brangene." Herr Alvary
was as unsurpassed as a great tenor and a dramatic
actor could well be ; but it was in the new revelation
400 BOSTON DAYS
of the lyric and dramatic possibilities of the character
of Isolde, made by Katherine Klafsky, that a higher
note was struck in the lyric drama, and qualities un-
dreamed of were revealed. Madame Klafsky — whose
early death was a signal loss to lyric art — had that
indescribable magnetism and power of a great artist
who creates new ideals of an exacting role. On the
day preceding this great triumphal occasion, she had
kept herself in silence and seclusion in her rooms in
the Hotel Brunswick, gathering as it were her forces
from the atmosphere. Of all great operatic roles that
of Isolde is perhaps the most exacting in its demand on
both lyric and dramatic art. In JNIadame Klafsky this
rare combination of twofold power existed. Her poses
recalled those of Rachel, of whom her friends said,
"EUe pose toujours." Never was a crowded house
more entirely beside itself in enthusiasm than in the
storm of ovation that spent itself on this superb, im-
passioned Isolde in her white and gold robes in the
pictorial scenes of this opera.
" Tristan and Isolde " with Lilli Lehmann as the
heroine lingers in memory. The curtain rises: Isolde
is seen at the left of the stage, w^ith bowed head con-
cealed in her arms. The very pose tells its own story.
It is the abandon of grief and despair. JNIadame
Lehmann strikes the note of tragedy in a high key and
holds it firmly all through. This Isolde is, indeed,
worth daring and dying for ; this intense, impassioned
being, all color and flame and energy, whose potent
will must transform for her the entire world. Every
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 401
glance and gesture is instinct with this electric energy,
this indefinable and all-potent magnetism. It sweeps
one on, irresistibly, into the very heart of the tragedy.
Studying Madame Lehmann's conception of the charac-
ter on this occasion, when all the world about faded
away and one only lived in the impassioned art of
the great singer, it almost seemed as if her face and
figure accorded better, perhaps, with the character than
would more slender and girlish grace. For here was
no coy maiden, shrinking even from the lover she
adored, but a woman and a princess, royal by both
rights, demanding that love should be all in all, whether
for life or for death. In the garden scene Madame Leh-
mann infused far more of the electric intensity and less
of the languorous yielding than any Isolde save Madame
Klafsky. The exalt4 note was held from first to last.
And a night of " Tannhauser " — that drama of love
and death ! Wagner tells a friend that he wrote this
opera " with such consuming ardor " that the nearer he
approached the end the more he was haunted by the
idea that sudden death would prevent him from com-
pleting it. " It acted on me like real magic," he said.
" Whenever and wherever I took up my theme I
was all aglow and trembling with excitement."
" Tannhauser " and the vocal contest is a legend of
the thirteenth century. The title role, as taken by
Herr Rothmuhl; Elizabetli, as impersonated by Frau
Gadski, off'er pictures to remember for a lifetime.
Elizabeth, white-robed, with falling hair, kneeling in
prayer at the wayside shrine ; Tannhauser, returning
26
402 BOSTON DAYS
in sorrow from his pilgrimage to Rome ; Wolfram,
singing his song to the evening star ; Venus and her
nymphs in the grotto ; the chorus of monks chanting the
funeral dirge of Elizabeth whose dead body is borne
on a bier ; the funeral procession with the landgrave,
the knight, the singers, the pilgrims, and the Pope's
staff covered with fresh green, — evidence of Tann-
hauser's salvation because a maiden loved him and
died for him, and thus wrought the miracle, — how
impressive it was in its solemn beauty.
It is with especial pride that Boston always welcomes
Madame Lillian Nordica. It is a far cry, measured by
achievement rather than years, from the charming
Boston girl, Lillian Norton, who went to Paris with
her wonderful voice and her own simple sweetness and
energy of purpose, to the great prima donna, Madame
Nordica. Into these years she has concentrated work,
and in them she has achieved a phenomenal develop-
ment. But the secret of it lies not only in gifts, but in
grace.
Lillian Nordica is a woman of the most beautiful
temperament in the world. She is sweet, sunny,
serene. She is generous and loving and noble in every
thought and purpose. She never misses an opportunity
to say the kind and encouraging word, to do the help-
ful act, to diffuse sunny stimulus about her. And this
force of character has, one must needs believe, as
much to do with her phenomenal success as her genius
and her untiring study. An audience feels the force
of all this sweet and noble and harmonious character
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 403
whenever she appears on the stage. It may not be
analyzed or even consciously recognized, but all the
same it makes its impress. It is a force of immeasu-
rable aid and all her associate artists are helped by her
gladness in their success. A '* Nordica night " is a
red-letter night in the opera season.
Always a student is Madame Nordica. It is not
surprising that she has achieved so brilliant a triumph
at Beireuth, and in all the leading cities, in the Wagner
music which she interprets with such marvellous art
and impassioned devotion.
The presentation of Mr. Damrosch's own opera,
" The Scarlet Letter," founded on Hawthorne's im-
mortal romance, the libretto by George Parsons
Lathrop, the son-in-law of Hawthorne, and the music
by Mr. Damrosch himself, was a memorable event in
Boston ; and the theatre was crowded with the beauty
and genius, fashion and fame, learning and loveliness
of Boston and Cambridge.
The performance had an inevitable intensity of in-
terest due to the fact that the scene of Hawthorne's
greatest romance was laid in this city ; that his
name is one to conjure with ; that the scenery was
that which should bid the dead past rise, as if touched
by an enchanter's wand, and reveal the Boston of two
hundred and fifty years ago. The entire action of
the story of " The Scarlet Letter " takes place within
a small district of Boston — lying between Cornhill
and Temple Place, on the north and south, between
Tremont Street and the harbor on the west and east.
404 BOSTON DAYS
The house of the " worshipful Governor Bellingham "
stood ou the site now occupied by a dry-goods house
on the corner of Beacon and Tremont streets ; the old
jail, where Hawthorne pictured Hester as imprisoned,
was on Cornhill ; the old market place down near the
harbor. At that time (1636) there were two hundred
and fifty inhabitants in Boston, the beautiful harbor
was in sight from every house in the settlement, —
certainly a vast scenic advantage over the present, —
and the hut supposed to be occupied by Hester Prynne,
on the edge of the forest, was on " the Neck," now in
the heart of the city.
It was a number of years ago when Mr. Damrosch
first read the story of " The Scarlet Letter " that the
idea of translating it into opera began to haunt his
imagination. For Walter Damrosch is not merely a
man of talent and the finest musical culture ; but he is
a great original genius ; his mind is of that imaginative
and exquisitely touched quality which renders him
capable of vast creative achievements, and in Mr.
Damrosch there is one of the most marked and im-
pressive characters that the world has seen during the
past three centuries.
" Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues."
The spirit of Walter Damrosch is indeed of that order
of the " finely touched," the divinely commissioned.
" Gradually," says Mr. Damrosch, in speaking the
first stirring intimations of his work, " gradually, while
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 405
reading the story, I began to divide it into acts ; and
as I read and reread Hawthorne's great creation,
musical themes suggested themselves to me. But I
could do nothing definite, as I looked in vain for a poet
sufficiently sympathetic to collaborate with the require-
ments of music."
" The Scarlet Letter " did not score a popular success
as an opera, yet its production in Hawthorne's city was
an event of no little interest. The scenes of the dress-
rehearsal linger in the memory of those present. The
great auditorium of the Boston Theatre was but fitfully
lighted with chance gleams from the stage. The high
tiers of boxes looked ghostly and wraithlike in their
white linen shroudings, that fell from the ceiling to the
floor. The great musical critics from Philadelphia and
New York and Boston were all present, with a sprinkling
of press-correspondents, and a few friends, especially
invited. The little audience of the most intensely inter-
ested people bestowed themselves here and there with
subdued whisperings and a thrill of expectancy. The
scene that met their eyes was truly edifying. The
background of the first scene in the opera is a view of
the blue waters and sailing craft of Boston Harbor,
but the sea was hanging midway in the air, and the
dislocated ships seemed about to be precipitated upon
the fair head of Madame Gadski. The pillory on which
Hester was to stand was placed tentatively on the stage,
and the rosebush that blossomed by the old market
place lopped sadly on one side.
However, the sea was soon pulled down by cords
406 BOSTON DAYS
into its appropriate place, where the blue waters met
the eye in their accustomed relations of space ; the
rosebush was restored to its original intention ; the
pretty figure of Johanna Gadski was no longer in dan-
ger from the ships in the air, and Mr. Damrosch grasped
the baton, which in his hands is a magician's wand.
There is a beautiful experiment in physics where, when
a note in music is struck, the particles of sand on a tray
arrange themselves in crystals. One is always reminded
of this when Mr. Damrosch ascends the conductor's
stand and grasps the baton. Instantly life begins.
Everything falls into order.
To see him conduct a rehearsal was a new experience.
If a singer was out of tune Mr. Damrosch could sing
the bar and restore the key; if a player failed, on
whatever instrument, the conductor could put him right
again. In the acting, the orchestration, the singing, —
there was no phase of operatic art that he could not
personally direct with the unanswerable authority that
comes of absolute mastery of every branch of the work.
For three consecutive times the chorus would be sent
trooping back to make their entrance again ; to his
orchestra Mr. Damrosch spoke entirely in German, as
few of them understood English.
The premiere came ; the curtain went up on the first
scene with the harbor in its rightful place rather than
hanging in the air, and the rosebush growing according
to the due laws of nature. Prof. Charles Eliot Norton,
with his guest, Prince Wolkonsky, President Eliot,
Mrs. Leopold Damrosch, Clayton Johns, Mrs. Julia
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 407
Ward Howc, and Madame Melba were among those in
the audience.
The story of " The Scarlet Letter " was represented
in three acts, in which, from beginning to end, there
was not a dull moment, — not a moment, indeed, that is
not intense in interest. The child Pearl is supposed to
have died in prison. This point is told in the words of
Rev. John Wilson to Hester : —
" Hester Prynne, hearken !
Thy husband absent
Far beyond the sea,
A child to thee was born,
Bringing disgrace and scorn.
Heaven's wise decree
Hath taken thy daughter away,
Wafted on wings of death."
Then the venerable minister implored his young col-
league, Arthur Dimmesdale, to strive with Hester, and
as the partner of her guilt is about to speak, the terrible
sarcasm of the chorus wafts tliese words regarding
Dimmesdale : —
'' wise and childlike,
Simple and pure,
With words of an angel he speaks."
Then come the words of Arthur to Hester :
" If peace to thee it would give.
And thy spirit make whole
Or hope of salvation insure,
Tell his name who with thee now suffers,
Though hiding his guilty heart.
High or low, spare him not from the ban.
408 BOSTON DAYS
Remember, he is not exemjDted
From the doom that shadows thee.
Think ere thou repliest,
For if the truth thou deniest,
Oh, Hester, Hester !
His soul with thine condemned may be."
Again, the terrible mockery of the chorus is heard
" Too sharp the stress
Of grief that he feels for the wanton's woe."
And Arthur : —
"Ay, tell them who tempted thee."
And Hester, in a voice of the saddest sweetness : —
" From me the world shall never know his name."
The terrible Roger Chillingworth then shouts from
the crowd : —
"Ay, woman, speak,"
Hester recognizes his voice, and, in startled agitation
sings : —
" Ha, that voice !
No ! No ! Thrice no to thee ! My child hath found
A heavenly father. Ye shall never know his earthly one."
The first scene is one of the most beautiful in scenic
perfection. Irving himself, that master of stage art,
never devised a more beautiful pictorial effect. In the
forest (as told in the romance) Hester and Arthur meet,
and he says : —
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 409
" Ah, better, far better,
To wear that raiment
Woe unto me !
My letter in secret still cloth burn
With a pain that never and never dies.
I hear the accusing voice ;
* Thou, consecrate and placed
O'er men to teach them purity,
False art thou to thy trust I '
Had I one friend
Or a foe — the worst —
To whom I might bend
Each day and be known as a sinner vile,
E'en so much of truth might reconcile.
My soul to life. ..."
Then Hester : —
" Such a friend thou hast,
Behold, in me.
O'er the bitter present, the vanished past.
Of thy sin and mine
To weep with thee."
The orchestration is Wagnerian in that it has all that
fulness and richness of the master, after whom, indeed,
all else seems as water after wine, and as moonlight
after sunlight. Walter Damrosch is far more than a
disciple of Wagner. His genius is of the same immortal
type.
As the curtain fell the picture was memorable. The
stage was set with the forest scene, — a wild, deep glade,
when a glow of sunshine fell in the middle distance,
410 BOSTON DAYS
and mossy rocks and a fallen tree and exquisite group-
ing and glancing lights gave the background to the
slight, youthful, scliolarly-looking artist as he responded
to the enthusiasm and stood before the footlights. Mrs.
Leopold Damrosch (the mother of the artist), in a black
gown with diamonds and sapphires at her throat, looked
down from her box on the scene of four thousand people
applauding her son. The orchestra waited, instruments
in hand, looking proudly on their leader. Fraulein
Gadski, in her amethyst and white robes, her fair
hair flowing to her waist, Herr Berthold, the Arthur
Dimmesdale of the cast, Herr Mertens, whose Roger
Chilliugworth will rank as one of the great impersona-
tions of the lyric stage, — all stood grouped about.
Mr. Damrosch's speech was very simple and adequate,
expressing the debt of gratitude due first of all to Haw-
thorne ; then to his talented son-in-law, George Parsons
Lathrop, who had composed the libretto, and to his
singers and liis fellow-artists, the orchestra.
At the close Mr. Damrosch was'presented with laurel
wreaths enough to decorate all the crowned lieads of
Europe or the great masters of music, and at the end
of the opera more laurel wreaths and a silver vase filled
with American Beauty roses.
The death of the poet Whittier in September of 1892
came on a morning that dawned in a splendor of rose
and pearl and gold ; and it seemed a fitting hour for
the soul of our saintliest poet to be set free from its
earthly tabernacle to live wholly in that spiritual world
which his eye had seen, and his heart conceived, and
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 411
his pen portrayed during his long and beautiful life.
There was something significant — something one loves
to dwell upon — in Mr. Whittier's going forth from
the earthly to heavenly in this earliest hint of dawn.
It was not yet sunrise, but the world was flooded with
light, — so pure, so beautiful, so quivering with faint,
opalescent gleams of the dawn, that it was a wonder-
world — a miracle world. One looked out upon it
and thought of Paradise Gloria. It must remain a
picture enshrined in memory, — that morning when,
with the earliest dawn, the poet Whittier put off" the
mortal and put on immortality. One could not but
think of the expression of being "clothed with light as
with a garment, " of being " clothed with glory," so
fair in its hush of dawning splendor were the early
hours of that day, so beautiful was the scene, in the
glory of sea and of sky, on which his soul went forth.
Who may tell us what dawned upon his spiritual
vision ? " It is beautiful," Mrs. Browning said in her
last moment as she went. If ever the heavenly vision
shone around a life it attended that of John Greenleaf
Whittier. The entire world has been left
" the better for his being
And gladder for his human speech."
Mr. Whittier never journeyed far from his native New
England, yet his life could in no sense be called a nar-
row one, for sympathy and imagination are wings, and
with their magic, though one may not go to all the world,
all the world comes to him. Without that which we
412 BOSTON DAYS
are accustomed to call the culture of art, society, and
travel ; without a university education, or any of the
more obvious channels, he was yet largely in touch
with the world. He did not grasp it through the
appointed means, but all the same he possessed its best
results. The winged nature need not tread every step
of the path ; it can fly.
The world in which Mr. Whittier lived transcended
even the best that this world can offer, and still those
who think of him as in any sense dreamy, unpractical,
and impracticable, would fail to grasp his character.
He was intensely practical, but he was not material.
There is a difference. His life dealt with actualities.
He had the manly, vigorous fibre of New England, and
the prominent and active part he took in all the aboli-
tion movements and antislavery work proved him no
formless dreamer. It is the idealist who is most truly
practical, or at least practicable ; it is he who lives in
spiritual realities who most truly lives. Mr. Whittier
was no stranger to manly indignation at corruption and
wrong, though he was meek and lowly of heart. His
was not a nature to ever allow itself to be " melted
down for the benefit of the tallow trade." That is not
the New England fibre. He was a poet. He was
dowered with the poet's
" Hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love."
He not only had the vision, but the practical cast of
thought to apply his ideals as tests of life — to raise all
life to a purer plane. He was a fervent patriot, and
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 413
was always deeply interested in national and inter-
national politics, in affairs at large, in events, and in
movements. The reformer and the idealist, in the best
sense of each, are always united.
If Mr. Whittier's life were to be summed up in the
significance of one word, that word would be influence.
Wendell Phillips was pre-eminently the agitator, Mr.
Whittier as pre-eminently the influencer if one may coin
the word. It is the singer
" Who lives forever,
While the toiler dies in a day,"
and Mr. Whittier's life would quite fulfil the tradi-
tional power over a nation held by one who writes its
songs rather than by one who makes its laws.
Whittier was a prolific letter-writer, and while he
had not the classic polish of Longfellow or the wit of
Holmes, his letters are full of quaint humor, of tender
and noble feeling, of charm of allusion that make them
pleasant reading. In 1888 he writes to Mrs. James T.
Fields in reply to her tidings that she was convalesc-
ing from an illness, and that Lowell was reading to
her. In reply to this Whittier says : " Sitting by the
peat fire listening to Lowell's reading of his own
verses ! A convalescent princess with her minstrel in
attendance."
To Dr. Holmes, under date of Nov. 9, 1891, he writes:
" Dear Holmes, — The last and noblest word has been
spoken by thy lines on Lowell. As a work of artistic
beauty and fitness it has no equal in our literature. It
414 BOSTON DAYS
will last as long as his Ode on Lincoln, and that is saying
much. Thanks to our heavenly Father that he has been
given the power to write it."
Letters to Lydia Maria Child, to Lowell, Whipple,
Holmes, Longfellow, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and all
the familiar Boston circle of letters offer much of in-
terest and insight into the literary life of the city
between 1840-90.
A characteristic letter of Whittier's to Whipple is as
follows :
Oak Knoll, Dan vers, Nov. 25, 1880.
My Dear Whipple, — I am always glad to hear from
thee and I gave thy letter a hearty welcome. I hope
when the summer comes that thou and Mrs. Whipple will
run out here and see me, for I am admonished by many
tokens that the time is short, and that I must make the
most of the present time and the friends who are left me.
I would be happy to meet the wonderful violinist at
thy house. If I am able — just now I am suffering too
much with my head and eyes to listen even with any
satisfaction to the harp of Orpheus — I will try to arrange
it. I am greatly obliged to him for thinking of me and
volunteering to play for me.
I missed thee at the Holmes breakfast. It was a nice
tri])ute. I was only able to stay an hour or so.
Give my kindest regards to Mrs. Whipple, and believe
me always most truly thy friend,
John G. Whittier.
Among American poets that universal recognition
which, for want of a better term, we call popularity,
would lie between Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Whittier.
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 415
It is, perhaps, true that the Quaker poet exerted a
direct moral influence over his country that has never
in any age or any country been equalled. He was as
potent in the realm of spirituality as Goethe was in
that of intellect. Until we view his remarkable influ-
ence in its wholeness its totally unrivalled character
could not be adequately appreciated, yet this power of
influence when analyzed presents anomalies. Mr. Whit-
tier was devoid of collegiate culture ; he grew up in the
scenery of provincial, of rustic life ; he did not draw
from the sources of travel, of contact with great men
or great literatures, — all this cosmopolitan culture of
travel, art, society, was outside his life; and still he
was not provincial ; his interests were as wide as the
world of events and of humanity. Probably no one
of the greater poets have ever owed so little to what
we ordinarily term sources of culture as Mr. Whittier,
and the reason lies in the simple fact that he drew
strength and vision directly from the spiritual world,
which to him was ever present and real.
he wrote
" Ah, I have friends in spirit land,"
" Not shadows, in a shadowy band.
Not others, but themselves are they."
And again the poet would have us
— " stretch our hands in darkness
And call our loved ones o'er and o'er ;
Some day their arms shall close about us
And the old voices speak once more."
416 BOSTON DAYS
His vision of the invisible world is always clear,
simple, and direct. It was the world in which he
lived, although this manly, vigorous, earnest nature
was no cloistered and ascetic saint ; he was a re-
former, a man with ever-active interest in politics,
with ever-present sympathy in all the movements that
make for progress. After the heroic days of the
Antislavery Crusade, his active sympathies were with
temperance, with labor reform, with the higher educa-
tion and political enfranchisement of women, with all
the forces that are evolving the higher issues of hu-
manity. His life has stood for all that is most typically
noble in American manhood.
As a poet, he combines the rarest excellences. To
flexible and musical form, to the spontaneous lyric gift,
he has added the vigorous and noble outlook in life,
the tenderly helpful and uplifting spiritual vision. It
is more than an open question whether all the sermons
of this century have done so much to spiritualize life
as have Whittier's "Our Master" and "The Eternal
Goodness."
Mr. Stedman, in an estimate of Mr. Whittier as one
" who left to silence his personal experience," and who,
" like a celibate priest, was the consoler of the hearts
of others and the keeper of his own," adds :
"His traits, moreover, have begotten a sentiment of
public affection which, from its constant manifestation,
is not to be overlooked in any judgment of bis career.
In recognition of a beautiful character, critics have not
found it needful to measure the native bard with tape
DAWN OF THE T^^ENTIETH CENTURY 417
and calipers, ilis ser\'ice and the spirit of it offset the
blemishes which it is their wont to condemn in poets
whose exploits are merely technical. A life is on his
written page ; these are the chants of a soldier, and anon
the liymnal of a saint. Contemporary honor is not the
tiuai test, but it has its proper bearing, — as in the case
of Mrs. Browning, whom I have called the most beloved
of English poets."
Whittier's audience has been won by unaffected pic-
tures of the scenes to which he was bred, by the purity
of his nature, and even more by the earnestness audible
in his songs, injurious as it sometimes is to their ar-
tistic purpose. Like the English sibyl, he has obeyed
the heavenly vision, and the verse of poets who still
trust their inspiration has its material, as well as spirit-
ual, ebb and flow.
It must be owned that Goethe's calm distinction
between the poetry of humanity and poetry of a high
ideal is fully illustrated in Wliittier's reform verse.
Yet even his failings have " leaned to virtue's side."
Those who gained strength from his music to en-
dure defeat and obloquy cherish him with a devotion
beyond measure. For his righteous and tender heart
they would draw him with their own hands, over
paths strewed with lilies, to a shrine of peace and
remembrance.
One of the {ileasant social occasions in the life of
Mr. Whittier was a reception given for him by ex-
Govemor and Mrs William Claflin at their spacious
home in Mt. Vernon Street. This was almost or quite
27
418 BOSTON DAYS
the last meeting of many of the old antislavery work-
ers ; and beside the guest of honor, Mr. Whittier, there
were present Rev. Samuel J. May, Dr. Henry B. Black-
well and Mrs. Lucy Stone, Miss Anne Whitney, Mrs.
Abby Morton Diaz, Mrs. Cheney, Mrs. Howe, Mr.
Frank B. Sanborn, and others.
After nearly all the guests had gone, Mrs. Claflin,
with IMr. Whittier at her side, Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz,
and a few others, were seated at the informal tea-table.
Mrs. Claflin turned to Mr. Whittier and said, playfnlly,
in allusion to a remark he had made (with his char-
acteristic modesty, that these people she had invited
would not come merely to meet him, or something to
that effect) : " Mr. Whittier, you see they did come."
" Ah, but every one would be glad to come to see
thee," he rejoined, with graceful chivalry.
Hon. William Claflin served two or three terms as
governor of the Commonwealth and held a worthy
place among a long line of famous men from "the
worshipful Governor Bradford" to the present execu-
tive. Governor Crane, — a line including the great
war-governor, John A, Andrew, and the well-beloved
Roger Wolcott. Mrs. Claflin, whose death in 1896
left vacant a place in social and philanthropic inter-
ests, was a graceful hostess who made a fine art of
entertaining. INIr. and Mrs. Claflin were of that typi-
cal New England quality which our country recognizes
as its best citizenship, whether it be found in Maine or
Texas.
They began their married life with scanty means, and
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 419
lived in a simple way, near Framingham, rich only in
love and happiness. By his own integrity and good
management Mr, Clafliu amassed a large fortune, and
they established a beautiful home in Newton, calling
their estate " The Old Elms." They also had a town
house, which still remains one of the most pleasant of
the spacious old mansions of an earlier day. Their
houses became the scenes of the most charming hospi-
tality. Mr. Whittier was deeply attached to them, and
always made his home with the Claflins when in Boston.
Mrs. Stowe was a frequent guest, as were also Henry
Ward Beecher, Charles Sumner, Hon. Salmon P. Chase,
Longfellow, Dr. Holmes, ex-President and Mrs. Hayes,
Miss Edna Dean Proctor, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and
a host of others. It was at their country house, " The
Old Elms," that the seventieth birthday of Mrs. Stowe
was celebrated by one of the most brilliant literary com-
panies ever assembled. Among those present were
Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Holmes, Mr. Trowbridge,
Colonel Higginson, Miss Phelps (now Mrs. Ward),
Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, Mr. Ho wells, and Mr. Aldrich.
It was on that occasion that Mrs. Stowe remarked, as
she stood on the raised dais to respond to all the felici-
tations offered her : " My friends, always believe this :
Everything that ought to happen is always going to
happen."
Mr. Claflin has known many notable men and brings
them vividly before the listener when speaking of
them. The long life of more than eighty years
which the ex-governor has seen has included the
420 BOSTON DAYS
most eventful period of the century, and almost, per-
haps, of the world's history. The Boston of 1818 and
the Boston of the Twentieth century have little in com-
mon with each other ; and he has seen the introduction
of railroads, the invention of the steamships and of the
telegraph, the progress of the Civil War, the accession
of Queen Victoria and Edward VII. to the throne, the
exploration and civilization of all the country west of
the Mississippi River, the overthrow of slavery, to say
nothing of all the later great electric inventions and
the changes in politics and society. If the ex-governor
were to write his memoirs they would be deeply inter-
esting. There are few of the famous folk, of our own
country or of visiting foreigners, statesmen, authors,
artists, actors, reformers, inventors, or great scholars,
who have not been entertained by Governor and Mrs.
Claflin.
Any remembrance of Mr. Whittier recalls vividly his
lifelong friend and co-worker, Lydia Maria Child, to
whom lie refers as
" The worthiest of our narrowing circle,"
in a poem addressed to her on reading her lines on
Ellis Gray Loring, published in a journal of the time.
This is one of INIr. Whittier's sweetest lyrics. The
opening stanzas run : —
" The sweet spring day is glad with music,
But through it sounds a sadder strain ;
The worthiest of our narrowing circle
Sings Loring's dirges o'er aijaiu.
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 421
" O woman greatly loved ! I join thee
In tender memories of our friend ;
With thee across the awful spaces
The greeting of a soul I send !
" What cheer hath he 1 How is it with him ?
Where lingers he this weary while ?
Over what pleasant fields of Heaven
Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile ? "
After her death (on Oct. 20, 1880) he wrote of
her a memorial poem, entitled " Within the Gate," in
wliich occur the lines : —
" Not for brief days thy generous sympathies,
Thy scorn of selfish ease ;
Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal
Thy strong uplift of soul."
There is a rhythmic completeness in the life of Mr.
Whittier that appeals to the imagination, and it is for-
ever beautiful to remember that the last work of his
hand was the birthday poem to Dr. Holmes, just nine
days before his death, the poem closing with these
lines : —
" The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late.
When at the Eternal Gate,
We leave the words and works we call our own
And lift void hands alone
" For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul
Brings to that Gate no toll ;
Giftless we come to Him, who all things gives,
And live because He lives."
Among Mrs. Claflin's guests on this occasion of her
reception for Mr. Whittier, ]\Irs. Diaz was a very inter-
422 BOSTON DAYS
esting figure. A native of Plymouth and one who
entered on literary life by the most approved strait gate,
if not the narrow way, of the " Atlantic Monthly," her
work broadened into something that came to include
literature rather than to be exclusively absorbed in it.
Her early stories that appeared in the "Atlantic
Monthly " have been followed by the " William Henry
Letters," " Bybury to Beacon Street," " Domestic Prob-
lems," and " The John Spicer Letters," and a number
of stories and sketches contributed to various periodi-
cals have won for her wide literary fame. Yet far
beyond any conceivable prestige of fame in literary pro-
duction, is the simple, direct, sympathetic, and sparkling
presence of Mrs. Diaz. She might have been an artist,
a danseuse, a stage manager, a singer, quite as well as a
writer, a lecturer, an organizer of philanthropic and
economic work, and the mistress of a home whose
atmosphere is all sunshine. It is related that Prof.
Charles Eliot Norton was so charmed with the spirit of
the " William Henry Letters " that he inquired as to
the identity of the author, and soon after secured her
aid in educating his own children.
The opening of the new Public Library in Copley
Square was an epoch-making event in the nineties, —
an event the more significant in the installation of so
remarkable a librarian as Mr. Herbert Putnam, who,
on his resignation to accept the office of Librarian of
the Congressional Library, was succeeded by the
present able and learned man who administers it
so wisely, — James W. Whitney, LL.D.
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 423
Mr. Whitney shares Mr. Putnam's ideal in conceiving
of his office as an active and not as a passive one. The
true work of a public library is not merely to offer —
however freely and easily — supplies to those who ask,
to meet the demands that are made ; but, beyond this,
to increase the number who will ask ; to constantly
extend and multiply the demands. This is a new de-
parture in the conduct of great libraries. Mr. Whitney
is accessible personally ; he does away with all use-
less rubbish of red tape ; he has the people's interest
thoroughly at heart ; he discriminates swiftly and clearly
between the essential and the non-essential.
The mural art of the Library, representing the im-
mortal work of Puvis de Chavannes, John S. Sargent,
and Edwin A. Abbey, with one ceiling of unique beauty
by John Elliott, is among the finest in the modern wrld.
These paintings rival in interest the art in the galleries
of the Museum of Fine Arts. The stately and noble
reading-rooms — Bates Hall, the periodical-room, the
newspaper-room, the fine-arts room, and other depart-
ments and specialties ; the active hospitality of the
Library, its beauty, glow, and charm, are simply mag-
netic. Too much could hardly be said of the unweary-
ing courtesy, the helpful kindness of Mr. Bierstadt, the
Curator of Bates Hall, and of the heads of the other
departments in the delivery-room, the periodical and the
newspaper rooms. The atmosphere of the most gener-
ous helpfulness and gracious courtesy is simply ideal, and
it renders the Library that which every town and city
library should be, — an educational centre, using the
424 BOSTON DAYS
term in the larger sense of liberal culture as well as of
education alone. Yet with every recognition of the
very rare quality of Mr. Whitney's staff, in their various
responsible positions ; — with every recognition of the
spacious, stately, splendid building — a dream of beauty
without and within — one must come back to the centre
of it all, to him whose fine, firm touch upon the main-
spring holds its elaborate mechanism true to its course,
the Librarian. The splendid building, with all its treas-
ures of literature and art, might almost relapse into a
mere literary mausoleum were it not for the spirit that
informs it with life and light and irresistible energy.
The opening of the Library on Sunday afternoons, and
the extension of the evening hours from the former
closing hour of nine until ten o'clock, the present
hour, is an incalculable blessing to those whose occupa-
tions hold them closely all day. The number of persons
visiting the Library on Sunday afternoons is usually
large ; and not unfrequently Bates Hall is crowded
with eager readers at every table.
Fortunate in its magnificent site on Copley Square ;
facing the Museum of Fine Arts, Trinity Church, and
the Brunswicl^; fortunate in its arcliitects, its artists,
and its great corps of assistants, the library is most of
all fortunate in the wise administrative policy that con-
ducts the institution. The basic principle appears to
be the conviction that the Library is made for the
people, and not the people for the Library. The first
effort is to afford the largest number of people the larg-
est possible facilities for reading, study, and culture.
o
•^
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 425
To have such a centre for students and literary
workers as the Public Library has made itself in Boston
is a liberal education in larger social sympathies. The
architecture has been adversely criticised on account
of the distance of the book-stacks from the reading-
rooms. The building has a large central court in
which a fountain throws out its perpetual spray over
the verdant grass, and the four sides of which are sur-
rounded by a colonnade where, in time, will be busts
and statues of the immortals. The book-stacks occupy
the entire west end of the building ; but the distance is
practically annihilated by a pneumatic tube and electric
railway. The entire time between making out the slip
and receiving the book is often within four minutes, so
that when distance can thus be annihilated by modern
conveniences it is not objectionable. In the British
Museum the time required for procuring books is so
great that a busy worker usually sends for those he re-
quires the day before he needs to use them, in order to
have them at hand without wasting untold hours.
The habitues of Bates Hall hold in affectionate
remembrance the former curator, Mr. Arthur Mason
Knapp, who, for more than twenty years, had literally
radiated sweetness and light to every one who came
within the sphere of his work. Mr. Knapp's vast
stores of knowledge, and his infinite patience and sym-
pathetic kindness, were at the service of every one, and
the value of his aid which he freely placed at the use of
any one who asked was simply beyond computation. For
the Public Library in Boston is not a mere building stored
426 BOSTON DAYS
with books and mechanical conveniences. It is a centre
of life, of unselfish endeavor, of social sympathies, of
mutual interests.
Another centre which, like the Public Library, has
radiated high influences throughout the entire commu-
nity, is the Museum of Fine Arts, which was so fortunate
as to have for its director, over a long number of years,
that most accomplished and learned connoisseur of
art, Gen. Charles A. Loring, whose death, in the
summer of 1902, came as a profound personal and
artistic loss to the entire community whose interests
he had so faithfully and ably served with the most
endearing courtesy and generous goodness, as well as
by his wide culture and unerring judgment of both
ancient and modern art. The Museum has been for-
tunate in securing for his successor one of the most
distinguished of living savants. Prof. Edward Robinson.
The progress of art in Boston has been in an accelerated
ratio during the last half of the Nineteenth century.
Allston left his name written among the immortals.
William Hunt, George Fuller, and Dr. Rimmer have
title to imperishable fame. Of contemporary artists
there is a constellation of genius. Elizabeth Peabody
has recorded of Allston that "his every conversation
had the beauty of a work of art, though it was always
the unaffbcted and spontaneous outflow of a nature in
w^hich no faculty had been left to grow rank, but all
were cultivated harmoniously and faithfully."
From the exhibition of Allston's paintings in 1839,
which made so deep an impression upon Margaret
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 427
Fuller, to the present time Boston has been hos-
pitable, ardent, and finely appreciative of special col-
lections. Allston, whom the Italians well called the
" Titian of America," can be studied in the " Allston
rooms " of the Museum of Fine Arts, where many of
his sublimest works are exposed. In " Belchazzar's
Feast," "The Dead Man Restored to Life," "The
Witch of Endor," " Rosalie," and others, his art can be
adequately studied.
Miss Peabody used to say that intercourse with
Allston was always of a singular freshness.
" He was very retired in his habits," she continues,
" and his hours of work, whether with the pencil or the
pen, were always passed in absolute solitude; also his
hours of lassitude or weariness. But when he came into
the company of even his most intimate friends, he was in
full presence. He always went round and shook hands
with each, in delighted recognition, and whenever he
parted, even with members of the family, and for the
night, it was done with so much sensibility that it would
do well for the last time."
The great exposition of the works of John S. Sargent,
given by the Copley Society, was a memorable event in
art. One cannot study so representative a collection of
Sargent's work without applying to him the lines of
Emerson : —
" Born and nourished in miracles,
His feet were shod with golden bells. "
Born in Florence, cradled in art, companioned with
beauty from his infancy, steeped in the glorious im-
428 BOSTON DAYS
pressions of the great masters whose work made the
golden atmosphere of his youth — in tliese portraits is
seen the result of such an atmosphere. His portraits
reveal a series of psychological impressions. One can-
not but suspect him of entertaining private judgments
of his own which it would not invariably be discreet to
impart. In Sargent's earlier work there was, indeed,
an occasional departure into absolute eccentricity — as
when he painted a well-known society woman of Boston
with a ring of light, a la St. Cecilia, around her head.
Just what was intended by this, no one, so far as is
currently known, has ever discovered. At all events
that portrait did not figure in this collection, albeit its
owner is a liberal patron of art.
To the Sargent exhibition was added about the same
time that of Boutct de Monvel, who is the most famous
French artist of the day in the portraiture of children,
and who, as an illustrator, has a dramatic quality of
graphic depiction that renders his pictorial interpreta-
tion almost as perfect a manner of telling a story as is
literary narration. For instance, his series of illustrations
from the life of Jeanne d'Arc. In thirty-eight pictures
(in water-color) the entire story is told. The peasant
girl at Domremy ; the girl standing hushed and awed
before the vision of St. Michael that has risen before
her, half-hidden in the shrubbery, which is all lighted
up with the sudden glory; the girl listening in rapt,
wondering ecstasy to "the voices;" the scenes sliow-
ing Jeanne on the road ; her recognition of the King,
who tested her by wearing a plainer costume than his
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 429
courtiers ; her entrance into Orleans ; the taking of the
Bastille ; the reception of Jeanne by the King after the
victory ; Jeanne laying down her armor on the altar of
St. Denis kneeling in the dim, historic interior ; the scene
of her capture under the walls of Compi^gne ; her fall
from the fortress of Beaurevoir in the effort to escape ; her
imprisonment at Rouen ; the appearance to her of the
saints in her cell at night, and the final scene of the
burning of the Maid alive in the square at Rouen, —
all these and other scenes are so vividly represented as
to fairly suggest the story, even to one who had never
heard of the most marvellous train of events in history.
The St. Botolph Club have given in their galleries
a series of important exhibitions, among which was that
of works of Zorn, — not a large exhibition, some
forty pictures in all ; not too large to study at leisure
without bewilderment, and sufficiently extensive to
offer a representative estimate of the ability of this
remarkable artist. Mr. Sargent — who can well afford
to be generous, and would be, whether he could afford
it or not — asserts that Zorn is the greatest painter of
modern times. Boston does not hold him so high as
it does Mr. Sargent himself; but it must be felt that he
has a kind of electric power, a verve, an instantaneous,
creative ability, and a genius for handling light that is
all peculiarly his own. His methods and those of Mr.
Sargent are wholly different, and praise or appreciation
of the one does not by any means detract from the
other. The subjects of these portraits included some
persons who are widely known, among whom was Prof.
430 BOSTON DAYS
Halsey G. Ives, director of the Museum of Fine Arts
of St. Louis, and the man who so pre-eminently dis-
tinguished himself as the head of the entire art depart-
ment of the exposition in 1893 at Chicago.
The exhibition of the work of Boutet de Monvel, of
Raffaelli, of Marcious-Simonds, and others of late years,
have contributed to the art education of the people.
When the bronze tablet marking the grave of Edwin
Booth in Mount Auburn was placed, a little group
of his friends gathered there. His daughter Edwina
(Mrs. Grossman), Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple, Prof.
Charles Eliot Norton, INIrs. Howe, and others, and
Mrs. Howe, reminded of the beautiful social life of the
rare and vanished circle of the past, said, half dreamily,
" Where are the philosophers ? Charlotte [turning to
Mrs. Whipple], Charlotte, why don't you call the
philosophers again ? " " My doors are always open to
them," replied Mrs. Whipple.
" The philosophers " have nearly all vanished beyond
reach of the earthly summons, and yet the presence of
Emerson, Fields, Whipple, Dr. Holmes, Longfellow,
Edwin Booth, seems to pervade and even dominate Bos-
ton to-day, however unconsciously. The New England
type is very distinctive. A New Englander is a New
Englander as a Greek is a Greek. The type is as
absolutely its own in the United States as that of the
French or the Austrian in Europe. However wide the
culture or the experience of the New Englander, he
never ceases to have roots in soil, so to speak. On one
occasion Prof. Charles Eliot Norton remarked that he
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 431
considered the poem " On a Bust of Dante," by Dr.
Parsons, the finest one ever written on the immortal
Italian. A devotee of Rossetti suggested his wonderful
poem, and asked Professor Norton if he, indeed, con-
sidered that of Dr. Parsons finer than Rossetti's. Prof.
Norton replied in the afl[irmative, saying that Rossetti
seemed to him affected. There is an inherent Puritan-
ism in every son of New England, which, however
latent it may lie, now and then asserts its grasp over
determining matters of taste and choice.
Poet, reformer, romancist, with a charm of personal-
ity that is, in itself, one of the most potent of gifts, Col.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson continues still his active
days of a man of letters and social life. Colonel Higgin-
son is the founder and the president of the choicest
literary club of Boston, — the " Round Table " : he
was long the president, as he is always one of the
chief inspirers and leaders, of the Browning Club ; and
the list of his published works is impressive. He has
always stood for the most advanced and liberal thought ;
lie was one of the early workers for freedom ; he has
always warmly espoused the cause of woman suffrage,
and his scholarly taste, his wide range of delightful
friendships, his choice contribution to literature, invest
his name with a magic power. In his reminiscences
published under the title of " Cheerful Yesterdays,"
the reader gains vivid glimpses of the choicest life of
the past half century.
^Irs. Margaret Deland is another of the noted novel-
ists of the Boston of tlie closing years of the Nine-
432 BOSTON DAYS
teenth century ; and in lier " John Ward, Preacher,"
and subsequent books, she has ranked among the best
authors in contemporary fiction.
The place held by Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-
Ward is one very distinctive in American literature.
A daughter of one of the severest theologians, she yet
startled the reading world by her radical ideas of the
future life as presented in the " Gates Ajar." In the
light of modern thought it is a little difficult to under-
stand why there should have been anything incendiary
in this picture of the possibilities of the future life,
but it had its unquestioned work to do in breaking
down theological barriers. It was, perhaps, the first
important work to offer a rational picture of the life
beyond death, as the natural and simple continuation
and progress of this life. That such a work should come
from the daughter of an Andover professor is not so
strange when it is realized that this learned and revered
scholar, however severe his creed, was one of the most
tender and sympathetic of men, and that from both
parents Mrs. Ward must have inherited her quality of
exquisite literary talent. This fine quality of mind
naturally made her susceptible to inspirations of a very
high order.
Whether Mrs. Phelps- Ward lias " concealed herself
behind an autobiography " — to borrow the clever mot
of Zangwill — in her autobiographical book entitled
" Chapters from a Life," is an open question. The
strict Andover atmosphere of her girlhood is graphically
reproduced in these pages. It was a life narrow, but
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 433
liigli. The life of well-defined views is not quite
synonymous with that of great thought, but it has
the mould, at least, of the higher intellectual life.
Besides its interpretation of herself, — given with a
delicate reserve that leaves the reader to crave more, —
this book of Mrs. Ward's offers a multitude of charming
and intimate glimpses of nearly all the noted New
England authors. Of Longfellow she says : —
" Thus indeed, reviewing Longfellow's life as a whole,
we discern his days to be crowded with incident and ex-
perience. Every condition of human life presented itself
at his door, and every human being found a welcome
there, — incidents and experiences coming as frequently
to him through the lives of others as through the gate of
his own being. The note of love and unity with the
divine will was the dominant one which controlled his
spirit and gave him calm."
Certainly the salient points of the life of a woman of
letters, with whom thoughts, rather than occurrences,
are events, is told with a delicacy of reserve which is
in itself an example of literary art, and that the at-
mosphere seems half ideal is, nevertheless, one of its
strongest claims to realistic truth ; for the environment
of this remarkable woman has been essentially one of
detachment from ordinary events.
The summer residence of Mr. and Mrs. Ward is very
picturesque at their Gloucester cottage, where Mrs.
Ward has almost translated sea and surf into music
and set them in her " Songs of a Silent World." With
the ocean on one side of the jutting point, and Glou-
28
434 BOSTON DAYS
cester harbor on the other, there is a Venetian-like
effect to their home. Before tlie piazza are great
rocks, and between this ledge and the shore the tide
flows in. The color-pictures of a sea of sapphire, or
silver gray, or of dreamy shades of amethyst, rose, or
violet, transcend description ; and if one may see,
flitting from piazza to rocks, a graceful, white-robed
figure, with dark hair brushed carelessly away from
the classic face, a hint of tuberoses at the throat,
and the summer sunshine in the luminous eyes, he may
not be far amiss if he fancy it to be that of the world-
famous author, — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-Ward.
The pleasant informalities of summer life by the sea
are reflected in this little note from Miss Phelps (before
she became Mrs. Ward) to the Whipples, who were
staying near : —
Eastern Point.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Whipple, — I sent over yesterday
to see if you would u't take an early tea with me, but
you were not to be found, and we left no message, think-
ing it would be a medley by the time it reached you.
To-day I am not quite as well, and so have not tried
again. I hope at all events that you will get over to see
me in some fashion before you go.
Sincerely yours,
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
One of the most delightful and effervescent person-
alities was Miss Lucretia Peabody Hale, a sister of
Edward Everett Hale, who, in recalling their childhood,
would often gleefully narrate that in their nursery days
her father's paper, the " Advertiser," was made to do
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 435
duty at meals, pinned about their necks. Perhaps the
future illustrious group absorbed something of this ex-
ternal literary culture. Miss Susan Hale, her younger
sister, is a wit, par excellence, a delightful woman of
society, and is a most accomplished and extensive
traveller.
Miss Lucretia Hale, who will always be remembered
as the author of that inimitable book, " The Peterkins,"
was a favorite pupil of the famous Elizabeth Peabody.
The true Bostonese are all related or connected by
intricate intermarriages, and, as a consequence, as Mr.
Henry James has humorously portrayed in his stories,
they are apt to speak of each other by their first names.
Miss Hale's literary work was never by any means
done in any well-regulated early morning hours. " I
am absolutely useless till ten o'clock, at least," she used
to say, " but I have observed that if I survive that hour
I usually live through the day." It is a question if any
Boston woman since the days of Margaret Fuller had
ever so large a following, so to speak, as jVIiss Hale.
Her literary classes drew about her many young people ;
her literary work reached a still larger number, and her
own friends and associates were practically infinite in
variety. She had the talent for that large relatedness
of life which so signally characterizes her distinguished
brother.
In the esteemed jurist and citizen. Judge Robert
Grant, of the Boston of to-day, the literary world does
not forget the Robert Grant who is one of the interest-
ing figures among Boston authors. He has had the
4.36 BOSTON DAYS
typical career of the man who was born in Boston,
graduated at Harvard, and has been the poet of the Phi
Beta Kappa before the Harvard chapter. As an under-
graduate ]\Ir. Grant showed the literary bent, and his
work followed a certain sympathetic and delicately in-
tuitive line of interpretation of social life, with flashes
of wit and genial humor that make it delightful reading.
He struck the keynote of fame in that wonderfully
popular story of its day, the " Confessions of a Frivo-
lous Girl," and between that and his latest novel,
"Unleavened Bread," — one of the momentous studies
in American fiction, — lie a long list of charming
works.
The old "West End" of Boston is changing so
rapidly that one hardly recognizes it. Beacon Hill,
Mount Vernon, Chestnut, and Pinckney streets are
being rapidly invaded by trade and apartment houses.
These afibrd beautiful views from all the upper stories,
for the location is picturesque in the extreme, and the
old landmarks are, thereby, disappearing. From a some-
what provincial — even though choice — city of the
gods and muses, Boston is becoming cosmopolitan, and
the general topography of the city is undergoing a trans-
formation, while the vast extension of residence regions,
made possible by the superb system of local electric
transit, has fairly created a " Greater Boston " with the
celerity of the traditional miracle.
The home of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the poet, is one
of the stately old mansions on Beacon Hill, and it has
a cupola commanding a view which — especially at
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 437
night, with the electric lights gleaming brilliantly amid
the foliage of the Common, or reflected in the lake in the
Public Gardens casting Rembrandtesque shadows over
the stately architecture of the Back Bay — is most
romantic. The large drawing-rooms, up one flight,
after the manner of the old-time mansions of Boston,
are interesting in their relics of travel and quaint carv-
ings and old pictures ; brilliant companies throng them
on occasions of receptions, or choice and select groups
gather for the little dinners for which the house is
famous, Mr. Aldrich's place in modern poetry is so
unique that it is doubtless more widely appreciated
than critically defined. Two things, at least, are appa-
rent in his work, — apparent spontaneity, combined
with the most exquisite finish. The subtle process no
more lends itself to interpretation than does the song of
the nightingale.
The poetry of Mr. Aldrich is as distinctive as if he
were the only poet in the world. This is not to say it
is greater than any other ; but that it is of so unique
and delicate a quality that it is only comparable with
itself When one says that these lyrics are of the
exquisite finish, of the most subtle, penetrating insight
into the springs of life, it can well be added that these
qualities are to be found in greater or less measure in
other poets also ; but the subtle quality that makes
them Mr. Aldrich's own escapes analysis and defini-
tion ; it is felt rather than explained. Nor is there any
special satisfaction in endeavoring to turn upon them
some critical searchlight that shall reveal their defects
438 BOSTON DAYS
or limitations, if these they possess ; let one rather
revel in their beauty. As an instance of this pictorial
beauty, take these lines : —
" My mind lets go a thousand things,
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,
And yet recalls the very hour —
'T was noon by yonder village tower.
And on the last blue noon in May —
The wind came briskly up this way,
Crisping the brook beside the road ;
Then, pausing here, set down its load
Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly
Two petals from that wild-rose tree."
No painting could more wonderfully reproduce that
scene, — the blue sky, the brisk May wind rippling the
brook, the striking of the hour by the clock, and the
two petals falling from the rose tree. Here is a per-
fect artistic picture. In " Prescience " is as subtle and
perfect a picture with the far-reaching tide of spiritual
emotion added.
" The new moon hung in the sky.
The sun was low in the west,
And my betrothed and I
In the churchyard paused to rest.
" And lo ! in the meadow sweet
Was the grave of a little child,
With a crumbling stone at the feet
And the ivy running wild.
" Stricken with nameless fears
She shrank and clung to me,
And her eyes were filled with tears
For a sorrow I did not see.
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 439
" Tears for the unknown years
And a sorrow that was to be ! "
And how enchanting is this stanza from " The
Unforgiven " : —
"In the East the rose of morning seems as if 'twould blossom
soon;
But it never, never blossoms, in this picture ; and the moon
Never ceases to be crescent, and there June is always June."
Mr. Aldrich's poetry recalls to one everything delicate
and most beautiful, — the shimmer of moonlight on the
sea ; the faint fragrance of half-opened Marechal Niel
roses ; the gold and rose of a summer sunset. The
finest sculptured alabaster could not be more beautiful
in line and form than many of his poems.
Mrs. James T. Fields still continues to occupy her
home on Charles Street from which the tide of fashion
has long since ebbed away. Once within, the guest
would no more wonder that she felt no inclination
to migrate with her Lares and Penates to newer
locations. The west windows of the house (at the
back) command the Charles River, which, making
here a bend, gives the length for its vista, and the
glory of the sunset is a vision never to be forgotten.
The house is a veritable literary museum, — a shrine
of treasures, — crowded with rare books, engravings,
portraits, autographs ; portraits of Pope, by Richardson,
of Dickens, painted over a half a century ago by
Alexander, of Lady Sunderland, by Sir Peter Lely.
440 BOSTON DAYS
And especially does one feel the very consecration of
interest in the guest-chamber, which so many notable
people have occupied.
For in this home almost every foreign visitor of
distinction has been a guest. Mr. Fields was the
genial companion, the sympathetic and inspiring critic,
friend, and publisher. He had the publishing instinct
developed almost to genius. He had an intuitive
grasp of what the public wanted or should want, the
latter knowledge, perhaps, being the more important.
He was an educator of public taste. His genial and
sympathetic personality made him the centre of a not-
able group of authors, both American and English.
It was he who brought out the first edition in America
of Tennyson's poems. He published for Thackeray
and Dickens. Meantime our American classics —
Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Mrs. Stowe,
Tiioreau, Whipple — were appearing from his house.
When over thirty years of age Mr. Fields married Miss
Annie Adams, a girl of seventeen, whose character and
gifts, as she developed into womanhood, were remark-
ably sympathetic with his own.
A very beautiful picture of Mrs. Fields, taken in her
early womanhood, was a great favorite of Mr. Long-
fellow, a copy of it always remaining on the man-
tel of that upper chamber of his house which was
once Washington's chamber and in wiiich the poet
wrote " Hyperion." The hospitable home of Mr. and
Mrs. Fields has played a notable part in the literary
drama of Boston. In an upper room of their house
Sarah Holland Adavis
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 441
Emerson wrote his poem called " Voluntaries," on
an occasion when he was their guest. At the table
he told his host and hostess of the poem, and, after
the meal they accompanied him to his room, where
the scattered pages of the poem lay all over the
carpet. On his reading it, he asked, " What shall
the title be ? " to which Mrs. Fields at once replied,
" Voluntaries."
Mr. Whittier was an always welcome, albeit rather
shy, guest among the Boston group. He was often a
guest for weeks at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Fields,
and frequently, too, at the home of Governor and
Mrs. Claflin.
One of the most interesting figures in cosmopolitan
society — for Europe as well as her own country claims
her — is Miss Sarah Holland Adams, a sister of Mrs.
Fields, an eminent German translator, and a lady of
the most exquisite culture. For twenty years she
lived abroad, largely in Berlin, where she was in touch
with court circles and the best society of Germany in
the world of thought and letters, and where one of her
especial friends was Prof. Herman Grimm.
Miss Adams translated his " Lectures on Goethe," a
series of twelve which he delivered before the Univer-
sity of Berlin, which, in the volume brought out by
Little, Brown, and Company, constitute a contribution of
value to Goethean literature. Another volume of the
translations of Miss Adams comprises the essays of Dr.
Grimm on Emerson, Carlyle, Frederick the Great,
" The Brothers Grimm " (his father and uncle, the
442 BOSTON DAYS
authors of the celebrated " Fairy Tales "), and others.
Early in the last decade of the century just passed Miss
Adams returned to her home city, and in an apartment
looking out on Copley Square she makes a charming
home, in picture and book-lined rooms, always brilliant
with flowers sent by her myriad of friends, and which is
a social centre of the finest Boston life. The " Life of
Raphael," the " Life and Times of Goethe," and the
" Essays " of Prof. Herman Grimm have all been trans-
lated by Miss Adams with that accuracy of significance
and choice beauty of English which so notably charac-
terize her literary work,
Not only had Miss Adams a personal acquaintance
with Professor Grimm, but a most intimate friendship.
Her social circle in Berlin included, indeed, the most
eminent men and women of the city, and at a literary
festival she was decorated with a medal bearing on one
side the portraits of the Grand Duke and Duchess of
Weimar and on the other a laurel wreath and an
inscription. This, the highest honor that Germany can
bestow upon literary genius, was one singularly fitting
to be given to Miss Adams. She was also made a
member of the Gesellschaft, a literary society that is so
cosmopolitan as to include members among the eminent
people all over the w^orld, and her salon was a centre of
the most brilliant intellectual life. At Weimar Miss
Adams passed several delightful months. It was at
Weimar that Bayard Taylor made his home chiefly during
many years of his early life, and lie was much beloved
by the court, and often read English poetry aloud to the
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 443
Duke and Duchess and their children. One evening
he read to them (in English) Poe's " Raven," and when
he had finished, the Grand Duke said : " It is a terrible
conception, for the raven can only symbolize despair,
and he makes it perch upon the bust of Pallas, as if to
say that despair broods over wisdom herself."
The Grand Duke was a great lover of Hawthorne,
and Miss Adams relates that he often spoke of him
to Mr. Taylor, and related that Goethe spoke of Haw-
thorne's luminous and magnificent eyes.
The charm of personality which characterizes Miss
Adams is something diflBcult to define. It is that gift
and grace we call charm, the result of the fine inflores-
cence of many exquisite qualities, to which intellectual
grasp, imaginative power, sympathy, and social culture
all contribute, and which is all these, and more, in its
efi'ect.
Miss Sarah Orne Jewett, whose manner has the
same sympathetic winsomeness that invests her stories
with a charmed atmosphere, though not a resident of
Boston, yet has largely made one in the gifted circle of
later years ; and Mrs. Celia Thaxter, too, was allured
from the lovely sea-girt island that was her home for
every summer, and in her early life for all the year, and
that seemed a fit place for myth and legend and story.
She was herself something of a Viking maiden, strong
in her simple and spontaneous feeling, and pronounced
in her individuality. Her sensitiveness to color is re-
vealed in this part of a letter written to Mrs. Fields
from Naples in 1880 : —
444 BOSTON DAYS
'■ Our hotel is high up. Before us lies Capri, melting in
sapphire and amethyst. The Mediterranean is wondrous ;
it is like the ' Arabian Nights ; ' it 's not like water ; it 's
like leaping, liquid, prismatic flame all about its delicious
islands."
Her letters all show joyful, exuberant life and resist-
less energy. She loved flowers passionately ; music,
only less, and she cared for the more direct and simple,
rather than philosophic literature. She loved " Char-
lotte Bronte " with all her heart. She loved Whittier,
and spoke appreciatively of his rare truth and goodness.
It is a question if the subtleties of art appealed to her.
On the stage she preferred Ellen Terry to Bernhardt.
She revelled in color, and all her letters reveal vividly
this free, simple, joyous, and unique nature. Aside
from the strong, personal interest that it possesses, it is
interesting as a character-study.
It was like finding the philosophers, indeed, to find
Mrs. Horace j\Iann and her sister, Elizabeth Peabody,
one winter when they had rooms in the city on Bowdoin
Street, in the old West End. It was a cold and blus-
tering March evening, probably in 1885 or 1886, that
one or two friends climbed the stairs to the rooms that
the two ladies were occupying. The mixture of high
thinking and plain living was striking. The rooms,
only two or three, were in an old-fashioned house, and
the sitting-room evidently served as kitchen and dining-
room as well, in a kind of light housekeeping, where
an oil stove and a cabinet did duty for range and
pantry. In one corner was a superb marble bust of
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 445
Horace Maun ; there were engravings of great value
and beauty — many of them brought from Europe by
the Hawthornes — on the walls ; there were rare books
and bits of vertii, and, with these, the meagre furnishing
almost of tenement rooms. The two aged sisters —
gentlewomen, whose manner would have graced any
court — were living in the utmost simplicity, but they
lived and moved and had their being in the heavenly
kingdom. They missed nothing that this world could
have given them. They had bread to eat that the
world knew not of.
The guests drew their chairs before the fire. Miss
Peabody was a large woman. Mrs. Mann was as tiny
and delicate as a sparrow. The kerosene lamp flared
and flickered, and finally went out, after the fashion of
a lamp where the housekeepers are too much occupied
with ethical problems to remember to fill it. The blus-
tering March wind blew the branches of trees against
the windows, like ghostly finger taps, and the noble
and high-souled women talked, and their friends listened
and listened, even then half conscious that this was to
be an historic hour,
Mrs. Mann spoke of her husband, and of the " pre-
cious privilege " it had been to share his life ; and she
and Miss Peabody went on — in true transcendental
fasliion — to speak of the problem of evil as one that
had no substantial existence, but was merely " the want
of soul culture."
Mrs. Anna Cabot Lodge was another of the strongly
individualized characters of Boston. She lived into
446 BOSTON DAYS
advanced age, well on in the eighties, and her name
was an authority in that way in which Boston society is
peculiar. With ample wealth, with liberal endowment
of wit and literary and social culture, Mrs. Lodge
made her Beacon Street home a noted centre of life.
Dr. Howe was one of her nearer friends, and she was
deeply interested in his work for the blind. Mrs. Lodge
drew about her, indeed, many of the most eminent
people of the day, and among the most intimate habitues
of her house was Charles Sumner. She was a highly
intellectual woman, and so far as she was sympa-
thetic, it was through the intellect, and not in the
least through any poetic, intuitive, or imaginative feel-
ing. That was not her metier. She was poised, keen,
critical, extremely just in all her dealings, and a woman
of an imperious will. During all the years of tlie
domestic tragedy of Sumner's life, Mrs. Lodge was his
friend and confidante. She was not, as already stated,
an imaginative woman, but she was loyal and true, and,
as the New England people say, one " always knew
where to find her." She was penetrating, but not
intuitive. Her force of intellect made her the former ;
her lack of the poetry and divination of life denied
her the magic of intuition.
, Boston has been fortunate in a group of Catholic
citizens, — poets and men and women of letters, —
Boyle O'Reilly, Mrs. Mary E. Blake (the " M. E. B."
of literature), Miss Katherine Eleanor Conway, and
James Jeffi-ey Roche being all especially prominent.
Mr. O'Reilly had the personality that charmed the hum-
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 447
blest errand boy or the crudest laborer, as it did the
choicest circles of Boston society. As president of the
Papyrus Club, surrounded by the genius and wit of
authors, artists, and scholars, he was not more de-
lightful than in his professional and business relations
with his associates in the daily work of life. His was
a royal soul. A casual meeting and greeting on the
street communicated to one a new stimulus and invig-
oration. He was peculiarly and pre-eminently a man
of large relatedness to life. Not only in his natural
and inevitable relations to authorship and business,
to his family and nearer friends and to general society,
but to all humanity. No person could be so obscure,
or so degraded, or so utterly outside the pale of what
might seem some use in life, as to be outside the active
sympathies of Boyle Olleilly. If an individual was in
need, that was all the passport required to his sympathy,
his counsel, and his assistance. He left the deserts to
be judged by the All-Seeing, and asked no credentials
of those whom his goodness benefited. Even if Mr.
O'Reilly had lacked all his genius, his education, his
extensive culture, he would still have been a great
man, because of those great qualities. Such a life
lived for more than twenty years in a city will readily
be seen to have accumulated a vast number and variety
of personal relationships on many planes of life. Men
and women of genius, scholars and cultivated workers
in the arts and professions found in him a delightful
friend and companion ; men and women and young
people of the cruder classes, found in him a counsellor
448 BOSTON DAYS
whose judgment was wise and unselfish, and whose
sympathies were always responsive and generous, and
full of stimulus and encouragement.
Gen. Francis A. Walker and Mr. O'Reilly were the
most inseparable of companions, and they used to
take delight in puzzling their friends regarding their
individual identity, as they strikingly resembled each
other. Entering Mrs. Whipple's drawing-room on her
Sunday " evenings " together, the one would assert to
his hostess, " I am Walker," and the other, " I am
O'Reilly," and it was quite safe to reverse these alleged
identities in addressing them. Mrs. Whipple relates
that when the statue to Boyle O'Reilly — placed at
the Boylston Street entrance to the Back Bay Park —
was unveiled. General Walker sat so that his profile
was just within range of the portrait bust of the
dead patriot and poet, and that the face of the sculp-
tured marble might well have been for the poet's
friend as well.
" It 's better to be Irish than to be right," Mr.
O'Reilly would sometimes laughingly say, and the con-
versation between himself and General Walker was
often a perpetual flash of wit and repartee.
Two familiar figures in social and literary circles are
Nathan Haskell Dole, poet, wit, novelist, and eminent
translator, and Arlo Bates, an autlior to whom the lovers
of a national literature may well feel indebted for the
fine work he contributes. His novel called " The Wheel
of Fire " has passages that, in vivid intensity and psy-
chological analysis, suggest Hawthorne in the " Scarlet
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 449
Letter," and his poems are among those that have
claim to literary permanence.
Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells is a woman whose singu-
larly fine insight into life and art makes her one of
the most interesting of Bostonians. The father of
Mrs. Wells, the Rev. Dr. Gannett, was a noted Uni-
tarian divine of his day, and a portrait of him which
hangs in her drawing-room shows one of the typical
New England thinkers whose doctrines of plain living
and plain thinking laid the foundations for all that is
best in the New England of to-day. In her hospitable
home are some of the most delightful literary and social
reunions.
To hold the presidency of such an educational
centre as that of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology means more than the usual office of college
president, and General Walker's administration was a
remarkable one. It is an institution where great
forces diverge rather than converge. It is an institute
that comprehends widely different trends. It is de-
partmental and each department has its head. Over
all this complicated work General Walker held sway.
His military training had been of infinite value to him
in acquiring easy command ; the lectures and other
work in which he had been engaged had prepared
him in every respect to meet this vast and complicated
demand on his knowledge, his energies, and his direc-
tive ability.
Besides this work however, or rather, with this as a
centre from which to radiate, General Walker entered
29
450 BOSTON DAYS
into the life of politics and of municipal interests. He
was a member of the park commission, the art com-
mission, and a trustee of the Public Library. He was
a leader and an authority on the statistics of finance.
He was a frequent contributor to such reviews as the
" Forum," the " North American," and the " Arena."
He was one whom France would have distinguished as
a " first citizen."
A literary festival marking the eighty-first anniver-
sary of the birth of Mr. Longfellow by an authors'
reading, was held in Sanders Theatre, the interior well
known for Harvard Commencement exercises, where a
long Latin inscription is over the stage, and, at the
left, is the life-size statue of President Quincy. This
" Reading " vvas a night that left its impression on
memory. The stage was charmingly arranged with
flowers and palms and shaded lamps on little tables
grouped about ; and then there sat Colonel Higginson
who presided with his own inimitable grace, Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe, Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, Mrs.
Louise Chandler Moulton, John Boyle O'Reilly, Mr.
William Winter, Mr. George Parsons Lathrop, Heze-
kiah Butterworth, Mr. Charles Follen Adams, and the
*' founder of the feast," — as Colonel Higginson so hap-
pily said, — Miss Charlotte Fiske Bates, later Madame
Rog^. A bust of the poet Longfellow, crowned with
laurel, graced the centre of the stage, and above was
the inscription, in living green, " Longfellow, 1807-"
The audience included a large number of the literati
of Cambridge and Boston, an audience peculiarly re-
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 451
sponsive and appreciative. Colonel Higginson opened
his felicitous remarks with an allusion to the Spanish
proverb, — that a man cannot be bell-ringer and walk
in the procession at the same time, although he seemed
to prove that he himself, could, for beside his graceful
presiding, he read one of his own poems, " Dame
Craigie," which was most appreciatively received.
Mrs. Howe read her " Sunset on the Nile " and several
short poems on Italian themes, and afterward recited
some verses she had written to Longfellow. Colonel
Higginson's introduction of Dr. Hale was very amusing.
The statue of Josiah Quincy, once president of the col-
lege, reminded him, he said, when he looked from it
to Dr. Hale (the only officer of the university on the
stage), of an occasion painfully near fifty years ago,
when not only three of the speakers, but all of them,
had worn gowns. And on that day President Quincy
had said, in calling forward one young man, " Exspec-
tatur oratio in lingua vernacula." With this and a
" Hail, Hale," Dr. Hale came forward and read " My
Double and How He Undid Me," till the audience as
well, were fairly undone with laughter. Mr. William
Winter, who may well be called the Moore of America
in the wonderful melody and music of his poems, —
read his lines on Longfellow, some stanzas beginning,
" Could we but feel that our lost ones are near us,"
and his poem, " The Chieftain," in praise of Dr. Holmes.
Mr. J. T. TroAvbridge's contribution to the evening
was made up entirely of those verses of his which
describe simply and with no little pathos the tardy
452 BOSTON DAYS
success of a playwright who has long been fighting
poverty.
Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton was felicitously intro-
duced by Colonel Higginson, who related a portion of a
conversation which he had with a gentleman in London
who had spoken to him of the blindness which was the
perpetual discouragement of his son's poetic talent, and
of a gracious, sympathetic woman who had encouraged
the son to write, and, by reading his verses aloud, had
shown them to be poetry. The same justice which
she had rendered to the work of the young, blind
poet, Philip Bourke Marston, would now be rendered
to some of her own poems, he said. Mrs. Moulton
read first, ''The House of Death," which was poor
Marston's favorite, and her beautiful "At Midnight,"
" In a Garden," and " Come Back, Dear Days." Mrs.
Moulton's winning manner, tra'mante voice, and charm
of presence was felt by all. The poet — the woman —
seemed revealed in all the beauty of her artistic genius
and her loveliness of presence. Another of the great
pleasures of the evening was the reading of Boyle
O'Reilly, which included some of his crisp, keen, elec-
tric epigrams, followed by the thrilling " Ensign Epps,"
and " In Bohemia."
Charles Follen Adams was introduced with a stroke
of wit, and recited his " Lecdle Yawcob Strauss " in
an inimitable German accent, and Miss Bates gave " My
Thought and I," and some tributary verses which she
had written to Longfellow. In closing, Colonel Hig-
ginson paid a graceful and fitting tribute to Miss Bates,
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 453
and the evening ended with the reading of Lowell's
beautiful lines to Longfellow, beginning, " I need not
praise the sweetness of his song." The entertainment
was one of the most interesting occasions in both life
and literature.
The name of Hezekiali Butterworth is one to conjure
with in his home city where he is known, — not only
as the author of the finest poem on Lincoln that has
ever been written and of charming books of travel, but
also as a delightful lecturer and one of the most ideal
of friends.
A curious thing was noted by the entire audience at
this reading. All the evening there was a sound of
faint, far-away music in the air. It was as delicate as
the strain of an ^olian harp, as mournful as a burial
chant ; and it was a peculiarly haunting eerie sound.
" Telegraph wires ? " exclaimed a friend to whom it
was related. But there were no wires there. "A
device of the freshmen," was suggested. The " Trans-
cript," alluding to this curious sound, said : —
"It seemed like the ghost of vanished music Imunting
the hall. When Mr. William Winter, in a peculiarly mourn-
ful voice and accent, read his own poem upon Long-
fellow's death, which has these lines often repeated, like
a refrain,
" ' And still the night wind's moan goes on,
And still the mystery is here,'
this strange, ghostly music echoed the refrain with a
shudderiuo; sort of weirdness."
454 BOSTON DAYS
One could hardly help fancying this had some un-
known origin, so peculiarly unaccountable was the
occurrence, and it was plainly heard by two or three
hundred people.
Oscar Fay Adams, poet, story-writer, and literary
editor and compiler, is one of the younger Boston au-
thors whose charming gifts, fastidious taste, and well-
directed energy have contributed greatly to latter-day
culture. The author of that inimitable collection of
tales under the title of " The Archbishop's Unguarded
Moment, and Other Stories," and of poems that have
just claim to permanent importance in lyric art, — Mr.
Adams has also done much other work, in various direc-
tions, that is full of interest and of value.
One of the most perfect specimens of exquisite lit-
erary art in the English language is a romance entitled
" The Duchess Emilia," by Prof. Barrett Wendell, of
Harvard, an author whose criticism and lectures are,
while often unique and exciting controversy, always of
serious claim to attention. Professor Wendell's fine
monograph on Mr. Francis Parkman, and his notable
biography of Cotton INIather, are among the permanent
works in American literature. Of Cotton Mather, Pro-
fessor Wendell says : —
" Day after day, week after week, month after month,
year after year, he cast himself in the dust before the
Lord ; he strained his eyes for a fleeting glimpse of the
robes and crowns of God's angels, his ears for the faintest
echo of their celestial music. Pure in motive, noble in
purpose, his whole life was an nneudiug effort to
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 455
strengtheu in himself tliat phase of human nature whose
inner token is a riot of mystical emotion. . . . The pas-
sionate idealism to which he held with all his heart — like
honest priests since the world began — colored and
glorified, and made divine even the meanest things in
petty earthly life he knew. . . . All about him he saw
ever crescent disappointment and sorrow, and earthly
failure ; but he never lost heart, not even for a moment
ceased effort with word and deed alike, to do good to
mankind. ... In his ministry Cotton Mather never fal-
tered, . . . and among the Puritan priests there was never
one, I believe, more faithfully earnest than this Cotton
Mather."
No other such perfect interpretation of this unique
and remarkable man has ever been given to him whose
mortal body has lain for nearly two hundred years in
the old Mather tomb on Copp's Hill.
So great in influence, so impressive in heroic noble-
ness that she seems to belong to the world rather than
to any one city, — Mary A. Livermore is, nevertheless,
Boston born and bred, and her name confers added lustre
even to that period when " the total air was fame." The
great directive force of the work of the Sanitary Com-
mission in the Civil War, which she organized and
conducted ; the woman whose impassioned eloquence
as an orator is unrivalled in all the ages ; whose great-
ness of soul is only equalled by her nobility of heart.
]\Irs. Livermore is great — not only because she has a
strong and active and finely disciplined intellect ; not
only because she has a storehouse of deeper and more
varied experiences than any other one American woman.
456 BOSTON DAYS
on account of her important work in the war and wide
relations to humanity, — but more than all because
she represents the spirit of American institutions.
Patriotism is a duty, she feels, and she lives this duty.
Who are you, she will say, that your street, your neigh-
borhood, your town, your country, shall not be better
and happier that you live in it.
Mrs. Livermore may well be considered the most
potent influence of the Nineteenth century on American
womanhood. Mrs. Howe, with her exquisite culture
and philosophic thought, Lucy Stone, with her in-
vincible energy and sweetness of nature, Susan B.
Anthony, with her stirring logic and good sense, Eliza-
beth Cady Stanton, with her serene sway and invincible
logic, Frances Willard, in her special work for temper-
ance, always serene and strong on moral heights, —
these, and other leaders of social achievement who
might be named, have all contributed greatly and nobly ;
but out of all this brilliant galaxy the name of Mary A.
Livermore shines like a fixed star in the heavens. It
is she who has traversed the entire country as the great
popular lecturer, not specifically for suffrage, or temper-
ance, or education, but including these, and as the great
insi^irer ; one whose power made for the enlarge-
ment and the uplifting of the general life. She has
always been close to the hearts of the people, and
without any invidious comparison, it must be said that
she has exerted a wider and a more universal influence
than any other one American woman. In Mrs. Liver-
more's lectures, and in even her most informal talks,
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 457
there is a depth of spiritual vitality that appeals in-
stantly and profoundly to her audience, and establishes
a swift and direct relation between speaker and hearer.
In this lies, perhaps, the secret of her marvellous power.
For thirty years the bare announcement that Mrs.
Livermore was to speak would fill any lecture hall,
east or west, to overflowing. She has the divine gift
of sympathy. She is in touch with all the infinite
power of the unseen life. She was born with the pro-
foundly spiritual temperament, not merely an ethical
bias, but the true spirituality of life. There is a wide
difference between the two. Ethics and morality are
negative ; faith and love are the positive and magnetic
qualities. " I am not ashamed," said Mrs. Livermore,
once in conversation, " to confess myself a convert to the
power of prayer." The words were as simple in their
sublimity, or as sublime in their simplicity, as those of
Saint Paul when he said, " I am not ashamed of the
gospel of Christ."
"Whatever contribution to progress I have been
able to make," said Mrs. Livermore one morning, " has
been entirely due to my husband. From the day of our
marriage to that of his death he surrounded me with
the most perfect atmosphere for my thought and work.
He left me entirely free. We could talk over all sub-
jects ; we could differ upon them without heat. When
we were married I was a member of the Baptist
Church, and he a Universalist minister, — and for three
years I continued to go to my own church. He would
ask me on my return if I had heard an interesting
458 BOSTON DAYS
sermon. There was only one subject, so far as I
know, on which he felt that ray opinion was absolutely
wrong, and that was the matter of protection and free
trade."
"Not a very personal subject, surely, between hus-
band and wife," remarked her guest.
" No. On that," she replied, " he used to tell me
that I spoke well, but that my premises were all
wrong."
The home of Mrs. Livermore is in Melrose, a beauti-
ful suburban town some eight miles from Boston, with
the romantic scenery of the Middlesex Fells all around.
On one side she looks out on a beautiful blue lake,
with hills in the near distance. It is a pleasant home,
with spacious, hospitable rooms, and books and pic-
tures everywhere in the cozy way of a house that
has grown into a home. Many houses never become
homes at all. When they do it is because they express
the advancing household life from year to year — the
new books bought and read together and talked over ;
the pictures that are the gift of friend or artist or the
purchase of appreciation ; the furnishing and decora-
tions that have a certain fitness as the manifestation of
the individual taste and selection that brings them
together.
One is often amused by seeing in the city a palace
built and appropriately decorated and furnished, — by
carte hlanche given to the upholsterer and the artist, —
and when all is completed, even to the smallest detail,
the owners close and barricade it and go to Europe for
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 459
three years. Not so the home of the Livermores. It
has grown year by year as life in tastes and require-
ments and means expanded for the husband and wife,
whose beautiful half century of wedded love is as
" — perfect music set to noble -words."
Mrs. Livermore's study is lined with books. Her
large, roll-top desk is in a corner by a window, her
revolving chair before it. Its pigeon-holes are full, and
the waste-basket, full even in the early morning of
envelopes, reveals the voluminous correspondence
every mail brings upon her in an avalanche that only her
great executive and administrative power enables her to
handle. She is consulted on every conceivable subject.
The scope, number, and variety of the letters which
Mrs. Livermore receives in any one day would suggest
a good degree of the world's happenings. She is
appealed to by great firms and societies for a confiden-
tial opinion regarding certain individuals, or movements,
or objects. Her judgment settles many a matter of
■which the world little dreams. There lies behind her
eighty years of the most flawless integrity, admirable
poise, great good sense, keen, and, one might say, practi-
cally unerring moral discrimination ; and an irresistible
energy that has been perpetually fed from the Divine
energy and whose enthusiasm has been organized and
applied to the most remarkable work for the advance-
ment of humanity. About the study are portraits of
Dr. Livermore, whose companionship has only grown
still closer and more responsive since he passed into the
460 BOSTON DAYS
unseen ; of Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and other
friends. Here she writes and thinks and produces
her literary work.
To one with any fancy for tracing out the correspon-
dences and the significances of life, there is something
impressive in the way that Mary Ashton Rice and the
Rev. Daniel Parker Livermore first met. It was in
Duxbury, a seacoast town down on what is called the
" South Shore " from Boston, on a Christmas eve. Mrs.
Livermore (then Miss Rice) had gone out for a walk.
The sea was at flood-tide and the radiant moonlight
traced its broad track of silver across the bay. She
found herself near the Universalist church, when, as
she says, " a triumphant burst of song rang out on the
night air. ' Glory to God in the highest ; on earth
peace and good will to men ! ' " Again was the glad
song repeated, " as if the singers were unable to repress
their joy," she has said, " and I listened till the anthem
was ended. Should I enter ? "
What a picture in this moment and what a crisis it
was — the point, indeed, which determined all the
future life, the marvellous influence and work of the
nation's divinest helper — Mary A. Livermore. Here
was the hour of destiny — the hour freighted with that
intense significance of life which is seldom recognized
except from the perspective of the long years to come.
Should she enter ? That church portal was the " open
door " of her life. If she had not entered, it would
have been much the worse for the world and for all
who live in it. But when a nature is held in con-
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 46l
stant loyalty to God and the Divine will the leading is
sure and the angels hold tlieir charge concerning the
life which keeps true to the heavenly influence. Such
a life was that of the young girl just entering her early
twenties, who paused in the moonlight on Cliristinas
eve with the silver track of light on the ocean before
her, with the choral music of " Glory to God in the
highest " in the air, and with clouds of witnesses unseen
above. Was not that moment one whose exaltation
well initiated the noble, far-reaching, and profoundly
significant influence upon the world that for more than
fifty years has been exerted by Mary A. Livermore ?
She entered. A blond young man of twenty-five was
in the pulpit. "And thou shait call His name Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sins," was the
text. " Save His people from their sins ! " Mrs. Liver-
more says she mentally ejaculated ; " that is not the
correct reading." She consulted a Bible and conceded
the correctness. " It was a statement that had never
arrested my attention," she said, " or made any impres-
sion upon me." The sermon began.
"It was not from endless punishment that Christ
came to save us," said the young preacher, " but from
our sins. He came to teach us how to live that we
might avoid the mistakes of wrong-doings to which we
are liable." He went on with illustration as familiar
as the rudimentary mathematics, to the girl who listened
so intensely and yet utterly new in combination.
" A great peace stole over me," she said ; " a pulsa-
tion of love for all the world throbbed through my
462 BOSTON DAYS
being." Although some twenty years were to pass
before this young woman was to enter upon her world-
work, yet this was the hour of initiation into the Divine
purpose. The rest of the story is a matter of sequences.
Would the young minister lend her his sermon to read?
He would and he did, and there began a duet of mutual
trust and love and sweetness and work paralleled only
by that story of the love of the poets, Robert and Eliza-
beth Browning. " Aurora Leigh " had not then been
written, but in its magnetic words the young minister
might well have said to her : —
" The world waits
For help. Beloved, let us love so well
Our work shall still be sweeter for our love,
And still our love be sweeter for our work."
The first home of Mr. and Mrs. Livermore was in
Fall River, Mass., where he was the pastor of a church,
and his wife entered into his work with all her charac-
teristic earnestness. Not within these limits can their
work be pictured. Largely is it known and read of all
men, and it is, as she has said, largely due to the per-
fect conditions which Dr. Livermore created and made
always possible for the genius of his wife.
It was he who encouraged and sustained all her pub-
lic work. When that vast, bewildering call of the sani-
tary commission came and Mrs. Livermore shrank from
its weight of responsibility, feeling that as wife and
mother she could not leave her home, it was her hus-
band who said to her: "Mary, you arc called to the
angelic side of the war." To go forth to help — to
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 463
heal, to care for the wounded and the suffering, to
speak the last words to the dying, to carry aid and
sympathy and uplift — that was the work to which,
through her husband's sustaining counsel, she gave
herself. Then, the war being over, came that extraor-
dinary lecturing experience, of Mrs. Livermore's, extend-
ing over a quarter of a century, during which she was a
burning and a shining light in almost every city and
town in the United States.
She carried the message of intelligent activity and of
moral inspiration. Whatever her theme, — in educa-
tion, temperance, politics, literature, or affairs, — she
aroused, stimulated, and uplifted the people. From
the greatest statesman, the most brilliant leader of the
literati, the reformer, — to the woman in domestic life in
a Western town, — all thronged to hear Mrs. Livermore.
No one was too lofty to be benefited ; no one too
humble to understand. Nor need one allude to Mrs.
Livermore's lectures as a chapter that is closed. Only
recently the Y. M. C. A. of Melrose begged her to
address them. A thoroughly orthodox organization,
Mrs. Livermore reminded them that by their ideas she
was a heretic. They smiled. If such lives as Mrs.
Livermore's are those of heretics, heresy will be at a
premium.
One characteristic little incident of her lecturing life
is this : The rector of a very prominent church in Boston
went to Mrs. Livermore to ask her to address the young
men of his parish on temperance. He told her they
were the very flower of aristocracy, culture, and wealtli,
464 BOSTON DAYS
— young men to whom all the kingdoms of the earth
were open, but who were undermining their powers by
fashionable intemperance. (This was some years ago,
when the accepted standards of fashion were less
refined than now.) The rector went on to explain to
Mrs. Livermore that the regulation temperance talk
would have no effect at all on this particular audience.
So she started on a new tack. She primed herself with
the scientific side of the subject, — the disintegrating
power of alcohol on the physical nature, sapping all the
springs of vitality and weakening and disintegrating the
intellectual powers. The day and the hour came. An
audience that taxed the resources of the room was
present, — the young men, their mothers, sisters, wives,
and sweethearts. The attitude of the men was one of
great nonchalance and polite indifference, with a tacit
expression to the lecturer that they had no objection to
listening, but that nothing she could say would make
any impression upon them, and she might as well accept
that as a foregone conclusion.
Mrs. Livermore looked them over and was in nowise
disturbed. She opened her discourse. She marshalled
fact after fact of scientific accuracy drawn from unques-
tionable authority. Her hearers began to sit up with
an alert attention. They listened with an interest that
deepened to eagerness. They became responsive and
sympathetic with the masterly argument. At its close
they gathered around her ; they inquired into her
authorities, and copied the names of treatise and medi-
cal or scientific author. And as she entered her car-
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 465
riage they brought her a gigantic box of jacqueminot
roses — fifty or more of those long-stemmed jacque-
minots which are fairly a forest of blazing splendor, and
which required the services of brakeman and policeman
to aid her in carrying until she was finally bestowed in
her own carriage, with which her husband met her
when she alighted from the train at Melrose.
The present years of Mrs. Livermore's life are full of
interest and beauty. Her intellectual power is only
clearer and deeper as time adds increasing study, cul-
ture, and thought. Her health is fairly good ; she often
addresses audiences — and she is seeing people in all
possible relations, from those of her intimate friends to
the strangers who make to her a perpetual pilgrimage.
Problems of life of all kinds — the most intimate and
far-reaching — are continually submitted to her. To
each and all she speaks the word of counsel and of
wisdom.
Mrs. Livermore's household includes her sister, a
daughter, her secretary, and servants. Just opposite
her house is the pretty home of her married daughter,
where a family of grandchildren are devoted to her, as
are her townspeople. She is the beloved as well as the
venerated friend of each and all, and the days are filled
with manifestations of this love and respect. Although
the town of Melrose made its municipal celebration of
Mrs. Livermore's eightieth birthday on Dec. 18, 1900,
there is no suggestion of traditional " old age " about
this benignant and charmingly interesting lady whose
presence is a perfect energy of inspiration toward all
so
466 BOSTON DAYS
that is lovely and pure and of good report. Her sym-
pathies with youth are as keen as her judgment is wise.
Her hold on eternal truth is unfailing, and her life is
that of the profound spirituality that recognizes the
perpetual interpretation of the seen by the unseen, and
the perfect and unfailing communion of spirit to spirit
across the change we call death. An idyl in human
history is the beautiful and forever-united life of the
Rev. Dr. Daniel P. and Mary.Ashton Rice Livermore.
On a recent celebration of Lincoln's birthday Mrs.
Livermore was the orator of the occasion, and for
almost two hours, in an address given entirely without
notes, she held the breathless attention of a great
audience who felt it to be a classic masterpiece. What
was the secret of it ? Wlio may analyze the power ?
She passed in review the salient points of Lincoln's
heredity and surroundings and early influences, showing
them in such vivid relation to the great significance of
his after-life as to offer a truer biographical picture of
Lincoln than has, perhaps, before been given save in
that sublime interpretation of his life by Col. Henry
Watterson. Mrs. Livermore's knowledge of Lincoln
was contemporary, and from the standpoint of the most
intelligent and comprehensive sympathy. In the thrilling
events of his lifetime she bore no unimportant part. She
depicted his unvarying goodness of heart, his patience
under misconstruction, his magnanimity, his nobleness,
and that wonderful life lived again before the audience.
The lecture made a red-letter day in its wonderful
fulness of interest.
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 467
Mrs. Livermore has contributed immeasurably to
the true conceptions of spirituality. She has come
through clearer and closer study of its phenomena
and by her receptivity to the life in the unseen, to
comprehend the essential nature of the life here and
that which is to come, and to teach the vital truth in a
manner whose impressiveness is wholly her own. Stand-
ing on the brink of more than eighty years, she looks
before and after. There is an amusing little story that
some years ago there was a gathering at which were a
number of people well on toward fourscore, and that
the poet Whittier said to Mrs. Livermore : " How old
art thou, Mary ? " She replied, " Sixty-five, Green-
leaf," and he rejoined, " Get thee hence ! get thee
hence ! thou 'rt nothing but a giddy girl."
After the death of her husband, the Rev. Dr. Daniel
P. Livermore, Mrs. Livermore wrote to a friend : —
" Among the last words of INIr. Livermore was his wish
that I would go on as I had been living. ' Don't give up
any work you are engaged in ; only try not to overdo.'
I have great need of work now. It is to me more than
mone}^, sympathy, food, or raiment. I must live worthily ;
I cannot be overborne now, at close of my life, by sorrow,
depression, and loneliness."
These noble words are so universal in their signifi-
cance that they may well be a theme for consideration.
For when one comes to think of it, the cure for all the
ills in the world is to live worthily. An unfailing
recipe for unhappiness and misery is to live in self-
contemplation ; an unfailing recipe for a lofty and
468 BOSTON DAYS
noble order of happiness is to live in generous thought
and purpose and out-going sympathies for other lives
and for the things that make for progress.
All the interests, motives, and aspirations that make
up daily life extend themselves so indefinitely into the
unseen vrorld that neither their quality nor their course
of direction can be adequately discussed save as the
larger recognition is given to this ever-advancing horizon
line. The outer life is but a fraction projected from the
completeness that lies in this larger universe.
Rev. Charles Gordon Ames, D.D., who succeeded
James Freeman Clarke as pastor of the " Church of the
Disciples," will leave a very distinctive impress upon
Boston life. As a preacher, his sermons abound in
epigrammatic passages of the finest spiritual signifi-
cance. In the religious history of America he will
rank among the great preachers who have from time
to time stirred the mind and uplifted the hearts of the
people. From Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards on
to Theodore Parker, Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Bush-
nell, James Freeman Clarke, Edward Everett Hale,
Phillips Brooks, George A. Gordon, and E. Winchester
Donald, — in this galaxy the name of Dr. Ames shines
like a star. Boston has always been most fortunate in
her clergy, including so many men of eminence whose
lives and public spirit have illustrated the ideals they
enforced from the pulpit.
The incalculable aid to all nobler life by the ministry
of the Rev. Dr. George A. Gordon and by his literary
work as well, and by the divinely unselfish life and
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 469
work of Father Field, the noble energy of Dr. Leigh-
ton Parks, and of many others still, happily, in the midst
of Boston life, are the priceless treasures of the City of
Beautiful Ideals.
The idea is sometimes advanced that people are
" outgrowing the churches ; " that the general diffu-
sion of literature, the lecture platform, the Sunday
newspapers, athletics, amusements in general, — to say
nothing of Buddhism, Mohammedism, Theosophy, the
following of Abbas Effcndi, the various forms of
" Mind Cure " and Christian Science, or palmistry,
astrology, and other magic divinations have crowded out
the church. The idea that these are more than a sub-
stitute for religious organization is an idea that will
never take root in American life. Our country is one
founded upon moral ideals, and these are stimulated
and nurtured by organized religion. The church is
expanding with the age. It stands to-day not only for
its regular religious services of song and worship, but
as a centre of activity which extends in countless direc-
tions and which appeals under numberless forms, —
directions and forms which suggest themselves to every
one. There is abundance of room for every variety of
religious thought, and, in so far as it is sincere and held
as an aid to the attainment of divine ideals, perhaps the
more deeply all forms of its thought and philosophy are
studied, the better it may be for the community.
The " Church of the Disciples " is included among
those of the Unitarian faith, biit it stands for some-
thing far more vital than speculative inquiry. It is
470 BOSTON DAYS
the church " founded on elective affinities, not on the
purse principle," as James Freeman Clarke said, — the
church that has such a wealth of spiritual inheritance
that one approaches it only with tender reverence.
Its early history W9^ identified with the history of the
life of James Freeman Clarke, who for fifty years was
its only pastor. At his death by his previous request
Rev. Charles Gordon Ames, then pastor of a church
in Philadelphia, was invited to the charge, which he
accepted.
Dr. Ames's service in the Church of the Disciples
often leaves its impress on the mind as a beautiful
picture. The portrait of James Freeman Clarke, painted
by William Hunt, looks out from the lilies within which
it is often wreathed. The reading-desk is filled with
flowers ; palms and shining lilies encircle the minister
as he stands in his pulpit, his countenance illuminated
with the light of the spirit, the whole atmosphere one
of silence and beauty. The flowers seem to fitly adorn
a sacred festival. The music floats on the air, all sun-
shine and exaltation and gladness.
" The great days of life," we hear the pastor saying,
" are not the days when something happens outside of us.
They are the days when something happens Inside, — days
of spiritual expansion ; days of discovery or illumination,
when we gain clearer perception of high realities, see
deeper meanings in life ; days of moral re-enforcement,
when we make decisions and are prepared for worthier
achievement. What a day for the blind, when the scales
fall and his eyes are opened ! A white day — a day of
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 471
light ! Our greater birthdays are the claj's when we enter
into truer life and come into possession of that inner good
which is our proper inheritance as the children of God."
One of the most memorable sermons of Dr. Ames
is that entitled " The American Republic and the
Kingdom of God," in which the true values of life are
presented with great impressiveness.
The sermons of Dr. Ames are held to be of the finest
order, and his personal following adds largely to his
congregation beyond those who are enrolled in mem-
bership of the church. The prevailing spirit of the
teachings of Dr. Ames is that of the inspiration of
the higher life, — the possibility as well as the duty
to live nobly day by day. His sermons have a very
distinctive quality which is difficult to define in words.
They are full of that radiant energy which communi-
cates a spiritual impulse, the literary quality is fine,
and there is usually a very deep vein of philosophy
running through them ; but beyond this is a certain
unusualness in a simple, direct, forcible, and impressive
presentation of truth that enters into the very heart
of life and seems to implant vital germs of the diviner
spirit. It is a quality that leads one to feel after the
service is over that with him old things have passed
away and all has become new ; that there is a new
^heaven and a new earth ; that he goes homeward not
only refreshed, but renewed in his spiritual life ; that
all his future is to express this nobler purpose and
that all life must henceforth be lived on this higher
plane.
472 BOSTON DAYS
That pleasant home on Chestnut Street where the
cordial hospitality of Dr. and Mrs. Ames radiates its
cheer, seems to hold in itself the loveliness of the
Boston days that have gone from all save memory, and
all the promise, too, of the new Boston, — the Boston
of the Twentieth century.
Mrs. Fanny B. Ames — the wife of Dr. Ames — is
one of the most brilliant women of the age, both in
scholarly culture and in directive power. A leader in
many organizations, her charming personality makes
itself an effective factor in social advancement.
Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, whose work in intellectual
and philosopliic progress is so important a feature in
the social development of this City of Beautiful Ideals,
has, among other contributions to belles lettres, compiled
a volume of translations of Michael Angelo's poems,
including some of her own, and others by Mr. Frank
B. Sanborn, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr, John S.
Dwight, and Miss Eva Channing, together with transla-
tions made by Taylor, Harford, Symonds, and Southey.
No record of the Nineteenth century in Boston
could fail to include a reference to the oldest club
organization of women, called " The New England
Woman's Club," of which Mrs. Howe has been the
life-long president, and Mrs. Cheney one of its most
important directors. In a little reminiscence of the club's
memorial days, Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz has said : —
"Who will ever forget the tributes of James Freeman
Clarke, Frederic Hedge, William H. Channing, Elizabeth
Peabody, and the glorious anthems of Christopher P.
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 473
Crancli? At the centenary of the birth of Washington
AUston, . . . poems, letters, and reminiscences gave us a
beautiful insight into his character and life, while William
H. Channing, in words of lofty beauty, described the setting
of the glorious star. ... At the centenary birthday of
Michael Angelo, . . . again, Mr. Cranch composed for
us an ode which rings out as fresh and bold as the
' David ' on San Miniato. . . . We waited not till the
golden bowl was broken or the silver cord loosed to ex-
press our love for that embodiment of human sympathy
and broad thought, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody ; but
while she was still in the vigor of her work, we bade her
to a feast of recognition. She said she felt as if she
were dead and meeting her ideal ; we felt as if we were
holding up an ideal of true womanhood to ourselves."
The liistory of this club is almost an epitome of the
social and literary history of the last quarter of tlio
Nineteenth century in Boston.
" The City of Beautiful Ideals ! " This phrase may
well be held as synonymous with Boston. " The Puri-
tan Fathers believed New England 'charged with a
divine mission to show the world what human society
might be when governed by constant devotion to the
revealed law of God,' " says Prof, Barrett Wendell ;
and it is only from this foundation of faith and prayer
and devotion to spiritual ideals, that the Boston of the
Twentieth century can be estimated. The two regions
of thought and of action have met and mingled in the
forces that have developed the Puritan town, which
John Winthrop found a paradise because there he
"could enjoy God and Jesus Christ," into the great
474 BOSTON DAYS
cosmopolitau city of the present. But it is impossible,
as Phillips Brooks once said in one of his great dis-
courses, to separate those two phases. " It is impos-
sible," said Dr. Brooks, "to say to the business man
that he shall live only in the region of action ; it is
impossible to say to the scholar that he shall live only
in the region of thought, for thought and action make
one complete and single life. Thought is not simply
the sea upon which the world of action rests, but, like
the air which pervades the whole solid substance of
our globe, it permeates and fills it in every part. It is
thought which gives to it its life ; it is thought which
makes the manifestation of itself in every different ac-
tion of man." It is thought which, in both its early
planting and in the golden age of genius, so magnetized
the Boston atmosphere that gods and heroes still seem
to haunt the shade of the waving elms on the historic
old Common, and voices that bear divine messages for-
ever thrill the air. If the dawn of the Twentieth cen-
tury reveals more exclusively the age of action, it is
that action which is the expression and fulfilment of
thought of the Nineteenth century.
Sylvester Baxter, a poet of exquisite touch and a
man of letters whose fine power is winning wide recog-
nition, is also contributing to the Twentieth century
incalculably important results in his effective work for
park extension and other civic improvements that en-
hance the beauty of Boston.
A true poet of the nobler life of the new and untried
century is Alice Brown, who, though a novelist and
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 475
essayist, finds her most perfect expression in poetry.
The " Hora Christi " by JMiss Brown is worthy of artistic
immortality. In it one stanza reads : —
" lu cloistered aisles they keep to-day
Thy feast, living Lord !
With pomp of banner, pride of song,
And stately sounding word.
Mute stand the kings of j)ower and place,
While priests of holy mind
Dispense Thy blessed heritage
Of peace to all mankind."
The " City of Beautiful Ideals " is glorified anew by
the dawn of a group of new and younger writers who
are proving that romance and poetry are not dead ; that
Pan is still to be surprised lurking beneath the waving
elms of the old Common. And among these Lindsay I.
Swift, the author of that delightful book on " Brook
Farm ; " Alice Stone Blackwell, a poet whose poems
hold genuine appeal to art ; Vida D. Scudder, whose
fine work in literary criticism holds an unique place;
Katherine Eleanor Conway, a poet of true gifts and a
novelist of growing power ; Helen Choate Prince and
Laura A. Richards, — are all names that are winning in-
creasing recognition in their contribution to the progress
of literature. INIrs. Richards, although a resident of
jVIaine, was Boston born and bred and must be claimed
in the Boston group, both as one of the lovely and
accomplished daughters of JNIrs. Julia Ward Howe, and
as an author whose work is always published in this
city.
476 BOSTON DAYS
In the latter years of the Nineteenth century a re-
markable organization was founded by Edwin D. Mead,
LL.D., — the Twentieth Century Club, of which Mr.
Mead is the president and the inspiring leader. Mr.
Mead is widely known as one of the ablest interpreters
of the philosophy of Kant, and one of the most entranc-
ing of literary lecturers, as well as editor and essayist
of scholarly fame. Mr. Mead's club contributes, in the
most varied far-reaching and effective ways, to culture
and to the ever-growing development of beautiful ideals,
— of individual life and of citizenship. To Edwin D.
Mead, supported by this noble organization, was due the
ceremonial celebration of that memorable INIidnight
of 1900-01, when the old century went out and the
new^century came in. The celebration of this memorable
hour was one of significant and impressive beauty. It
marked the initiation of a still higher development of
the City of Beautiful Ideals, — of a period suggested in
the lines of Stephen Phillips : —
" I will make me a city of gliding and wide-wayed silence,
With room in your streets for the soul."
The scene of that midnight was one to live in
memory. On a balcony in front of the State House
on Beacon Hill stood the Rev. Dr. Edward Everett
Hale and others of the clergy, with Mr. Edwin D.
Mead and a group of invited guests. The Common
below was thronged with people who, with one
accord, welcomed the new century by singing the
hymn, —
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 477
*' O God, our help in ages past.
Our hope in worlds to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home."
Reverently this great concourse of people listened as
Dr. Hale, uplifting his voice in prayer, consecrated the
historic hour and the years that waited, just over the
threshold of this mystic midnight, with all their un-
known potentialities, with their new and greater mes-
sage to Humanity. Then, with a great fanfare of
trumpets, the Twentieth century was ushered in ; and
the populace who welcomed it, standing hushed and
reverent under a sky all aflame with stars, while the
deep-toned bell of old King's Chapel chimed the solemn
strokes of the knell of the Nineteenth century and the
greeting to the Twentieth, — the entire vast throng
must have seemed to hear on the air the words of the
poet : —
"Lo! now on the midnight the soul of the century
passing,
And on midnight the voice of the Lord ! "
INDEX
Abbey, Edwin A., 423.
Adams, Charles Follen, 450.
Hon. Charles Francis, 81.
Oscar Fav, 454.
Sarah Holland, 441, 442.
Agassiz, Elizabeth Cary (Mrs. Louis
Agassiz), 350, 351.
Louis, 18 ; journey of, to the
Andes, 19; poem of Dr. Holmes
to, 20; death of, 20.
Alcott, Amos Bronson, 128 ; esti-
mated by Frothinghara, 128 ; birth
of, 129 ;" gifts of, 130, 131, 132 ; in
home life, 133 ; favorite authors of,
134, 135; sonnets of, 135; school
of, 137; Fruitlands, experiment of,
described by Emerson, 139, 140,
141, 142, 143 ; poems of, 144, 145,
146; family life of, 153, 154; real-
izes dream of an Academe, 164,
165; philosophical teachings of,
166, 167, 168 ; Emerson character-
ized by, 184.
Louisa May, diary, records of,
79; childhood of, 147; early ex-
periences of, 147, 148 ; character of
work, 149 ; diary, extracts of, 150,
151 ; fame of, 152.
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 434, 436;
art of, 437; lines from, 437, 438,
439.
Alger, Rev. Dr. William Rounceville,
353.
Allston, Washington, 182.
Alvary, Herr, 395.
Ames, Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon,
words of, on Phillips Brooks, 342 ;
sermons of, 468, 470, 471.
Ames, Fanny B. (Mrs. Charles Gor-
don Ames), 472.
Anagnos, Julia Romana, nee Howe,
(Mrs. Michael Anagnos), 183, 184.
Aristotle, 178.
Arnold, Matthew, visits Boston, 325;
lecture of, on Emerson, 372, 373.
Atlantic Monthly, The, founding of,
227, 228.
Authors' reading, 450.
B
Bacon, Delia, 58; arduous life of,
99; Hawthorne's characterization
of, 60.
Balzac, Honore de, 344.
Bartol, Rev. Dr. Cyrus, 31, 169.
Bates, Arlo, 448.
Charlotte Fiske. see Rog^.
Baxter, Sylvester, 474.
Beacon Hilt, 475.
Bernhardt, Sarah, comparison of,
■with Duse, 393.
Bierstadt, Oscar F., 420.
Blackwell, Alice Stone, 475.
Blake, Mary E. (Mrs. John G. Blake),
446.
Booth, Agnes (Mrs. John B. Schoef-
fel), 392.
Edwin, 430.
Edwina (Mrs. Grossman), 430.
Boston, description of, in the "for-
ties," by Dr. Hale, 265, 266; famous
groups in, 100; Latin Quartier of,
352.
Bo.^tonians, the summer homes of,
81, 82.
Bradstreet, Anne, 23.
Brema, Marie, 395.
480
INDEX
Brimmer, Dr., 426.
Brooks, Rt. Rev. Dr. Phillips, called
to Trinity Church, 325; associ-
ates of, 827; love of nature, 328;
wide related ness of, 329 ; ministry
of, 333, 334, 377; special charac-
teristics of, 334; periods of work,
335, 336; social nature of, 337;
called to the Episcopate, 339; per-
sonal traits of, 340; Dr. Ames on,
342; influence of, 348.
Brown, Alice, 474.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, sonnets
of, 85.
Brunswick, the Hotel, 328, 400.
Bulkeley, Rev. Peter, 110.
Butterworth, Hezekiah, 453.
Cabot, James Eliot, 118.
Carlyle, Thomas, marriage gift of, to
Mrs. Emerson, 234.
Channing, Eva, 472.
Chapman, Maria Westman, described
by Miss Martineau, 64.
Chatterji, Mohini, 356.
Chavannes, Puvis de, 428.
Cheney, Ednah Dow, Theodore
Parker's opinion of Alcott related
by, 140.
Child, Lydia Maria, nee Francis,
beautiful temperament of, 60 ; ex-
perience of, 61,63, 64, 420; Whit-
tier's estimate of, 421.
Church of Disciples, founding of, 48 ;
469.
Church, " Old South," 369.
Trinity, 424.
" City of Beautiful Ideals," 472.
Claflin, Mary (Mrs. William Claflin),
417, 418.
Hon. William, 417; early life
of, 418; John Hancock estimated
by, 419.
Clapp, Henry Austin, fine dramatic
criticism of, 392.
Clarke, Rev. Dr. James Freeman,
48; "Ten Great Religions" of,
49; Dr. Holmes' poem to, 54;
friendship of, for Margaret Fuller,
55; letter of Dr. Holmes to, 250,
251.
Clough, Arthur Hugh, visit of, to
Boston, 85.
Club, the New England Woman's,
472.
the Papyrus, 447.
the Saturday, 229.
the St. Botolph, 430.
the Transcendental, 3.
the Twentieth Century, 474.
Concord, the idyl of, 163; famous
people of, 104, "l05.
Conway, Katherine Eleanor, 355, 446.
Cranch, Christopher, 472.
D
Dall, Caroline, nee Healey, tran-
scendentalism defined by, 30.
Damrosch, Mrs. Leopold, 406.
Walter, 394; directive power
of, 396; produces opera of "The
Scarlet Letter," 403, 404, 405;
creative power of, 409.
Davids, Rhys, 390.
Deland, Margaret, 431.
Denison, Rev. John, 343.
'• Deserted House, The," 185.
" Dial, The," 21.
Diaz, Abby Morton, 418, 472; early
work of, "420, 421.
Dickinson, Emilj', 118.
Dolbear, Prof. Aaron E., 361.
Dole, Nathan Haskell, 448.
Uom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, visit
of, to Boston, 20.
Donald, Rev. Dr. E. Winchester,
call of, to rectorship of Trinity
Church, 347; sermons of, 347, 348.
Douglass, Frederick, remark of, at
funeral of Wendell Phillips, 72.
Duse, Eleanora, comparison of, with
Bernhardt, 392.
Ebenschuetz, Riza, 398.
Elliott, John, decorative painting of,
406.
INDEX
481
Elliott, Maud, nee Howe (Mrs. John
Elliott), 269.
Emerson, Ellen, 116.
Mary Moody, 112, 113, 114.
Ralph Waldo, letter of, to
Whipple, 8; letter of, to Elizabeth
Peabod}', 21; letter of, to Sophia
Peabody, 28; poetry of, 110; col-
lege daj's, 115; describes Concord,
115, 116; letter of, to his wife,
117; letter of, to Margaret Fuller,
117; impressions of Alcott, 118,
120,122; Margaret Fullers words
of, 124; letter of, to Whipple, 124,
125; poems of, 125, 126, 127; letter
of, to Sophia Hawthorne, 163, 164;
home of, 179; death of, 185, 186;
appreciations of, 186, 194; grave
of, 190; letter of Felton's to, 230,
231; letter of, to Whipple, 231;
personal life of, 232, 235.
Ruth, nee Haskins (Mrs. Wil-
liam Emerson), 111, 112.
Rev. William, 108,
F
Felton, Cornelius C, letter of, to
Emerson, 230, 231.
Field, Rev. Father, 469.
Fields, Annie, nee Adams (Mrs.
James T. Fields), 219, 439 ; 440.
James T., 100, 205.
Fischer, Emil, 398.
Fiske, Dr. John, 364; 365; Darwinian
interpretation of, 368, 369.
Forbes, Edith, nee Emerson, 116.
Frothingham, Rev. Octavius B.,
estimates Emerson's "Nature," 24.
Fuller, George, 426.
Margaret, nee Fuller, Countess
d'Ossoli, 32; 33; marriage of, 34;
personality of, 35, 36 ; estimate of,
by James Freeman Clarke, 37, 38 ;
meets Emerson, 39 ; characteriza-
tion of, by Emerson, 40 ; 86.
G
Gadski, Johanna, appearance of, in
opera of " The Scarlet Letter," 395.
Garrison, William Lloyd, 23; esti-
mate of, by Col. Higginson, 66.
Gordon, Rev. Dr. George A., 468.
Gould, Benjamin Apthorp, Observa-
tory at Cordova founded by, 388;
389 ; poem of Holmes addressed to,
389; high rank in science, 390.
Grant, Judge Robert, 435, 436.
Greeley, Horace, 310.
H
Hale, Rev. Dr.. Edw^ard Everett,
Boston in the "forties" described
by, 265, 266; 277; ancestry of, 280,
281; important work of, 234, 254,
284; reads "My Double," 451;
Twentieth century welcomed by,
475.
Lucretia, 434, 435.
Susan, 435.
Hancock, John, 8; 419.
Harris, Hon. William Torrey, LL.D.,
lecturer on Aristotle, 178; interpre-
tation of Emerson, 171 ; lectures of,
173; lines to, 197, 198.
Harvard, Rev. John, 419.
Hawthorne, Julian, 155; 156.
Madame, 158.
Nathaniel, Whipple's visit to,
22 ; experience of, at Brook Farm,
22, letter of, to Sophia Peabody,
30; relations with Elizabeth Pea-
body, 86; letters of, 155, 156, 159,
162, 163; Longfellow's poem on,
160,
Sophia, nee Peabody (Mrs.
Nathaniel Hawthorne), simplicity
and loveliness of, 22; Longfellow's
letter to, 161; letter of, to Long-
fellow, 162; returns to London,
164.
Rose. See Lathrop.
Hedge, Dr. Frederic Henry, 122; 123.
Hemenway, Mary, aid of, to John
Fiske, 367 ; home of, 369 ; charac-
ter of, 370, 371.
Higginson, Col. Thomas Wentworth,
450, 451.
31
482
INDEX
Hoar, Elizabeth, 121.
, Hon. Samuel, 190.
Hodgson, Dr. Richard, 360.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Emerson
characterized by, 28; letters of, to
Mrs. Whipple, "204; to Whipple,
217, 218, 220, 221, 249, 250; poem
of Lowell to, 237; key-note of
character of, 238; views of, 238,
239; conversation of, 241; family
of, 244, 245, 246; works of, 242,
248 ; letter of, to Motley, 248 ; let-
ters of, to James Freeman Clarke,
250, 251 ; letters of, to Lowell, 252;
253; 255; personality of, 257 ; 258;
250; 260.
Hunt, William, 426.
Hutchinson, Anne, 5.
Howe, Julia, nee Ward, 23; 73; lec-
tures of, before School of Philoso-
phy, 179; lines of, 267; early life
of, 269, 270, 271; studies of, 272,
273, 274; work of, 274: reading
by, 275,
Maud. See Elliott.
Dr. Samuel Gridley, poem of
Whittier to, 100 ; 170; 2"67.
Howells, Eleanor, nee Mead, 311.
William Dean, Lowell's intro-
duction of, to Hawthorne, 309;
early poems of, 309 ; Lowell gives
dinner to, 309 ; views of, 316, 317 ;
sojourn of, in Venice, 311.
Winifred, 311.
"Impromptu, An," to Dr. W. J.
Harris, 197, 198.
Irving, Sir Henry, 392.
Ives, Prof. Halsey C, portrait of, 430.
James, Henry, pere, 312; ./?/.?,
Prof. William, 360, 39i.
Jewett, Sarah Orue, 443.
Johns, Clayton, 406.
Jones, Hiram K., 173, 174.
K
Kalisch, Paul, 398.
Kemble, Fanny (Mrs. Butler), Long-
fellow hears reading by, 85, 86;
anecdote of, 219.
Kernahan, Coulson, 305.
King, Rev. Dr. Thomas Starr, 18.
King's Chapel, 238.
Kingsford. Anna, 356.
Klafsky, Katherine, 400; 401.
Knowlton, Helen M., observation
of, on Elizabeth Peabody, 181,
182; portrait of Winifred Howells,
painted by, 311.
Kossuth, entertained by Longfellow,
83, 84,
Lathrop, George Parsons, 156,
157; 184; opera libretto of, 403.
Rose, nee Hawthorne (Mrs.
George Parsons Lathrop), 157.
Lehmann, Lilli, 395.
Lind, Jenny, 84, 85.
Little, Brown & Co., 46, 128.
Livermore, Rev. Dr. Daniel Parker,
460; 462.
Mary Ashton, nee Rice (Mrs.
Daniel Parker Livermore), 455;
genius of, 457; home of, 458; great
lectures of, 463, 464, 465; oration
of Lincoln, 466; influence of, 467.
Lodge, Anna Cabot, 446, 447,
"Lohengrin," 397.
Longfellow, Frances, nee Appleton,
22.
Henry Wadsworth, 83, 85; let-
ter of, to Whipple, 203, 204.
Loring, General Charles G., 426.
Lowell, Rev. Dr. Charles, 261.
Institute, the, 286, 376,
James Russell, letters of, to
Whipple, 83; poem of, to Holmes,
237; letter to, from Holmes, 252;
255; meets Thoreau, 263; early
youth of, 261, 262, 263,
Maria, nee White, 264.
INDEX
483
Lowell, Percivai, 386.
Lunt, Adeline, nee Parsons, 297, 298.
M
Martineau, Harriet, estimates
Margaret Fuller, 39.
Mather, Cotton, 5; 7; 454, 455.
McCosh, President, 179.
Mead, Edwin, 474, 475.
Larkin G., 311.
Meeker, Nathan Cook, association
with Horace Greeley on " Tribune,"
310; town of Greeley, Colorado,
founded by, 310.
Ralph, charming style of, 310.
Michael Angelo, 480.
Michelson, Dr. Albert A., 373; great
scientific work of, 374, 375.
Monvel, Boutet de, 428.
Motley, John Lothrop, 248, 251.
Moulton, Louise, nee Chandler, cos-
mopolitan life of, 302; 303, 304;
poetic art of, 305; Kernahan's esti-
mate of, 305, 306 ; 452.
Munsterberg, Prof. Hugo, 390, 391.
Myers, Frederic W. H., 364.
N
Nansen, Dr., 381 ; 382; Arctic night
described by, 384, 385, 386.
Nieriker, Louisa May, 136.
Monsieur, 136.
Nordica, Lillian, 402, 403.
Norton, Andrews, views of, on Emer-
son's "Nature," 25; 26.
Prof. Charles Eliot, 119; Maria
Lowell described by, 264; Lowell's
letters edited by, 205; letter of,
to Whipple, 290; Homer, Shak-
speare, and Dante compared by,
290; lectures on Dante by, 289,
290; views of, on poetry, 430, 431.
o
*' Old Manse, The,"' 108.
"Oracles of New England, The,"
179, 180.
O'Reilly, John Boyle, 440, 447, 448.
Otis, Mrs. Harrison G., 74, 75; re-
ceptions of, on Washington's birth-
day, 76 ; work of, in the Civil War,
77^ 78.
"Over-Soul, The," 25.
"Parker, Memorial, The," 70.
Parker, Theodore, 21; comparison
of, with Savonarola, 21 ; referred
to, by Mrs. Howe, 56; Mrs. Child's
impressions of, 56, 57; early im-
pulses of, 57 ; death of, in Florence,
58.
Parkman, Francis, remarkable na-
ture of, 317, 318; methods of, 320;
works of, 321.
Parsons, Dr. Thomas William, 290;
isolation of temperament of, 291;
292; "Paradisa Gloria" of, 293;
earlv life of, 295, 296 ; Dante trans-
lations of, 299, 300, 301.
Peabod}-, Elizabeth, 29 ; visit of, to
Europe, 88; with Charlotte Cush-
man in Rome, meeting of, 89; work
of, in School of Philosophy, 169,
170; letter of, to Alcott, 180; per-
sonality of, 181, 182; characteriza-
tion of, 183; Mrs. Howe's words
of, 183 ; description of, 444, 445.
Mary. See Mann.
Sophia. See Hawthorne.
the Sisters, 157.
Peirce, Prof. Benjamin, poem of
Holmes to, 225; lectures of, 226;
scientific rank of, 222, 223; 224.
Perabo, Johann Ernst, noble art of,
307, 308; views of, 308.
Pericles, 100.
Phillips, Stephen, 478.
Wendell, 23, 65; O'Reilly's
poem on, 66 ; estimate of, by Col.
Higginson, 66, 67; tablet on home
oCi%; 69, 70; death of, 71, 72.
Porter, Maria S., nee Alley, Mrs.
Lunt characterized by, 297, 298.
Pratt, John, 06, 136.
Prince, Helen, nee Choate, 475.
I Psychical Research, Society of, 360.
484
INDEX
Public Library, the Boston, 421.
Putnam, Herbert, 421.
Pythagoras, 177.
Q
QuiNCY, Dorothy ("Dorothy Q."),
80.
Quincy, Col. Edmund, 79.
Radcltpfe, College of, 357.
Radical Club, the, 276, 277, 278.
Raffaelli, 430.
Richards, Laura A., nee Howe, 475.
Ripley, Dr. George, 108, 109.
Robinson, Edward, 426.
Roche, .James Jeffrey, 446.
Roge, Charlotte Fiske, 7iee Bates, 450.
" Royal Guest, The," 271, 272.
Royce, Prof. Josiah, 364.
St. Gaudens, Augustus, impressive
statue by, 4.
Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin, 121;
poem of, before School of Philoso-
phy, 175 ; 176 ; lectures of, 179 ;
characterization of Emerson of,
191, 192; translations of, 472.
Sargent, John S., 427, 423.
Savage, Rev. Dr. Minot J., 57; 360.
"Scarlet Letter, The," 84; opera of,
407, 408, 409.
Scudder, Horace, 228.
Scudder, Vida D., 475.
Sedgwick, William E., 391.
See, Dr. T. J. J., 376; astronomic.nl
discoveries of, 377 ; researches of,
378; reverses theory of La Place,
378; early life of, 329,330.
" Sleepy Hollow," 114.
Snider, Denton J., 197.
Sonnets, Alcott's, 135.
Spofford, Harriet, nee Prescott, 229,
30G.
Stedman, Edmund Clarence, poem
of, before School of Philosophy,
175; Whittier estimated by, 416,
417.
Stone, Lucy (Mrs. Henry B. Black-
well), enrly life of, 90, 92, 93, 94;
personality of, described by Alice
Stone Blackwell, 95; marriage of,
96; home life of, 97, 98; character
of, 99.
Stowe, Harriet, nee Beecher, 219, 419.
Swift, Lindsay L, 475.
Symonds, Arthur, 472.
" Tannhausek," 401.
Tasso, 39.
Temple Place, 353.
Terry, Ellen, 392.
Thaxter, Celia, 443, 444.
Thoreau, Henry David, Emerson's
estimate of, 105.
"Threnody," 116.
Ticknor, Anna Eliot, 348, 349.
Caroline, 350.
Prof. George D., 78.
•■'Transcript, The," relates occur-
rence at authors' reading, 453.
" Tristan and Isolde," .399.
Twentieth Century, the, midnight
inauguration of, on Boston Com-
mon, 476.
u
" Uncle Tom'.s Cabin," 84.
Very, Jones, 40 ; faith of, 41 ; char-
acterized by Miss Peabody, 42;
characterized by Emerson, 43, 44,
45; Dr. Hale on, 46, 47, 48.
Vivekananda, Swami, 358.
w
Wagner, Richard, 86, 399.
Walker, Gen. Francis A., 448, 449.
Ward, Elizabeth Stuart, nee Phelps,
432; Longfellow characterized by,
INDEX
485
433; seaside home of, 433, 434;
note of, 434.
"Wayside, The," 399.
Wellesley, College of, 65.
Wells, Kate, nee Gannett, 449.
Wendell, Prof. Barrett, 454.
Whipple, Charlotte, nee Hastings
(Mrs. Edwin Percy Whipple),
social circle of, 210; letter of
Holmes to, 204, 205.
Edwin Percy, 201 ; Elizabethan
literature of, 202 ; letter of Sumner
to, 202; Longfellow's letter to, 203,
204; lettei of Edward Everett to,
263 ; letter of, to Lilian Whiting,
215, 216 ; Alcott characterized by,
205 ; letters of Holmes to, 206, 217,
218,220, 221, 260; letter of Emer-
son's to, 231; letter of Curtis to,
208; characterized by Whittier,
207 ; movement to award Harvard
degree to, 212; home life of, 210;
characterization of, by Kate Field,
216, 217.
Whipples, the, 22.
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 410; po-
tent influence of, 411; felicitous
expressions of, 412; letter of, to
Holmes, 412, 413; letter of, to
Whipple, 414; noted reception to,
by Mrs. Claflin, 417.
Winter, William, 451.
Winthrop, Hon. Robert Charles, 11;
ideal life of, 11, 12; public recep-
tions of, 12; Phillips Brooks writes
to, 12.
Wolkonsky, Prince, 406.
Wright, Rev. Dr. G. Frederick, great
lectures of, 386; early life and
work of, 387, 388.
X
Xenophon, 24.
ZoRN, Anders, art of, 429.
Cbc dorld Beautiful
By LILIAN WHITING
I know of no volumes of sermons published in recent years which
are so well fitted to uplift the reader, and inspire all that is finest and
best in his nature, as arc the series of essays entitled "The World
Beautiful," by Lilian Whiting. — B. O. Flower, /n The Coming Age.
Cbc CClorld Beautiful (first Series)
i6mo. Cloth, $i.oo. Decorated cloth, fi.25.
Comprising : The World Beautiful ; Friendship ;
Our Social Salvation 5 Lotus Eating ; That
WHICH is to Come.
The world beautiful about which she writes is no far-off event to
-which all things move, but the every-day scene around us filled by a
spirit which elevates and transforms it. — Prof. Louis J. Block, in
The Philosophical journal.
No one can read it without feeling himself the better and richer
and happier for having done so. — The Independent.
Che CClorld Beautiful (Second Series)
i6mo. Cloth, $1.00. Decorated cloth, $1.25.
Comprising : The World Beautiful ; Our Best
Society ; To Clasp Eternal Beauty ; Vibra-
tions ; The Unseen World.
The style is at once gracefijl and lively. Every touch is fresh. —
Ziofi's Herald.
Che Olorld Beautiful (Cbird Series)
i6mo. Cloth, $1.00. Decorated cloth, $1.1^.
Comprising : The World Beautiful ; The Rose
OF Dawn ; The Encircling Spirit- World ; The
Ring of Amethyst ; Paradisa Gloria.
The thoughtful reader who loves spiritual themes will find these
pages inspiring. — Chicago Inter-Ocean,
Hfter f)er Death
Cbc Story of a Suinmcr <*
By Lilian Whiting, author of "The World Beau-
tiful," etc. i6mo. Cloth, ^i.oo. Decorated
cloth, $1.25.
Comprising : What Lacks the Summer ? From
Inmost Dreamland ; Past the Morning Star ;
In Two Worlds ; Distant Gates of Eden ; Unto
My Heart Thou Livest So ; Across the World
I Speak, to Thee ; The Deeper Meaning of the
Hour.
My conviction is that every preacher, reformer, religious editor,
and Christian worker should read the books by Lilian Whiting. —
Rev. W. H. Rogers, in The Christian Standard.
" After Her Death " has given me the light and help I have so
long craved ; it has given me comfort and strength which no other
book has ever done. — Cordelia L. Commore.
from Dreamland Sent
Tcr9€9 of the Life to Come /* ^
By Lilian Whiting. New Edition, with additional
verses. i6mo. Cloth, extra, ^i.oo. Decorated
cloth, I1.25.
Lilian Whiting's verse is like a bit of sunlit landscape on a May
morning. — Boston Herald.
Graceful, tender, and true, appealing to what is best in the
human heart. — The Independent.
I never saw anything on earth before which looked so much as if
just brought from heaven by angel hands as this new edition of " P'rom
Dreamland Sent." In the golden sunshine of an Italian morning I
have heard the silver trumpets blow. This e.xquisite book reminds
me of them. — Sarah Holland Adams.
Kate field ^ H Record
By Lilian Whiting. Author of "The World
Beautiful," "A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Brown-
ing," etc. With several portraits of Miss Field,
including one by Elihu Vedder. izmo. ^2.00.
She knew almost everybody worth knowing in her own genera-
tion, not alone in America, but in England, and wherever Americans
and Englishmen met on alien soil. She not only knew them, she be-
came a vital episode in the story of their lives. — Ne%u York Herald.
Miss Whiting modestly calls her book a "Record," but it can
well lay claim to the title of biography, and excellent biography at that.
It is a serious, earnest work, written around a fascinating subject. —
Neiu York Commercial Ad-verther.
eiizabetb Barrett Browning
By Lilian Whiting. Author of "Kate Field, a
Record," "The World Beautiful," "After Her
Death," "From Dreamland Sent," etc. With
portrait. l6mo. ^1.25.
The most virile picture of Mrs. Browning in all our literature.
... A distinctly valuable addition to our Browning literature. — New
York Times.
The leading facts of Mrs. Browning's life and a good analysis of
her character and work. — Boston Transcript.
Decidedly readable. . . . Brings the poet's art into vivid light
and outlines the peculiarities both of her character and of her genius. —
Chicago Tribune.
A valuable contribution to literature, and a worthy interpretation
of Mrs. Browning's life and works. — Los Angeles Herald.
Vhc Spiritual Significance
or, Death as an 6vcrit in Life ^ ^ ^
By Lilian Whiting. Author of " The World
Beautiful," " Boston Days," etc. i6mo. Cloth,
gi.oo. Decorated cloth, gilt top, ^1.25.
Comprising : The Spiritual Significance ; Vision
AND Achievement; Between the Seen and the
Unseen ; Psychic Communication ; The Gates
OF New Life.
It suggests and hints at the ultimate significance of scientific in-
vestigation with relation to the totality of thought in a very fresh and
suggestive way. . . . The spirit of her book, like that of its prede-
cessors, is admirable. — T/ie Outlook.
A book from her pen means new flashes of insight, a revelation
of spiritual truth almost Emersonian in kind. — Chicago Chronicle.
B ^ ^ ^
By Lilian Whiting. i6mo. Cloth, ^l.oo 7iet.
Decorated cloth, $1.25 net.
The careful and repeated reading of " The World Beautiful in
Books" would be a liberal education. — Philadelphia Telegraph.
It is like a Greek urn filled with priceless relics. Hundreds of
brains, ancient and modern, are daintily picked of their best thoughts,
and there is scarcely a page that is not enriched with some rifled treas-
ure. It is, in fact, concentrated food for select minds. — Chicago
Post.
Little, Brown, ^ Company, publishers
254 Washington Street, Boston, JMlass,
1902
,0 o
.c^
"■^^>
V
/
-^^
■^^^■ '-^ .x:'' "^ ■^" ^^
c*-.
,0 0,
,v^^'^
: >.{";[:■
''^y. v-^'
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
017 298 197 5
\)i».**i»>*s^ \.V^ ^♦"
'^i J^
^