She was a martyr physically, and mentally a heroine. Let us never fail to honour the woman who founded Smith College.
Extracts from a letter replying to my question: "Is there a full-length portrait of Sophia Smith, now to be seen anywhere in the princ.i.p.al building at Smith College, Northampton?"
How I wish that some generous patron of Smith College might bestow upon it two thousand dollars for a full-length portrait of Sophia Smith to be placed in the large reading room, at the end of which is a full-length portrait of President Seelye. The presence of such a commanding figure seen by hundreds of girls every day would be a subtle and lasting influence.
I like to nibble at a stuffed date, but do not enjoy having my memory stuffed with dates, though I am proud rather than sensitive in regard to my age.
Lady Morgan was unwilling her age should be known, and pleads:
What has a woman to do with dates--cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates--new style, old style, precession of the equinoxes, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of reference in woman"s autobiography. Plutarch sets the example of dropping dates in favour of incidents; and an authority more appropriate, Madame de Genlis, who began her own memoires at eighty, swept through nearly an age of incident and revolution without any reference to vulgar eras signifying nothing (the times themselves out of joint), testifying to the pleasant incidents she recounts and the changes she witnessed. I mean to have none of them!
I hesitate to allude to my next experience after leaving Smith College, for it was so delightful that I am afraid I shall scarcely be believed, and am also afraid that my readers will consider me a "swell head" and my story only fit for a "Vanity Box." Yet I would not leave out one bit of the Western lecture trip. If it were possible to tell of the great kindness shown me at every step of the way without any mention of myself, I would gladly prefer to do that.
After leaving Smith College, I was enjoying commencement festivities in my own home--when another surprising event! Mr. George W.
Bartholomew, a graduate of Dartmouth, who was born and brought up in a neighbouring Vermont town, told me when he called that he had established a large and successful school for young ladies in Cincinnati, Ohio, taking a few young ladies to live in his pleasant home. He urged me to go to his school for three months to teach literature, also giving lectures to ladies of the city in his large recitation hall. And he felt sure he could secure me many invitations to lecture in other cities.
Remembering my former Western experience with measles and whooping-cough, I realized that mumps and chicken-pox were still likely to attack me, but the invitation was too tempting, and it was gladly accepted, and I went to Cincinnati in the fall of 1884.
Mrs. Bartholomew I found a charming woman and a most cordial friend.
Every day of three months spent in Cincinnati was full of happiness.
Mrs. Broadwell, a decided leader in the best social matters, as well as in all public spirited enterprises, I had known years before in Hanover, N.H. Her brother, General William Haines Lytle, had been slain at Chickamauga during the Civil War, just in the full strength and glory of manhood. He wrote that striking poem, beginning: "I am dying, Egypt, dying." Here are two verses of his one poem:
As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian!
Glorious sorceress of the Nile, Light the path to Stygian horrors With the splendors of thy smile.
Give the Caesar crowns and arches, Let his brow the laurel twine; I can scorn the Senate"s triumphs, Triumphing in love like thine.
I am dying, Egypt, dying; Hark! the insulting foeman"s cry, They are coming! quick, my falchion!
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah! no more amid the battle Shall my heart exulting swell-- Isis and Osiris guard thee!
Cleopatra, Rome, farewell!
He was engaged to Miss Sarah Doremus, a sister of Professor Doremus of New York. After the terrible shock of his sudden death she never married, but devoted her life to carrying out her sainted mother"s missionary projects, once taking a trip alone around the world to visit the missionary stations started by her mother.
As soon as I had arrived at Mr. Bartholomew"s, Mrs. Broadwell gave me a dinner. Six unmarried ladies and seven well-known bachelors were the guests, as she wished to give me just what I needed, an endors.e.m.e.nt among her own friends. The result was instant and potent.
Everyone at that dinner did something afterwards to entertain me. I was often invited to the opera, always had a box (long-stemmed roses for all the ladies), also to dinner and lunches. If anyone in the city had anything in the way of a rare collection, from old engravings to rare old books, an evening was devoted to showing the collection to me with other friends. One lady, Miss Mary Louise McLaughlin, invited me to lunch with her alone. Her brother, a bachelor lawyer, had at that time the finest private library in the city. She was certainly the most versatile in her accomplishments of anyone I have ever known. She had painted the best full-length portrait of Judge Longworth, father of the husband of Alice Roosevelt. She was a china painter to beat the Chinese, and author of four books on the subject. She was an artist in photography; had a portfolio of off-hand sketches of street gamins, newsboys, etc., full of life and expression. She brought the art of under glaze in china-firing to this country and had discovered a method of etching metal into fine woods for bedroom furniture. She was an expert at wood-carving, taking lessons from Ben Pitman. Was fond of housekeeping and made a success of it in every way. Anything else?
Yes, she showed me pieces of her exquisite embroidery and had made an artistic and wholly sane "crazy-quilt" so much in vogue at that time.
Her own beautiful china was all painted and finished by herself. As I left her, I felt about two feet high, with a pin head. And yet she was free from the slightest touch of conceit.
Miss Laura MacDonald (daughter of Alexander MacDonald, the business man who took great risks with Mr. John D. Rockefeller in borrowing money to invest largely in oil fields) was my pupil in the school, and through her I became acquainted with her lovely mother, who invited me to her home at Clifton, just out of Cincinnati, to lecture to a select audience of her special friends.
My lectures at Mr. Bartholomew"s school were very well attended. Lists of my subjects were sent about widely, and when the day came for my enthusiastic praise of Christopher North (John Wilson), a sweet-faced old lady came up to the desk and placed before me a large bunch of veritable Scotch heather for which she had sent to Scotland.
In Cleveland, where I gave a series of talks, President Cutler, of Adelbert University, rose at the close of the last lecture and, looking genially towards me, made this acknowledgment: "I am free to confess that I have often been charmed by a woman, and occasionally instructed, but never before have I been charmed and instructed by the same woman."
Cleveland showed even then the spirit of the Cleveland of today, which is putting that city in the very first rank of the cities not only of the United States but of the world in civic improvement and munic.i.p.al progress, morally and physically. Each night of my lectures I was entertained at a different house while there, and as a trifle to show their being in advance of other cities, I noticed that the ladies wore wigs to suit their costumes. That only became the fashion here last winter, but I saw no ultra colours such as we saw last year, green and pink and blue, but only those that suited their style and their costume.
At Chicago I was the guest of Mrs. H.O. Stone, who gave me a dinner and an afternoon reception, where I met many members of various clubs, and the youngest grandmothers I had ever seen. At a lunch given for me by Mrs. Locke, wife of Rev. Clinton B. Locke, I met Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. Wayne MacVeagh, and Mrs. Williams, wife of General Williams, and formerly the wife of Stephen Douglas. Mrs. Locke was the best _raconteur_ of any woman I have ever heard. Dartmouth men drove me to all the show places of that wonderful city. Lectured in Rev. Dr.
Little"s church parlors. He was not only a New Hampshire man, but born in Boscawen, New Hampshire, where my grandfather lived, and where my mother lived until her marriage.
It is pleasant to record that I was carried along on my lecture tour, sometimes by invitation of a Dartmouth man, again by college girls who had graduated at Smith College; then at Peoria, Illinois; welcomed there by a dear friend from Brooklyn, New York, wife of a business man of that city. I knew of Peoria only as a great place for the manufacture of whisky, and for its cast-iron stoves, but found it a city, magnificently situated on a series of bold bluffs. And when I reached my friend"s house, a cla.s.s of ladies, who had been easily chatting in German, wanted to stay and ask me a few questions. These showed deep thought, wide reading, and finely disciplined minds. Only one reading there in the Congregational Church, where there was such a fearful lack of ventilation that I turned from my ma.n.u.script and quoted a bit from the "Apele for Are to the s.e.xtant of the Old Brick Meetinouse by A. Gasper," which proved effectual.
I give this impressive exhortation entire as it should be more generally known.
A APELE FOR ARE TO THE s.e.xTANT
BY ARABELLA WILSON
O s.e.xtant of the meetinouse which sweeps And dusts, or is supposed to! and makes fiers, And lites the gas, and sumtimes leaves a screw loose, In which case it smells orful--wus than lampile; And wrings the Bel and toles it, and sweeps paths; And for these servaces gits $100 per annum; Wich them that thinks deer let "em try it; Gittin up before starlite in all wethers, and Kindlin fiers when the wether is as cold As zero, and like as not green wood for kindlins, (I wouldn"t be hierd to do it for no sum;) But o s.e.xtant there are one kermodity Wuth more than gold which don"t cost nuthin; Wuth more than anything except the Sole of man!
I mean pewer Are, s.e.xtant, I mean pewer Are!
O it is plenty out o dores, so plenty it doant no What on airth to do with itself, but flize about Scatterin leaves and bloin off men"s hats; In short its jest as free as Are out dores; But O s.e.xtant! in our church its scarce as piety, Scarce as bankbills when ajunts beg for mishuns, Which sum say is purty often, taint nuthin to me, What I give aint nuthing to n.o.body; but O s.e.xtant!
You shet 500 men women and children Speshily the latter, up in a t.i.te place, Sum has bad breths, none of em aint too sweet, Sum is fevery, sum is scroflus, sum has bad teeth And sum haint none, and sum aint over clean; But evry one of em brethes in and out and in Say 50 times a minnet, or 1 million and a half breths an hour; Now how long will a church full of are last at that rate?
I ask you; say fifteen minnets, and then what"s to be did?
Why then they must brethe it all over agin, And then agin and so on, till each has took it down At least ten times and let it up agin, and what"s more, The same individible doant have the privilege Of brethin his own are and no one else, Each one must take wotever comes to him.
O s.e.xtant! doant you know our lungs is belluses To bio the fier of life and keep it from Going out: and how can bellusses blo without wind?
And aint wind are? I put it to your konshens, Are is the same to us as milk to babies, Or water is to fish, or pendlums to clox, Or roots and airbs unto an Injun doctor, Or little pills unto an omepath.
Or Boze to girls. Are is for us to brethe.
What signifize who preaches ef I can"t brethe?
What"s Pol? What"s Pollus to sinners who are ded?
Ded for want of breth! Why s.e.xtant when we dye Its only coz we cant brethe no more--that"s all.
And now O s.e.xtant! let me beg of you To let a little are into our cherch (Pewer are is sertin proper for the pews); And dew it week days and on Sundys tew-- It aint much trobble--only make a hoal, And then the are will come in of itself (It loves to come in where it can git warm).
And O how it will rouze the people up And sperrit up the preacher, and stop garps And yorns and fijits as effectool As wind on the dry boans the Profit tels Of.
I went as far as Omaha, and then was asked if I were not going West.
The reason for this charming reception was that it was a novelty then to hear a young woman talk in a lively way on striking themes which had been most carefully prepared, and a light touch added, with frequent glints of humour. Byron declared that easy writing was very hard reading. I reversed that method, always working hard over each lecture. For instance, I spent two months in preparing "Bachelor Authors," cramming and condensing, and pa.s.sing quickly over dangerous ground. With my vocal training I could easily be heard by an audience of five hundred.
A friend was eager to go to Alaska by Seattle; then, after our return, visit Yellowstone Park and San Francisco. She urged me so eloquently to accompany her, that I left my home in Metcalf, Ma.s.sachusetts, taking great risks in many ways, but wonderful to relate, nothing disastrous occurred.
We scurried by fastest trains across the country to Seattle, just in time to take the Steamer _Topeka_ from Seattle on August 8, 1899, the last boat of the season, and the last chance tourists ever had to see the Muir Glacier in its marvellous glory, as it was broken badly before the next summer.
My friend advised me kindly to ask no questions of the captain, as she knew well what a bore that was. I promised to be exceedingly careful.
So, next morning, when that tall and handsome Captain Thompson came around the deck, with a smiling "Good morning," and bowing right and left, I was deeply absorbed in a book; the next time I was looking at a view; another time I played I was fast asleep. He never spoke to me, only stopped an instant before me and walked on. At last, a bow-legged pilot came directly from the captain"s office to my open window, bringing to Miss Sanborn a bowl of extra large and luscious strawberries from Douglas Island, quite famous on account of the size and sweetness of this berry. With this gift came a note running thus:
DEAR MISS SANBORN:
I am a little puzzled by your frigid manner. Have you any personal prejudice against me? Walter Raymond wrote me before he sailed, to look you up, and do what I could for you, as you were quite a favourite on the Eastern coast, and any kindness shown to you would be considered a personal favour to him, and that he only wished he could take the trip with us.
I was amazed and mortified. I had obeyed my directions too literally, and must and did explain and apologize. After that, such pleasant attentions from him! Invited to call at his office with my friends, to meet desirable pa.s.sengers, something nice provided for refreshment, and these gentlemen were always ready for cards or conversation. But the great occasion was when I had no idea of such an honour, that the captain said:
"We are soon to pa.s.s through the Wrangel Narrows, a dangerous place, and the steering through zigzag lines must be most careful. I am going to smuggle you on to the bridge to see me steer and hear me give my orders that will be repeated below. But as it is against the rule to take a woman up there at such a time, promise me to keep perfectly silent. If you make one remark you lose your life."
I agreed and kept my mouth shut without a muzzle. That "memory" is as clear today as if it had happened yesterday.
One day while reading in my fine stateroom, a lady came to the open door and asked me if I would go out with her on the deck that pleasant afternoon and meet some friends of hers. I thanked her, but refused as I was reading one of Hon. Justin McCarthy"s books, and as I had the honour of meeting him and his most interesting wife in New York City at the home of Mrs. Henry M. Field, I was much engrossed in what he wrote. Again, another person came and entreated me to go to the deck; not suspecting any plot to test me, I went with her, and found a crowd gathered there, and a good-looking young man seemed to be haranguing them. He stopped as we came along and after being introduced went on with: "As I was saying, Miss Sanborn, I regard women as greatly our inferiors; in fact, essentially unemotional,--really bovine. Do you really not agree to that?" I almost choked with surprise and wrath, but managed to retort: "I am sorry to suppose your mother was a cow, but she must have been to raise a calf like you." And I walked away to the tune of great applause. It seems someone had said that I was never at a loss when a repartee was needed, and it was proposed to give me an opportunity. Next surprise: a call as we were nearing Seattle from a large and noticeable lady who introduced herself saying:
"I am the president of a club which I started myself, and feel bound to help on. I have followed you about a good deal, and shall be much obliged if you will jot down for me to read to this club everything you have said since you came on board. I know they will enjoy it." I was sorry my memory failed me entirely on that occasion. Still it was a great compliment!
But the Muir Glacier! We had to keep three and a half miles away, lest the steamer be injured by the small icebergs which broke off the immense ma.s.s into the water with a thunderous roar. A live glacier advances a certain distance each day and retreats a little. Those who visited the glacier brought back delicate little blue harebells they found growing in the clefts of ice. No description of my impressions?
Certainly not! Too much of that has been done already.