MARY ELEANOR ANDERSON JPoems and Biography OF Mary Eleanor Anderson BY HER HUSBAND, GALUSHA ANDERSON Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago Author of "The Story of a Border City during the Civil War," "Hitherto Untold," " When Neighbors Were Neighbors," and "Science and Prayer" One soul in two bodies." GREGORY NAZIANZEN BOSTON THE COLONIAL PRESS PUBLISHERS PS \03 C ! A Copyright, 1917 BY GALUSHA ANDERSON THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U. S. A. To HER CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN, AND TO ALL WITH WHOM SHE WORKED IN PROMOTING MISSIONS, BOTH HOME AND FOREIGN, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. FOREWORD To edit the poems and write the biography of one s wife, is a work both delicate and difficult. In one respect I was manifestly disqualified for it, since I was a prejudiced witness. For more than fifty-five years we had walked together in the bonds of holy wedlock. She was the happy mother of my children. I fairly worshipped the ground on which she stood, and her absence from the earth had increased, rather than abated, the ardor of my affection. But while I could not but be prejudiced in her favor, on the other hand no one, in all the world, understood her so well as I. Divesting myself so far as I could of undue bias, I proceeded to edit some of her poems and to write the story of her life. In telling that story I have often quoted from an autobiographical sketch, which I found among her papers, written, not for the public, but simply for the eye of her husband and children. I found it no easy task to select from her numerous poetical compositions her best work, and in some cases I may have rejected what I should have chosen and edited what might better have been omitted; but I have done my best. As to her biography, I have striven to write it vii impartially and justly, neither consciously covering up defects nor unduly exalting virtues. If I have come short in any respect, I am sure it is in setting forth her real worth. In order to avoid awkward circum locutions I have ordinarily designated her in the biography, by her given name, " Mary." I trust that this will not be offensive even to those of fastidious taste. It gives me pleasure to acknowledge the courtesy of the editors of The Atlantic Monthly in permitting me to republish from its pages Mrs. Anderson s poem, " Poor Marie." I also heartily thank her old school mate, Mrs. Sophie Burns of Bath, New York, and also those with whom she was associated in Mission work, for their valuable suggestions. GALUSHA ANDERSON. NEWTON CENTRE, MASSACHUSETTS, October 16, 1917. Vlll CONTENTS THE POEMS PAGE DEPARTED DAYS ........ i POOR MARIE ........ i GRANDMOTHER S HEART ...... 5 SOUL LONGINGS ........ 6 THI<: MARKET-PLACE ....... 7 NIGHT MUSINGS ....... 8 BLUEBIRDS ......... 10 PSYCHE S WINGS . . . . . . .11 NEW YEAR S, 1886 12 THE WOODLAND ROSE ....... 14 MABEL ......... 15 A SUNBEAM ........ 18 DAISIES AND CLOVER-TOPS ...... 19 THISTLE-SWEETNESS ....... 21 LITTLE BELGIAN CHILDREN ...... 23 TAKING IN THE FLOWERS ...... 24 How PEARLS GROW ....... 26 CROSSING THE STYX ....... 27 ST. CECILIA ........ 28 DEBORAH ......... 29 WINTER-RAINS ........ 31 THE CHRISTMAS-SHEAF ...... 32 WINTER ......... 34 WATER-LILIES ........ 36 LEAF-BUDS ........ 37 TWILIGHT ......... 39 THE OLD PINE-TREE BY THE GATE .... 40 THE TIDE ......... 42 ix PAGE WITH THE TIDE ........ 43 CHRISTMAS, 1915 ....... 45 ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1915 ...... 47 WHAT THEY SAY ....... 48 THOUGHT QUESTIONINGS ...... 49 THE BROOK ........ 50 MORNING IN A GREAT CITY . . . . . 51 HOME AT NIGHT ....... 52 THE SPRINGTIME COMES AGAIN ..... 53 A BABY SONG ........ 55 EVERLASTING DAYS ....... 55 FLOWERS LAID ON THE BREAST OF HER BROTHER FREDDIE S BODY ....... 56 DEATH PASSED MY WAY ...... 57 UNDER THE CYPRESS VINE .... .58 THE EMPTY HOUSE ....... 59 THE SKYLARK S NEST ...... 61 STAR AND LILY ........ 62 GRASS ......... 63 GOD S PEACE ........ 65 THE EMPTY NEST ....... 65 THE OPEN GRAVE ....... 67 A TWILIGHT SONG ....... 68 VOICES ......... 69 THE SOLDIER BOY ....... 74 OUR COUNTRY ........ 75 THE FADING LINE OF BLUE ...... 77 ECHOES FROM THE CIVIL WAR AND SOME OCCASIONAL POEMS BLOOD-ROOT ........ 81 AFTER THE BATTLE . . . . . . .81 PEACE ....... . 84 THE AUTUMN OF PEACE .... .86 A DIRGE OF SLAVERY ....... 88 DEDICATION OF COLBY HALL ..... 90 x PAGE ARBOR DAY ........ 91 AUNT LIZZIE AIKEN S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY . . 92 POEMS DISTINCTIVELY CHRISTIAN PAGE WHAT SHALL I RENDER UNTO THE LORD? ... 99 ONLY ONE TALENT ....... 100 TRUST IN THE UNSEEN ...... 102 GOOD-NIGHT ........ 103 SORROW ......... 104 SELF-SURRENDER ....... 105 I AM THINE . . . . . . . 106 " APPREHENDED OF CHRIST JESUS " . . . . 108 " THE LIVING TEMPLE "...... 108 GOLDEN BOWLS ........ 109 GOD OUR STRENGTH . . . . . . . no ILLUMINATE THE CROSS . . . . . . in LOVEST TO THE END . . . . . . .113 "HE SHALL CARRY THE LAMBS IN His BOSOM" . 115 THE HEAVENLY GATES . . . . . .116 HABAKKUK, CHAPTER III . . . . . .118 CHRIST S SACRIFICE . . . . . . .119 EASTER MISSIONARY HYMN ... . . . 120 SHALL I BE THERE? ....... 121 THE SMITTEN ROCK ....... 122 GOD S CHILD THROUGH REDEMPTION .... 124 THE HAPPY DAY ....... 124 GIVING MY HEART ....... 125 GOD-ATTUNED ........ 126 THE FATHER S WELCOME ...... 127 DELIVERANCE FROM SIN ...... 128 THE SABBATH ........ 129 JESUS ADORED ........ 130 FOR BAPTISM ........ 132 OUR SAVIOUR-KING ....... 133 DAY OF LIGHT AND GLADNESS ..... 134 xi LIGHT-HOUSE LAMPS ....... 135 THE GOSPEL TRIUMPHANT ...... 136 GOD S GLORIOUS DAY . . . . . . .137 A FRIEND ......... 138 THE APPLE BLOSSOM ....... 139 " SALVE CAPUT CRUENTATUM " . . . . .140 THE BIOGRAPHY I ANCESTRY AND EARLY TRAVELS . . 145 II ADVERSE INFLUENCES . . . . 154 III MULTIPLICITY OF HOMES . . . . .164 IV SCHOOLS ATTENDED . . . . . 174 V GRADUATION, CHOSEN PURSUIT, BAPTISM AND MARRIAGE . . . . . . .190 VI MEETING NEW RESPONSIBILITIES . . . 197 VII CHANGE OF PLACE AND OCCUPATION . . . 205 VIII LIFE IN BROOKLYN, CHICAGO, SALEM AND GRANVILLE ....... 212 IX RETIREMENT IN NEW ENGLAND . . . 227 X MARY S LITERARY WORK ..... 230 XI HER TRAITS OF MIND AND HEART . . . 237 APPENDIX ....... 250 xn THE POEMS THE POEMS DEPARTED DAYS LIKE the faint perfume of a drawer, Where rose-leaves were, but are no more, The sweetness of departed days Lingers through all our lives and ways. As when across a maze of flowers, The south-wind wafts the early showers, Not several sweetnesses he brings, But mingled odors load his wings. So from the past there gently steals A subtle joy, he knows who feels; Not many memories fill his soul; But the blest influence of the whole. POOR MARIE DOWN the long hill came poor Marie, Her basket on her head, The tears rolled slowly down her cheeks And flecked her kerchief red, And every tear bewept the day When Wilhelm marched to France away. The gurgle of the mountain spring, As from the wooden spout The water, like a joyous child, Leaped laughing, prattling out, Cried Wilhelm! Wilhelm! in her ears, Till she could hardly see for tears. She wiped them with her apron blue, And sought her heart to cheer. " Why should I weep since he is true, Perchance may soon be here?" But the light harebell shook its head At every cheerful word she said. In clefts and crannies of the rock Which walls the narrow street, The bluebell and the heatherbell Cling fast with slender feet, And, with slight vines and tufts of grass, Beckon and nod to all who pass. "O wayside darlings!" cried Marie, " He praised my eyes of blue, When will he come to say again That they shine bright as you? Here, let me kiss you where you stand, I will not touch you with my hand." The light wind sent a shiver down Through all the garlands green, And shook the dewdrops from the cups Of flowers that grew between. On Marie s face the drops were shed Like mourners tears upon the dead. Down to the market-place she came With weary step and slow, The heaps of fruit and stands of flowers Were blooming in a row, And everywhere hung overhead Wreaths of immortelles for the dead. The people in an anxious crowd Filled all the street and square; You might have heard a passing cloud, It was so silent there, As from the church-steps some one read The list of wounded men and dead. For in the glorious battle fought And won but yesterday Were half the men of that small town, The brown-haired and the gray. Through the rapt throng poor Marie pressed, To quake and listen with the rest. She heard a whisper, as she passed, That burned her like a flame. " Poor, poor Marie!" it said; she turned To see from whence it came. Hope kissed her pallid lips, and fled. " Tell me," she cried, " oh, is he dead?" They bear a woman down the street: "His mother, give her air!" She knows the kerchief and the gown, She knows the ashen hair. " Mother, let me die, too," she moans, And senseless falls upon the stones. Up the long hill climbed poor Marie, Her stony eyes were dry. The heart beneath the kerchief gay Breaking, could only sigh. One thought spun ceaseless in her head, " Why do I live when he is dead?" Fainting she leaned against the rock, The. bluebells kissed her face. " He called my eyes as blue as these Here in this very place; Here in this very place," she said, " And still they bloom while he is dead." First published in The Atlantic Monthly. The scene of this poem was Heidelberg. Germany. It was written soon after the Franco-German war of 1870. GRANDMOTHER S HEART GRANDMOTHER stands in the sunny door, Where blossom the roses, red and white, She has gathered them seventy times before, But she greets them ever with fresh delight. Grandmother s eyes may be slow to see, Grandmother s hair may have lost its curl, But as she stands by the old rose-tree, Grandmother s heart is the heart of a girl. Gently she breaks from their bending stem The fairest buds of the perfumed wreath, Tucks them under her neckerchief hem, With a smile that has not a shade of grief. Grandmother s ears hear the bobolink yet, Oriole sings her his song so gay, And well she knows that the thrush has set His nest in the elm-tree across the way. Grandmother knows where the wood flowers bloom, Where violets courtesy in meadows cold, Where blue lakes gleam through the forest gloom, Then why should grandmother s heart be old? Grandmother hums with her faltering voice, An old, old song in the sunny day, It bids her heart leap up and rejoice, And she smiles with the joy of yesterday. They are not old that around her rise, The little brother of long ago, The fair young mother in Paradise, And the children who never older grow. Soon when the tale of her years is told, The tall, fair angels of endless youth, Shall gently loosen the garment old, And carry to heaven her heart of truth. There He shall meet her with greeting mild, Who so long led her by staff and rod, " Thou hadst the heart of a child, Come in; inherit the kingdom of God." SOUL LONGINGS Is there nothing here but hope? No fruition? Is but in the night to grope Our condition? And for greater light and scope Our petition? Can no real good be found In all pleasure? Can we own of house or ground But our measure? Are the toys, that us surround, All our treasure? Are we made to think and long, And expire? With our hearts burnt out by wrong As a fire? Is life but a plaintive song For the lyre? In my soul there is a cry, Ceases never, For that life more blest and high, The forever, Where attainment shall be nigh The endeavor. THE MARKET-PLACE IN the heart of the quaint old town, Looks the church on the market down, Which glows with fruit and blossoms with flowers, Bright setting for the gray old towers. Sounds of traffic and trade are loud, Shrill the voice of the busy crowd, From the belfry the swallows call, The church stands silent mid them all. Grief and happiness come and go, Life and death in the square below, The chimes above reflect them well In marriage peal and funeral knell. Within its walls the casual tread Wakens the echoes overhead, Which, in a stillness so profound, Rise, startled, at the slightest sound. And still from time to time there come Faint murmurs of the outside hum, Which, like the sunshine s dusty beams, Are dim as memories of dreams. In sunny light and melody The belfry soars into the sky, Mid chime of bell and song of bird The worldly din is all unheard. Could I but bear so still a heart In busy crowd and noisy mart, So crowned with song, so hushed with prayer, I should be happy everywhere. NIGHT MUSINGS SWEET fields and hills, all wrapt in snow, Cold, bitter cold, each hour ye grow, Cold as if roses ne er did blow. The moon, ere yet the day is done, To tell her ros ry has begun, Slipping the star-beads one by one. Still as some white-stoled saint she goes At midnight penance through the snows, And, going, bright and brighter grows. No passing cloud is in the air, But heaven, all unveiled and fair, Flashes new beauties everywhere. Past snowy plains, as moonbeams white, Past all the shadowy forms of light, In star-beams sketched upon the night, I gaze into a distance far, Beyond where shines the outside star, That gems with light night s azure car. I see a vault with vastness black, From which no sunbeam shineth back, Nor e en the wandering comet s track. So, far below all joy and woe, Past thoughts which come, and words which go, A farther deep we feel and know, Hidden in darkness so profound That man, though searching, ne er has found The line which his own soul doth bound. What shall this outside region be, Stretching beyond the world we see, But thy broad land, eternity? BLUEBIRDS IN the bare trees Bluebirds are swinging, To the chill breeze Cheerily singing; Prophets of Spring Ere springtime is here, Where did they learn The time of the year? Blossoms and buds Quietly sleeping, Only the grass Greening and creeping, Hardly a brook Escaped from its chain, But the cold night Recaptures again. Deep in the ground Snow-drops are lying, Not one the storm Dreams of defying. Black are the clouds, 10 4 Yet bluebirds are here, Filling the woods With songs loud and clear. Ye, whose hearts wake, Though the earth slumbers; Ye, who have learned Heavenly numbers; Dark are the days, Yet joyfully sing, Loudly and clear, The Prophets of Spring. PSYCHE S WINGS FLIT, birds of eventide, On the swift wing, Summer is in her pride, Earth blossoming; Level the shadows fly, Naught breathes but rest, Fly, happy warblers, fly Home to the nest. Stretch thy strong pinions now, Soul, toward the skies, What hushes all below Bids thee arise, ii Far past the setting sun Press thou thy way; His daily race is run, Naught bounds thy day. Lift up thy snow-white wings, Washed in His blood, Who bore for thee death s stings, Scorn and the rood; Fly, soul, to meet Him, where Sin cannot come, Happy and quiet there, Safe in thy home. Now at this sunset hour, Labor all done, Use thou the mighty power, Given thee alone; Birds to their branches fly, Swift comes the night, To heavenward-lifted eye Darkness is light. NEW YEAR S, 1886 HERE we change horses! From my side Climbs down my faithful twelvemonth s guide Through icebound steppes and meadows pied. 12 Already, in the ghostly night, Mid falling snows, his surtout white, Has vanished like a wraith from sight. And, in his stead, a youthful form Gleams white against the dark ning storm, His check is red, his breath is warm. Away! away! Each flying steed Devours the road with headlong speed, And still their swifter shadows lead. Whither, O driver, dost thou know? Dost see, far peering through the snow, Bright lights of joy, dull gleams of woe? He answers not by word or sign, This dumb, unheeding guide of mine, But cracks the whip and shakes the line. Onward, still onward as before, We hasten to an unknown shore, This much I know; and know no more. This much I know, yet without dread I watch the landscape form ahead, I hear the horses rapid tread. For, lower the cloud or shine the sun, The journey, long ago begun, Sooner or later will be done. And whensoever it may end, To meet me waits, as I descend, With outstretched arms my dearest Friend. Him have I ridden far to meet, My heart outstrips the flying feet, That on the icy pavement beat. Look forward, driver, canst thou see If near at hand He waits for me, Or ride I all this year with thee? See st thou my Father s open door, Where this wild journey will be o er, Over and done forevermore? He answers not. Far in the west, How far I ask not; God knows best, Gleam the glad lights of home and rest. THE WOODLAND ROSE WHEN the early flowers are dead, O er their idust no tear is shed, Since the wood-rose lives instead. Sparks of bloom upon the spray, Fireflies that shine by day, Seem its half-blown buds alway. Where into the sunny glade Forest paths pass out of shade, There it loves to ope and fade; And it spreads so lightly there Leaves, which droop mid roadside glare, That it seems to float in air. With five fragrant wings around, It would fain part from the ground, Found it not itself stem-bound. Here the wandering butterfly, Flitting like a sunbeam by, Drinks its little goblet dry. Thence the wood-bee, robber bold, Yellow with its rifled gold, Fills with sweets his hive-tree old. Of all lives so glad and free, Amid sweets and minstrelsy, Give thy life, O rose, to me. MABEL WHAT brings thee down the lane so late, Mabel, Mabel, What brings thee down the lane so late? 15 Why in the starlight dost thou wait, Who comes to meet thee at the gate, Mabel? The sea-breeze through the garden came, Mother, Mother, It seemed to call me by my name, The north-light waved a beckoning flame, Tis these, not me, that thou must blame, Mother. Why didst thou rove so far away, Mabel, Mabel? Tis maidenly at home to stay, And not amid the shadows gray Of starlit hedges thus to stray, Mabel. I heard a voice across the sea, Mother, Mother, Call through the open door to me, Yes, calling once, twice, thrice for me, To answer were but maidenly, Mother. Twas but the sighing of the wave, Mabel, Mabel, Thy love lies silent in his grave, The jewel of some starless cave, And o er his head the waters rave, Mabel. 16 Why in the dew dost linger yet, Mabel, Mabel? The wind is up, the moon has set, Thy hands are cold, thy locks are wet, Come home, perchance thou may st forget, Mabel. Forget! and thou a woman, too, Mother, Mother, Is that what thou wouldst have me do? Nay, when my father came to woo, Did st thou not swear to aye be true, Mother? Forget! when every little rose, Mother, Mother, That fragrant in the hedgerow blows, Our parting saw, my promise knows, Each one would shame me, where it glows, Mother. Nay, rather would that I were dead, Mother, Mother, The wild surf moaning by my bed, Here where the pitying rose might shed Its leaves like blessings on my head, Mother. Here, true in death, though desolate, Mother, Mother, 17 Let me lie where he bade me wait, Should he come early or come late, Among the roses at the gate, Mother. A SUNBEAM INTO a hushed and darkened room, A sunbeam crept athwart the gloom, And lay, a magic golden ring, Upon a couch of suffering. To fevered brain and weary eyes, It came, a rapture of surprise; To sinking mind and wandering thought, A dream of life and joy it brought. " When through my window shines the sun," She said, " the springtime has begun; All winter long too far and shy He is to visit such as I. " But when the bluebirds sing about The garden trees, and winds are out, He round the corner creeps and smiles With joy that all my soul beguiles. " Now hence, ye dark delirious dreams, Bright, in your stead, the crocus gleams, 18 And up and down upon the wall Nod hyacinths and violets small. " Windflowers, whene er I close my eyes, Shall, painted on the lids, arise, And all sweet blooms of wood and dell Chase far these visions wild and fell." Then to her sad and darkened soul A thought of God, like sunshine, stole: " He who calls back the flowers," cried she, " Surely has not forgotten me. " All through the winter s cold and gloom I lay, alive, as in a tomb, As sad, as dark, as far from God As if already neath the sod. " But now a sunbeam from the skies Calls me, with snowdrops, to arise; Wide open every casement fling, I live, I breathe, for it is spring." DAISIES AND CLOVER-TOPS I HAD a dream of springtime, In the long winter night, When earth was lost in darkness, And heaven alone was bright A dream of fields of clover, Of daisies white and small, 19 Of breezes faint with odor, And blue sky over all. Pink balls of bloom and honey, Now drenched with morning dew, Now to the wild bee nodding, The springtime lives in you. Through all the dreary winter, Your sweetness underground Fills the faint heart with courage, Makes our slow pulses bound. Fair daisies tipped with morning, Crowned with a golden crown, Like dormice soundly sleeping In nests so snug and brown, I see you through the snow-drifts, I see you, or I dream, In rose-tints of the evening, And sunlight s yellow gleam. Oh! fields of blooming clover! Oh! daisies small and white! Oh! breezes faint with odor! Oh! sweetness of delight! Oh! loveliness and beauty, If you from earth had fled, The clover-tops and daisies Might call you from the dead. 20 THISTLE - SWEETNESS THEY sauntered down the sunny lane, The lady and her lover; The roadside was a wild of bloom, The fields were sweet with clover. Through tangled hedge and meadow green, Blithe rang the blackbird s whistle; Apart, in solitary pride, Stood here and there a thistle. Fair lady, cried the youth, I would The birds and flowers might woo thee To listen, for a moment s space, To me that humbly sues thee. But still the lady turned her head, And cried, Nay, cease thy pleading; Find rather in the thistle-flower A lesson for thy reading. See how she ever stands apart, Her robe of thorns around her; He who would pluck her purple bloom Soon rues that he has found her. I too am fain to dwell alone, So strive no more to woo me, 21 Twere quite in vain for bird or flower, Angel or man to sue me. Lady, the thistle in its heart Stores honey sweet as roses, The wild bee loves her better far Than half the softer posies. He does not care how many thorns Warn others from the treasure, But drinks from out her perfumed cup Contentment without measure. I, like the wild bee, would aspire To leave the crowd behind me, And solitary drink the cup Of happiness assigned me. Nay, frown not, lady, that I long To read in full completeness The answer to that riddle dark, The key to thistle-sweetness. Why then, she cried, with sudden smile, Since you ll take no dismissal, It were a shame that I should be More cruel than a thistle. 22 LITTLE BELGIAN CHILDREN This heart-song was copied throughout the English- speaking world. POOR little baby children, Ten thousand, four years old; And all of them are hungry! And all of them are cold! They flee, like frantic lambkins, When the wolf is in the fold. There is no place, no corner, Where they may lay their head. They re crying for their supper; They re crying for their bed. They dare not look behind them, Where the angry sky is red. The frightened little children Cling to their mother s gown. Her arms are full of babies, She cannot put them down; She drags the toddlers with her Away from the burning town. The fields are full of cannon, There s neither milk nor bread; 23 A rattling vulture airship Is hovering overhead, And in the freezing trenches Lie their fathers, stark and dead. Bring freely forth, ye Christians, Your frankincense and gold; Christ calls you to the rescue (He once was four years old) To save His little children From the famine and from cold. TAKING IN THE FLOWERS WHEN come the days of early frost^ Ere golden leaves turn brown, When apples in the orchard grass Fail red and ripe adown, \Vhile still the drowsy world is fair Rise, Flora, and begin With gentle hand and tender care To bring the flowers in. The fuchsia with its pendent gems, Pale roses with sweet lips, Lilies as white as gainst the sky Shine sun-lit sails of ships. Carnations, drifted isles of spice, That woo us with their breath, 24 Acacia with her golden hair Too beautiful for death. Come, bring them in, the tender ones, Ere, like a priest, the frost Strew them, the embers, black and seared, Of his great holocaust; Before the fury of the wind And the devouring rain Leave of their beauty on the walks Only a clinging stain. Ah! bring them in, and softly lay The lesson to thy heart; Twill prove an anodyne of pain, Perchance may heal the smart. Thou, who dost shield thy tender rose, Remember, and with shame, That thou hast murmured at the Lord Because He did the same. Did He not see the evil day, The beating rain of sin, The frosts of unbelief and care, And take His flowers in? Though howling sorrow shake thy soul From root to topmost leaf, The safety of God s hidden ones May comfort e en thy grief. HOW PEARLS GROW FATHOMS deep in the quiet sea, The pearls are growing silently, Growing, in darkness, round and white With fold on fold of silv ry light. The moonlight floods the summer sky, But not one beam falls where they lie, Yet drops of moonlight, such as these, Are only found beneath the seas. Wouldst know how pearls and oysters dwell So diff rent in the selfsame shell? Wouldst know whence come these wonders bright To grace the dusky ear with light? Then if the comfort of thy life Is vanquished by some petty strife, Some worthless thought, some grain of sand, Thou art the one to understand, For this is how pearls come to be Fathoms deep in the quiet sea; This is how pearls and oysters dwell, So diff rent in the selfsame shell. 26 CROSSING THE STYX IN the plaintive old-time story, Stands the boatman stern and hoary, Ready every soul to meet; Which, with cries and bitter weeping, From all love and love s fond keeping Turns with backward, ling ring feet. Young and old alike all groping In the dark, for nothing hoping, Throng to meet him on the shore; Then the still and sullen river, Without ripple, without shiver, Silently they ferry o er. As its clammy mists grow thicker, And the fading sunbeams flicker Ever fainter through the gloom, Close upon each earthly pleasure, Every heart s best hope and treasure, The black portals of the tomb. Hearts, which cease at length to languish, Lose, with all they love, their anguish In a calm more dead than they. Without yesterday or morrow, Seeing, with departing sorrow, Hope s bright garments float away. 27 But since came the blest evangel, Waits there now a helping angel Where old Charon stood of yore; And, across the shaded region, Gleams from pearly gates Elysian Fleck each turbid billow o er. So, the dying vision turning Upward with a heavenly yearning, Meets full often radiant eyes; Sees there love which changes never, Hope, unclouded now forever, Faith, triumphant in the skies. ST. CECILIA This poem was suggested from looking at the tradi tional portrait of this saint and patroness of music, as she stands, her lyre set down at her feet, intently looking up into heaven. FOR thee the angels sing, sweet soul, And hushed is thy forgotten lyre, All earthly music dies away When praise attunes those lips of fire. As when the brooklet finds the sea, Its song is lost forevermore, Before that glorious symphony Whose deep vibrations shake the shore. 28 Who praises God to heaven draws near; There is no wonder in thine eyes, Thy soul, that joins the angels hymn, Feels at their presence no surprise. Yet e en thy silence has a voice Sweeter than melody could be, Thou gazest heavenward, and we long To be all eye and ear with thee. Like thee the soul cannot express Its highest thought by lyre and tongue; But rapt in ecstasy stands mute, Leaving its noblest songs unsung. Yet there are silences that wake Feelings which words could never reach, When soul draws near to soul on wings That soar above the bounds of speech. DEBORAH Suggested by a discussion in the Boston Baptist Ministers Conference. UNDER the palm-tree was her seat, Where, amid trial and defeat, The land learned wisdom at her feet. 29 Her fearless, future-piercing eye Leaped past the thronging danger njgh To vict ry, coming by and by. Her war-cry, like a tocsin bell, Arousing captive Israel, Rang out the fierce oppressor s knell. Down through the ages rolls along The mighty torrent of her song, Like Kishon s river deep and strong. A thousand generations bless This war-inspiring prophetess, " Mother in Israel," nathless. None censure her heroic deed, When, in its hour of sternest need, Her country from the yoke she freed. So now when woman claims the right To battle with the powers of night, Cry, " Welcome, sisters, to the fight!" Who knows, perchance ye yet may bless The day, when Israel s distress To soldier changed the prophetess. WINTER -RAINS AH! e en the Winter, at the heart, Is not all cold; Though he be wrapped in ice and rime, Fold upon fold, The sighing of the south-wind finds A way through all, And, melting every barrier down, The warm tears fall. The Winter has a loving heart Ye little know, Who only mark the chilling winds, The frost and snow; He loves full well the tangled dells Where rabbits hide, All the fine tracery of the woods, Though brown and dried. His very breath upon the pane Reveals his heart, All the small beauties of the glade There bear their part; The tender mosses and the ferns Are limned so fair, That little children stretch their hands To pluck them there. All night, adown the half-thawed street, The waters glide, Melting the ice and snow they meet, To swell the tide. Slipping and sliding out of sight, To reach the sea, What rapture on a winter s night To be frost free! Not with the merry splash of showers Of summer-time; But plodding on as one who toils Mid mud and grime; Yet happy at the appointed task, Whate er it be, Knowing that power to do one s work Is liberty. THE CHRISTMAS -SHEAF Ii4 brief Norwegian summers, How blithely laughs the sun, How blithely laugh the waters That down the hillsides run, Till broad fiords receive them To silence, one by one. How green the little valleys That hide among the hills; 32 How spicy sweet the fragrance The dark pine wood distills; How hushed the Sabbath stillness Which all its arches fills! Glowing with golden beauty The ripened wheat-fields shine, The poppies and the corn-flowers About them spring and twine, Like an illumined border Round text of love divine. No wonder that the harvest Should stand so stout and fair; The birds have sung their blessing Above it everywhere, Have warbled charms of blessing O er sunshine, dew and air. But when the sheaves are gathered Upon the creaking wain, The birds all sing as loudly As robins in spring rain; They know that they at Christmas Shall feast upon the grain. The last sheaf of the harvest Stands in the barn apart, Its ripeness and its fullness Are not for house or mart; 33 The others feed man s hunger, But this shall feed his heart. For when the bitter winter Brings back the Christmas tide, In every snowy garden Through all the country side, From palace unto cottage, The Christmas-sheaf is tied. Then from their hiding-places In hedge and thicket brown, From out the twisted gables And chimneys of the town, From rocky clefts and crannies The birds come flocking down. They eat, most gladly welcome, One thankful lay they sing, A prophecy and blessing To rich and poor they bring, A prophecy of sunshine, Of plenty and of spring. WINTER COLD blows the bitter wind, Freezing the blue lakes o er, Snowflakes are in the air, Snowbirds are at the door. 34 Dark are the dreary days, Long is the dreary night, Fled with the singing birds All beauty and delight. Even the brook s last song, Smothered, has passed away, Still is the snowy night, Silent the leaden day. Only with fiercer life, Since summer calms are o er, The ocean s mighty pulse Beats ceaseless on the shore. Only the moaning wind Utters its voice aloud, And, from earth s bosom cold, Tears off the snowy shroud. Oh! but to hear one glad Whirr of the swallow s wing! Oh! for one fragrant kiss From the sweet mouth of Spring! Cold blows the bitter wind, Freezing the blue lakes o er, Snow-wreaths bend down the trees, Snowbirds are at the door. 35 WATER-LILIES FLOATING upon a northern lake Dark with reflected shade, Which only plashes on the shore \Vhere lonely herons wade, In spot so hidden and remote, That hardly in a dream It e er has gladdened human eye, The water-lilies gleam. White flecks upon the dark expanse Like stars upon the sky, Or distant wave-caps on the sea, They far and fragrant lie; The passing wild swans bend their necks, As swiftly on they fly, To greet these beauties of the lake With wild and mournful cry. Like water in a thirsty land, Their breath so faint and sweet Came to me mid the sullen roar And tumult of the street; But closed their leaves, and drooped their heads, Like captives in the mart; Let others take you home, I cried, For I have not the heart. 36 No flowers are these for household use; To show their native grace, For border they must have the woods, A lakelet for a vase. Let pansies in the garden bloom And roses by the door, Pond-lilies like the birds are wild, Once plucked are fair no more. LEAF -BUDS SUCH tiny little things, so brown One scarcely sees them in cold weather, Hugging so close the parent stem, Or nestling sociably together; You would not think a spray of leaves, A branch was there, all blossom-laden, Quite long enough, ere spring has fled, To weave a garland for a maiden. Even before the winter draws His bolts and bars of ice asunder, The buds begin to grow and swell, And feel the spring e en in their slumber; But when the south wind, truant-like, Comes coyly making its advances, The swaddling-bands grow all too strait, And leaves break *out in airy dances. 37 Where did they hide those folds on folds Of green and red, crimped so demurely Beneath the little waterproofs, From every storm tucked in securely! And not alone the present growth, But all the beauty of the season, The buds, the blossoms and the fruit, The wise men say, not without reason, Here hide away in fairy-wise, In this brown shell, their wondrous beauty, Until the coming of the spring Makes growth and loveliness a duty. O ye who feel this life not all, Who reach toward the distant dawning, And, not content with twilight gleams, Hope still that somewhere there is morning; Ye are the buds upon the vine Hidden within the bloom, the cluster, Which needs another, milder time, To give the grape its ripened lustre. Ye do not know how can ye tell From stirrings of imprisoned sweetness, When ye are given space to climb, What is the measure of completeness? TWILIGHT HARK ! How in the dark Each sound grows distincter, Each murmur a sound, The hoofs of the cattle Ring on the hard ground, The sharp cropping of grass, A bite here and there, And the tinkling of bells Come on the cool air. See! Over the lea, The fireflies are glancing Like jewels with wings, And the ghost-moth in flitting A silvery gleam flings; While the stars overhead Wink out one by one, And a glow belts the west Where daylight has gone. Now, Under the bough, All dripping with perfume As eaves drip with rain, 39 All scents, faint at noonday, Grow sweeter again, They crowd and they gather, Till the motionless air Is heavy with odors, Exhaled everywhere. Come, Come let us roam Abroad through the valley, Like Eden this hour, With beauty and sweetness And rest for its dower; Come dream in the twilight, Aye, dream while we may; To-morrow is hasting, And toil dawns with day. THE OLD PINE-TREE BY THE GATE GREEN, when all other leaves are brown And whirled from their high places down, Bright Summer s shade, but Winter s crown, We hail thee, old pine-tree. When through the fields the storm-wind raves, And Winter stumbles o er the graves Of flowers, neath forest architraves, He leaves no mark on thee. 40 Thy many boughs, bowed neath the snow, Spring back and let it fall below, The still air rings as from a blow, And all the woodlands hear. The bitterest frost, which knows no ruth, May try on thee his sharpest tooth, He finds a fruitless task forsooth, He turns not one leaf sear. When April opes each ice-locked spring, Teaching the silent year to sing, She finds in thee a minor string, Her fingers love to try. For heard neath all the warbling strains, Her whispering winds, her merry rains, A tender undertone remains Of plaintive mystery. As one, who, when all others sleep, Has heard a secret, grand and deep, He longs to tell, yet cannot speak, Thou seemest, ancient tree. Say! would thy dryad bent and old Some long-lived sorrow fain unfold, Which must forever rest untold, A groan to all but thee? Ah! many, like to thee, old pine, Stand stoutly on through shade and shine, Whose heart-song is as sad as thine, A wordless agony; Whose broken idols, hid away, May never see the light of day, Yet murmur through their words alway A plaintive melody. THE TIDE A MURMUROUS sigh along the shore, Where gleams the sinuous sand, A distant whisper at the bar, Tells all the listening land That now, at last, The ebb is past And the tide is coming in. How slowly creeps th advancing wave, You scarce can see it rise, As to each crevice of the rock It slips in humble guise; Yet tis the sign Of power divine, For the tide is coming in. 42 Anon it lifts the stranded weeds And floats them on its breast, It leaps the barriers, one by one, And shakes its flashing crest; For naught can stay Its conquering way, As the tide comes sweeping in. E en when adown the shingly strand The waters loud retreat, Tis only that their next advance May lave the meadow s feet; Defeat, you see, Is victory, When the rising tide comes in. Fear not its dashing and its roar, But trust it and prevail, Twill lift thy shallop o er the bar, Twill speed thy homeward sail; Look, far and wide, On every side God s tide comes rushing in. WITH THE TIDE Her father was born and died by the ocean. WITH the rising tide, he was born, On the edge of a summer morn; Creeping and whispering to the shore, 43 It promised much and hinted more Of the life that was to be, Its joy and its misery. First they heard it, when far away It broke on the rocks in the bay With a sullen mutter and roar But silent it stole to the shore To stretch itself out on the sands; In and out through the marshy lands It glided and shone like a snake. Ah! that was a time to awake. And so when the tide was high He greeted it with a cry. At the turn of the night he died, Drawn away with the falling tide; Wave by wave, breath by breath they fell, The sea and its lover as well, Sob by sob, sigh by sigh, Pulse by pulse, they both die. Past the fainting moon overhead Torn and ghostly the cloud rack fled, But her light through the trembling air Showed the beaches beaten and bare, While farther into the night The black water slipped from sight. 44 Still he lay with his eyelids closed, His breathing hushed, his limbs composed, And with ears that but dully heard He awaited the Master s word. His life still slipping away Like the waters in the bay. A boat on the outgoing sea, Where the estuary of life Glides out into eternity, Without a ripple, without strife; So his life went out with the tide, In the summer night he died. CHRISTMAS, 1915 WHEN shines the Christmas star The children all come home; Though far from me they dwell, Though distant they may roam, I hear, before the day is light, Their whispered joy, their hushed delight. When Christmas comes again They climb upon my bed, Their lips caress my cheek, Their arms around my head, Their rifled stockings flung away Already at the dawn of day. 45 All through the Christmas hours In the still house I hear, While gay disorder reigns, Glad sounds of life and cheer, Voices of children and of toys, Commingled in a joyful noise. When Christmas evening falls, The merry crew I see Salute with shining eyes The magic-fruited tree, And gather in, with laugh and cheer, The last, best harvest of the year. Gay Christmas comes again, The children, where are they? Fair women, stalwart men Stand in their place to-day. Yet when I look deep in their eyes I see the childish soul arise. Though far away they dwell, Though distant they may roam, On Christmas day they come, The children all come home; Their inmost heart is glad to be At home, with father and with me. 46 ON CHRISTMAS DAY 1915 Her last Christmas. Her children asked her to write them a song for the day. ON Christmas day, on Christmas day, What says my heart on Christmas day? Dear children, erst my babies small, My heart sends greetings to you all, On Christmas day. Your children, growing by your side, Teach you our love, our faith, our pride, As you to them, so we to you Are linked by chains tender and true, On Christmas day. A thousand hopes, a thousand fears, Joys, sorrows, laughter, sunshine, tears; All these and many thousand more Come thronging out, through memory s door, On Christmas day. The fire you lit when first you came, Burns ever with more brilliant flame, And so we greet you, while we may, Once more, once more, On Christmas day. 47 WHAT THEY SAY THEY say that I am old! Aye; so are the fountains, That for unnumbered years Sing clear in the mountains. Temples may fall away, The rocks themselves decay, Yet they sing on and on, Voices of Helicon. They say that I am old: My soul won t receive it, With endless life begun, How can she believe it? Past the remotest star She sees her road stretch far: Can what must live for aye, Turn aged in a day? They tell me I must die! What then is this dying? A sword that cuts the cord, And sets the bird flying. Heaven s windows open stand, Whence a dear pierced hand, Out-reaching, draws her in A new song to begin. 48 THOUGHT QUESTIONINGS WHERE hast thou been, my soul, oh, tell me where? Thou wast not formed with this thy frail abode, This clay is but a drag, a painful load For one the native of some different air. In sleep I hear sweet music, here unknown, And all within me rises at the sound, Which seems to wrap me, as a veil, around, Something of such a plaintive, soothing tone, That even now I sigh, as twere the song With which my mother lull d me erst to sleep, And in my spirit, long-suppressed and deep, The echo answers with vibrations strong. When sunset fills the woods with softened light, And the zephyrs all vocal make the trees, One feels a mystery in all he sees; Perchance it is the coming of the night, That fills his heart with such an awful joy, He fears to speak it, lest he break the charm, And yet tis more than the prevailing calm, That gives to every sense such glad employ. There is a something in the breathing wind, And in the very shading of the sky, That lifts the wings by which our spirits fly, 49 And chafes them gainst the fetters that them bind; Say not tis fancy, it is something more, Tis as the veil that hides some dreamed of face, The mist that shadows o er some lovely place, Which straight we know, though never seen before. Oh! am I earth-born, as the grass, the flowers, That future days will see upon my grave? Nay, they who say so, but as maniacs rave; I feel my soul has seen those heavenly bowers, Whither my feet, my thoughts so eager fly; Like a lost child, I wear a costly dress, Though soiled by wandering in the wilderness, It speaks my birthplace and my lineage high. THE BROOK LISTEN in the quiet meadow How the brooklet flows, Rippling on in light and shadow, Laughing as it goes. Wearing smooth with ceaseless kisses Each misshapen stone, Adding to its store of blisses Yet another tone. Finding music in the grasses, Though they choke the way, 50 Laughing still, it greets and passes Woods that hide the day. Thus each pebble that would bar it Makes its song more clear, Every tangle that would mar it Adds but to its cheer. Happy brooklet of the meadow, Let me learn of thee, Teach thy song of shine and shadow Even unto me. MORNING IN A GREAT CITY MORNING is rising on the city s towers, And the first sunbeam, slanting upward, lies Upon the housetops. Now begins to rise The smoke, dark herald of the busy hours. See! how it changes neath the hand of morn, From deepest gray to amethystine hues; And, as advance the streakings of the dawn, Unites the opal s fire with those soft blues Which Autumn shows us in the hazy sky. Then as the sun uplifts him from the plain, The curling wreaths before his coming fly, And leave the heavens without one dusky stain. The city lies all open to the day, And sleep on heavy pinions floats away. 51 HOME AT NIGHT I STOOD amid the crowded ways Where toil and traffic meet, And thought I heard time s pendule swing; Twas but the rush of feet. I thought I heard the cry of earth, The groaning of her pain; It was the city s roar and din That sank and rose again. Oh weary life, oh dreary way, Oh unavailing fight! Who could outlive the anxious day, Came he not home at night? Home, home at night! The golden heads, The auburn and the brown, Are shining gainst the window-panes, In country and in town; The door is opened with a shout, And, from the outside cold, The weary man by tender hands Is drawn into the fold. 52 Sweet foretaste of the Father s house, Through whose star-windows bright We see so ma~ny eager eyes Watch for us ev ry night; So many tender hands draw back The doorway curtain blue, As weary feet the threshold press And joyfully pass through. And where the Heavenly Father s voice, That dearest voice and best, Says, Come, poor child, poor footsore child, Welcome to home and rest. THE SPRINGTIME COMES AGAIN THE springtime comes again, dear Love, The days we hold so dear; The flickering shadows on the grass, The flower-breath far and near, The callow birdlings stretch their throats For berries bright with dew; The charm lacks only you, dear Love, The charm lacks only you. I sit among the ripening grass, The fruit-blooms fall around, Whene er the south wind stirs the trees, Circling unto the ground. 53 I idly watch the idle clouds Melt back into the blue; I needs must think of you, dear Love, I needs must think of you. The days have slowly grown to years, And yet they seem not long, Since our two lives ran into one Like melody and song; They have not all been halcyon days, Yet send He rose or rue, I thank my God for you, dear Love, I thank my God for you. The days are not all halcyon days, And yet the white dove, peace, Has made our home her nest the while, And still her joys increase. It is not every heart hath rest, Whate er the world may do; But mine has rest in you, dear Love, Has perfect rest in you. For had I closed my eyes in death, And turned me to depart, One kiss of thine, e en were I cold, Would warm me to the heart; And if from all this hollow world, I take but one thing true, Twill be the thought of you, dear Love, Twill be the thought of you. 54 A BABY SONG Two eyes so deep, so dark, so clear, Like still lakes in a silent land, Into their tranquil depths I peer And long their dreams to understand. Two lips like sunrise on the snow, When all the hills transfigured glow, But shall I never, never learn Their songs that like the streamlets flow? Upon the threshold of the world, Thy new-born soul on tiptoe waits, And dreams and sings till speech, one day, Shall open throw her pearly gates. And the first words, like trembling doves, Cling to thy lips, afraid and shy, Slowly unfold their silver wings, And, one by one, learn how to fly. EVERLASTING DAYS As the moon that in the heavens Shineth alway, Though she be by earth s black shadow Hid for a day, 55 Is the life that faileth never, Never for aye. As the river ever singing Unto the sun, Though beneath a cloud in darkness Now it may run, Is the life that faileth never, Never is done. Death the shadow of the gateway Upon the sod, As we pass through from the meadows Our feet have trod, Entering the Golden City To dwell with God. FLOWERS LAID ON THE BREAST OF HER BROTHER FREDDIE S BODY DEAR friend, thanks for the tender thought That laid upon our darling s breast The sweet blossoms, which, mid all his joys, He ever loved the best. Oft as the spring called violets forth He found the firstlings of the wood, 56 And knew, in autumn s soberer days, Where the last aster stood. Amid the treasures of our home His flowerets claim our tenderest care, Alas! that he should fade so soon And they remain so fair. Dear friend, thou knowest well the pain That fills our hearts, as day by day We watch the uncurling leaves he loved. And he so far away. But well we know sweet Sharon s rose Blooms for him on the heavenly plain, And joying in his happiness Our hearts cannot complain. Then take the thanks of those whose grief Thy tender love has borne in part, And may the flowers thus sent e er shed Sweet fragrance in thy heart. DEATH PASSED MY WAY ONE time, Death passed my way; His robe, confused and gray, Enwrapped, a night cloud dun, My vision of the sun. 57 But, as a father might Hush a scared child s affright, He whispered, " Look and see The face that smiles on thee." I looked and straight forgot My thoughts, and heeded not The haunting line that ran, II The shadow feared of man." The eyes of love divine Shone calmly into mine, And, as in Israel s night, Shot all the cloud with light. Lord, since Thou didst not give To see Thy face and live, I know the secret why We see Thv face and die. UNDER THE CYPRESS VINE Under a spreading walnut-tree, over the graves of a mother and her three infant boys, crept a cypress vine. AH! bind them gently, tender vine, The one unto the other, The graves, o er which thy tendrils twine, Most precious treasure cover; 58 Enwreathe them in thy soft embrace, Those whom we never sever In fondest thought their names shall be One memory forever. The mother and her bright-haired boys, Now never to be parted, Have met upon that shining shore, Where meet the holy-hearted; The sunshine, through the walnut-leaves, Falls where they lie together, And there the rain calls out the flowers, In tearful April weather. The vine has bound them all in one; Its blossoms, ever seeming Hiding with crimson bloom the graves To have a sacred meaning; A symbol of the precious blood That saved both child and mother, Which he, who marks the Christless dead, Has seen and passed them over. THE EMPTY HOUSE AH! the dreary house and old, There across the way; In full sunshine it stands cold, Like ghosts seen by day. 59 Its uncurtained windows stare As with dumb surprise; Or the vacant blindness share Of an idol s eyes. Since the children s feet are gone From the echoing floor, The house takes a weirdness on, Never seen before. Vine and rose still cling about, Tap against the pane; Winds at every doorway shout, And entreats the rain; Yet it has no answering voice, All its music fled, It can sorrow nor rejoice, For the house is dead. Ah, the dreary world and old, Sun and star and clod! Full of beauty, yet so cold If there be no God. If the beckoning heavens cry not, " Here thy Father dwells," If there be no tender thought In the ferny dells, 60 If the roses on the hills, Vacant stare and shine, If the network of the rills, Traced no hand divine, If there be indeed no God, As vain man has said, What care we for star or sod, For the world is dead. THE SKYLARK S NEST THE meadows are twinkling with dew. The daisies are opening their eyes, Gold fringes the curtain of blue, Which evening drew over the skies. The sun has but purpled the hill, And touched the tall tree- tops with light; The lanes yet are shady and still, And sweet with the perfumes of night. Alone in the midst of the grass, A nest stands all vacant and bare, The breezes, which whisper and pass, Find no ans ring whisperers there. A nest without music and love, Deserted upon the cold ground! 61 But hark! from blue heaven above, There falls a sweet shower of sound. Wouldst know whence this rapture of song, That pierces the mist-laden air? Dawn comes, though the night may be long, When the larks sing, the nest must be bare. Then weep not, fond mother, so sore O er nests whence the songsters have fled; The earth may be still evermore, But hark! there is music o erhead. STAR AND LILY STAR of the cold and wintry sky, Across immeasurable spaces Flinging a sheaf of arrowy beams, E en heaven itself thy beauty graces. Thy message of the power of God, Who traced thine orbit with His finger, Might freeze the current of my blood, Cause hope to halt and faith to linger Did not the lily, faint and frail, Here in my window garden growing, Remind me, by its fragrant breath, Of words with mercy overflowing. 62 For God made both; His mighty hand, The vast and seething ball upholding, Is, with a light and tender touch, The lily s crystal bells unfolding. They are but dust, the fiery star, The lovely, fragrant, fleeting flower. Though one may shine unnumbered years, And one may fade within an hour; They are but dust. Within me burns A light akin to light supernal Where could I trust my deathless soul Save in the care of Love Eternal? GRASS I LOVE the grass, the roadside grass. Through sultry summer days It calleth unto all who pass To leave the beaten ways, And find it, after dust and heat, A pathway soft to weary feet. At first it merely skirts the road Along a field of grain, Then, where the shelving banks begin, It groweth thick again: And, where the pine-woods scent the air, It springs up sparsely here and there. 63 And as it rests my weary foot, I love to think how oft Our Saviour s dusty sandal pressed Its carpet green and soft; When, at the close of busy day, He turned His steps to Bethany. It must have loved to make His path With thousand odors sweet, And stretching up with eager haSte Caressed His blessed feet; Or resting ever humbly bent, To mark the way His footsteps went. Oh! there is hardly one small joy In all the country side, Which by His word, or look, or touch, Christ has not sanctified; The grass, the clouds, the flowers, the birds, Speak of Him, loud as uttered words. It takes away all fear that He Will e er forget His own, When of the very grass He spoke In such a tender tone, And, though Heaven s King, remembers yet The evening walks on Olivet. 64 GOD S PEACE Suggested by Christians in the war zones and in the mountains of Armenia. THERE is a peace, far mightier than war, That battle, horror, murder cannot quench, That smiles serene close to death s open door, That sings its song e en in the blood-stained trench. O peace of God, life of the trusting heart, All is not lost where thou a dweller art. Jesus, behold, Thy suffering children lie In the red fires of torture, grief and shame, Yet, by Thy grace, they bravely live and die, Since Thou dost walk with them amidst the flame. From Thee their strength, from Thee their courage springs, Great Prince of Peace, Thou art the King of kings. THE EMPTY NEST THE winter wind blows through the night, Where wild woods toss, where wild woods toss. Complaining ever in its flight, Of grief and loss, of grief and loss. 65 The empty nest in orchard croft Sways with the bough, sways with the bough; Once full of song it swung aloft, How empty now, how empty now! The snow comes drifting on the wind Across the lea, across the lea, As one who, leaving hope behind, Can only flee, can only flee. It heaps into the empty nest All it can hold, all it can hold; No more by love and music blessed, But still and cold, but still and cold. Why should it seek a place of rest So sad and lone, so sad and lone? Why linger in an empty nest, \Vhose birds have flown, whose birds have flown? O mother, fainting and distressed, Beside thy dead, beside thy dead, Look upward from the empty nest; Thy bird has fled, thy bird has fled! 66 THE OPEN GRAVE The occasion of this song is not known, but it was read as very appropriate at the author s burial. THE cypress boughs sway to and fro, The open grave is strait and low, Weeping above and peace below. Oh, weary feet that climbed to bliss, Your many paths but led to this, One step from summit to abyss. Oh, busy brain, that, never still, Dreamed ever, but ne er dreamed of ill, Thou now art quiet gainst thy will. But eager .soul that now dost fling This dust from thine unfolding wing, It is not thee, they hither bring. And thou too, body, e en to thee, This is the gate that sets thee free, From pain and from mortality. Enter and close behind the door, Which grass and flowers shall bolt and bar, As if twere shut forevermore. 67 Yet, from that bed so dark and low, Immortal shall from mortal grow, As winter-bulbs in springtime blow. And what was closed in grief and pain, With joy shall open fly again, At the last trumpet s loud acclaim. A TWILIGHT SONG Now the deep ning tides of night Meet the yellow sands of day, And, as pales the sunset light, Fades the busy world away, At the twilight hour. Hesper shines with bright ning face; Lord, my spirit turns to Thee, Earth becomes a holy place, Where my Brother talks with me, At the twilight hour. After Thee, the words I say, " Father, let Thy kingdom come." Teach me how to truly pray, Let my spirit not be dumb, At the twilight hour. 68 To the sowers of the seed, To the reapers, worn, yet glad, All the gifts and grace they need, Richly from Thy treasures add, At the twilight hour. Not alone to bear Thy name, But to follow with the cross, Let this, Jesus, be my aim. Let me count the world but dross, At the twilight hour. Then, when morning bids me wake, Glad to labor and achieve, I will bid the world partake Of the blessings I receive At the twilight hour. VOICES BACK to our northern land, o er hill and fen, The springtide maiden hastens once again. Her warm breath wakes, her fingers deft employ, Each after each, the instruments of joy. Each string she tries, each tuneful pipe essays, And every song is still a song of praise. Our souls respond. We answer, voice for voice; Take up the strain and in God s love rejoice. 69 Yet listen, and, past nature s harp, we hear Ten thousand voices, speaking fine and clear, Ten thousand voices, sounding far and near, Until the soul seems but one quivering ear. Like her who, on the plains of sunny France, Saw forms of saint and angel in her trance And heard their voices, ever urging on Her soul to duty till her task was done; Calling at morn, at noon, at quiet eve, The peasant maid her lowly tasks to leave, To change the distaff for the banner white And save her country from the invader s might; Like her, we well may pause and listening stand, While words of warning, pleading and command Echo across the ages, till they wake Our souls to action for the Saviour s sake. The past is full of voices. The faint din Of clashing arms and hurtling javelin Mingles with shouts of victory and the cry Of those who flee, the moans of those who die. While words of hope, of courage and of cheer Fall with distinctness on the listening ear, Like the clear, joyous carol of a bird Above the city s sullen turmoil heard. And, hark! the angel s choral leads a song, That deepens ever as it flows along, Praising the Crucified. From age to age Its heavenly tone earth s loftiest strains engage. Nation from nation, heart from heart receives The chant and its best music interweaves. The northern fervor and the southern fire To nobly set the sacred theme aspire. Music her organ, Poesy her lyre Calls to new life, to lead the swelling choir. Down through the centuries, the song of peace Touches the notes of discord and they cease; And, in their stead, a busy friendly hum, The harmony of labor gins to come, And Miriam s cymbals by the Red Sea wave Chime with the falling shackles of the slave Like a full throated organ, that displays The beauty of the voice which it obeys, Whose deep, hushed harmonies accent the song And follow all its winding maze along; The solemn diapason of the past, With varied notes, profound, ecstatic, vast, Accompanies one voice which rules the whole, The voice of Jesus, speaking to the soul. That blessed voice our inmost spirits know, And all the past repeats its mandate, " go," " Go into all the world, go and proclaim The glories of your Lord s all-conquering name. Onward with courage! They alone are brave, Who lose themselves another s life to save, Whose love, like Orpheus fabled magic lyre, Soothes savage hearts and wakens pure desire " - This is the clarion word of yesterday, That calls us to the duty of to-day. An eager crowd of beggars at the gate, The voices of to-day our coming wait, Have waited long for us. With us was born Room for our life, a calling to adorn, Some noble task, to accomplish which we came, Some word to speak, some message to proclaim. While all the past conjures us not to waste The precious hour, the present bids us haste. Hasten, oh! hasten, for life s winter day Arises late, and fades at noon away. Our cherished theme is dropped, though half undone, Our sweetest song is only just begun; For Death, who follows fast on silent wings, Snatches the harp and snaps the slender strings. Then haste, oh, haste, that to-morrow may, Since we have lived, be better than to-day. What is this sound, that fills my shrinking ears? As of a river sobbing, full of tears ; A bitter river that doth take its rise, Far from the sparkling streams of Paradise, In broken hearts, and whose sad waters flow From eyes that every change of sorrow know; An ancient river, all its streams begin At Eden s gate, whence, weeping for her sin, With streaming eyes, came forth our Mother, Eve, First to transgress and first, alas! to grieve. 72 Ever advancing with advancing time, Broadening and deepening, fed by every clime, River of tears! even in our glad to-day, We hear thy wailing waters with dismay. The undertone of every song of gladness, Thy sullen moan fills all our joy with sadness. Ah! who shall heal thy waters, who transform, To gladsome praise, thy cry of grief and storm? Tis God s own voice in answer that we hear, As erst He spake in Israel to the seer. " Follow these bitter streams e en to the spring And into it the salt of soundness fling, For I will heal these waters. Never more Shall death flow out of them as heretofore." Why falter we, reluctant to obey? Why deem that word a word of yesterday? The salt of grace, borne in the gospel cruse, God places in our feeble hands to use. He bids us cast it in those springs of woe, Sad human hearts, whence sin and sorrow flow. While He, Himself, our Saviour and our Lord, Shall heal the fountain with one gracious word. The bitter river, altered at its source, Sings on its way, a sparkling water-course, And, cleared of every stain of death and strife, Springs up a fountain of eternal life. Oh! the glad future, with its heavenly joy! The ecstatic music that its choirs employ! 73 Shall we defraud it of one glorious strain, Or in its cadence leave one note of pain? Nay! let us teach earth s voices as they rise, To emulate celestial harmonies; Till mystic India teach the glad new song To waking China, unresponsive long; Till to each farthest isle, each coast remote, On every breeze, the echoing hymn shall float; Till every voice and every heart shall sing, And Jesus Christ be hailed creation s king; Then shall glad earth forget her ancient moan And lead the stars that sing around God s throne. THE SOLDIER BOY A song at the time of the Spanish War. Air- When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again." WHEN Johnny comes marching up the street, Hurrah, hurrah! Then Jenny s heart begins to beat, Hurrah, hurrah! It beats so high with pride and joy, She needs must cheer her charming boy As he fights the fight for liberty, right, and home. A thousand battle-fields has war, Hurrah, hurrah! Peace has ten thousand conflicts more, Hurrah, hurrah! 74 And Jenny sees, with love and pride, Her Johnny march at Duty s side As he fights the fight for liberty, right, and home. For freedom s sake the fathers came, Hurrah, hurrah! The Pilgrim mothers did the same, Hurrah, hurrah! And, as in all the glorious past, So long as wrong and hardship last We will fight the fight of liberty, right, and home. Then Jenny give a ringing cheer, Hurrah, hurrah! For those who love their country dear, Hurrah, hurrah! What Johnny dare, that Johnny can; And victory crowns the honest man As he fights the fight for liberty, right, and home. OUR COUNTRY A national hymn. Air "Jerusalem, the Golden." GOD bless thee, native country, His smile, like sunshine, rest Upon thy hills and valleys, With peace and freedom blest; 75 Take freedom for thy banner And justice for thy sword, Cry joyfully hosannah, O favored of the Lord. God bless thee, native country, What danger can betide? The hand that ever led thee Will all thy future guide; After the ancient manner He ll show himself our God; Arise and shout hosannah, O favored of the Lord. God bless thee, native country, May ages but increase Thy beauty and thy glory, Thy heritage of peace; On hillside and savannah The wealth of joy is poured, Cry joyfully hosannah, O favored of the Lord. God bless thee, native country, Let nothing thee affright Long as thy children love thee And stand by truth and right; Then rest beneath thy banner And lean upon thy sword, Cry joyfully hosannah, O favored of the Lord. 76 THE FADING LINE OF BLUE This poem has been widely read and greatly admired. The "darling" and "my dear" was her oldest grandson. Written and first printed during the G. A. R. Encampment in Chicago in August, 1900. COME, darling, stand with me awhile, That through the window we may view, With eager eyes that weep and smile, * Once more the fading line of blue; The fading line of blue, my dear, That once stretched wide and far, As though the sky were dropping near And every flag a star, my dear, And every flag a star. Ah! see how brave they march along A drum, a riddled flag or two, A fife that shrills a battle song, Some ancient coats that once were blue. And some have empty sleeves, my dear, And some limp faint and slow; Come, greet them with a hearty cheer, Salute them as they go, my dear, Salute them as they go. For I have stood to see them pass In other, sadder days than these, 77 When blood was red upon the grass And bullets felled the forest trees, When dread clutched at my heart, my dear, Lest freedom s self might die, And to that last supremest fear They were God s best reply, my dear, They were God s best reply. For those you see below us there Ah, scan their passing faces well Have borne, each man, heroic share In war s dread cyclone; shot and shell Have proved their stainless faith, my dear, Their deathless courage, too; Salute them, love them, and revere; They bled for me and you, my dear, They bled for me and you. Though all the world is changed to-day, The sun shines bright, the flag floats free, And all the past is swept away By glory and prosperity, Your heart must not forget, my dear, All that you owe the heroes who Brought back full-handed peace and cheer. Salute the line of blue, my dear! The fading line of blue! ECHOES FROM THE CIVIL WAR AND SOME OCCASIONAL POEMS BLOOD -ROOT ON the hillside, out in the sun, Of all fair flowers the purest one, White as moonbeams, whiter than snow, Pure as dewdrops these beauties grow. Pluck them gently, lo! on your hand Crimson drops in a moment stand. Has the pure blossom then a heart, That from its wound the blood should start? Snow-white flower of a bloody root, Of our future be prophet mute, And through our land may sweet peace grow From war and blood a bloom of snow. AFTER THE BATTLE HUSHED is the roll of the drum, And the musketry s rattle, Cannon and rifle are dumb; Passed is the battle. The vanquished are fled, and pursuit were in vain, For night s dusky veil wraps in mist all the plain, After the battle. 81 The burning sun had set in blood; Up rose the bloody harvest moon; Small store of golden wheat she saw Alas! her light came all too soon; As, wrapt in mist as in a shroud, She slowly climbed athwart the skies, She seemed, like some fierce fiend of war, To revel in the sacrifice. Alas! the yellow wheat Was threshed too soon, too soon by hostile feet The feathery, rustling corn Was trampled in the mire, And all the mire was red. What wonder that the sun went down in fire, And the moon rose in blood! The hillside golden-rod, And aster of the wood, Were scattered here in place of rosemary; Instead of organ tones Were sighings deep, and groans, Which prayed for morning where the wounded lay. But ah! th unholy sight Hide, hide, red moon, thy light! How canst thou look so bold, where man dares only guess? Are these the shining eyes Which looked for glory s prize? Are these the lips which little children loved to press? 82 Cover them, cover them, Bury the dead, Gently now gather them, Each to his bed; Fighting for liberty Passed they away, They shall be heroes, be Cowards who may. O Christ! O holy One! Help those who mourn for these To cry, " Thy will be done," When weeping on their knees. Oh, turn Thy loving face Toward Thy much-loved race; Thy tears, O Lord, have mingled with our own, The measure has been given, O Lord! dear Lord! and will it ne er be filled? Must Earth still cry to Heaven, That brother s blood by brother yet is spilled? Help us to turn to Thee, In our great agony; Yea, e en to thank Thee for the pain, That draws us unto Thee. PEACE St. Louis, April, 1865. STILL at the gate of Peace and all her joys, With two-edged sword which turneth every way, Stands War, an angel, though of dreadful mien: The future s light, thrown backward, makes his face like day. For she will come, and War shall lead her in, Well pleased that all his dreadful work is o er. Mercy and Truth shall follow in her train, While Righteousness and Justice go before. Then come, sweet Peace: we wait to hear thy voice, Sweeter than mother singing to her child At hush of twilight; lo! our very hearts Are hushed to catch thy greeting soft and mild. Come, we will weave a crown for thee to wear, Thou shalt be queen, and crowned with white and blue; We know where rosy blossoms thickly grow, But thou with them shalt not have aught to do. Crimson violets, lilies bright, With a glow like sunset light, Blood-red golden-rod that drips f . Life-drops from its slender tips, Gory asters, stain on stain, Ne er to be washed white again. All the buds that spring can yield, All the flowers of summer field, All the autumn s lingering pride, Crushed and torn with man have died. These have been our lot too long, No more such in wreath or song; But cool and white, Airy and light, All manner of blossoms from vine and from spray, To strew in her way, The bride of the nation, the beauty, the queen, The angel, say rather, Who waves her white wings, where the war-cloud was seen So thickly to gather. Peace, peace! echo the bells. No cannon that day, We have heard their dull thunder Roll above and shake under Long enough, long enough, No cannon, we pray! Then come, sweet Peace, since Freedom bids thee come. The evil sounds which frighted thee away, 85 The driver s lash, the sullen clank of chains, The wail of flaves, shall not disturb thy sway. For this is not, as when thy parting feet Were dipped in blood on Carolina s shore, A land where bondmen groaned and freemen quailed, But now we all are free forevermore. Come, therefore, in fresh robes, washed from the stains Which soiled their whiteness in the former days, While with exultant heart the nation waits To greet thy coming and to shout thy praise. THE AUTUMN OF PEACE THE harvest-time has come again To orchard trees and golden plain, And woods of every gorgeous stain. The autumn moon looks down and sees, Upon a thousand misty leas, Wheat-stacks, like stranded argosies; She sees the curling vapor rise Like the white smoke of sacrifice Of first-fruits, to the kindly skies; She sees the late returning wain, Pressed neath the heavy sheaves of grain, And hears the reapers jocund strain. 86 And over all the land is poured A quiet, in which men are heard Beating to pruning hooks the sword; A distant sound of forge and flail, Instead of battle shout and wail, God s blessing sweetens every gale. God s blessing all our being fills, And gently as the dew distills Upon the waiting vales and hills. The harvest-time has come again, But in each well-reaped field and glen The harvest has been fruit, not men. The crimson on the forest leaves Is not the dropping from life s eaves; No blood is sprinkled on the sheaves. Ah! now we feel that peace of yore Has folded her white wings once more, Whiter and purer than before. For though she came ere spring had fled, We, since our hearts so deeply bled, Forgot her, weeping for our dead. Come down into our hearts, O peace, And let thy blessed reign increase, Till war and death forever cease. 87 A DIRGE OF SLAVERY I HEARD a sullen, hollow sound, Come from the regions under ground, Where the dead nations dwell; The voice of all that murderous clan, Who plot against the soul of man, To drag him down to Hell. " Hast thou become as we," it cried, " Cast from thy fastnesses of pride, And branded for thy lies? The cloak of light is rent away, Which made thee seem the child of day, Th apostle of the skies. " How long thy reign! beginning when Nimrod, the first who hunted men, Brought on the iron age. Thy robes are crimson with the blood Of every nation since the flood, The slain of thy fell rage. " Curses and groans and bitter tears Have been thy food through countless years, Sweet morsels for thy maw; Thy spell has ever broken through, And trespassed on th elysium new, Which the old prophet saw. " For to that happy-fated land Where flying freedom took her stand And keeps the world at bay, Thy slimy coil insidious crept, And tight ning while the nation slept, Half choked its life away. " Then murder, lust, oppression, pride, Thy banner hailed on every side, And reveled at their ease. Beneath the shadow of thy shield, We, well protected and concealed, Drained pleasure to the lees. " Then war and all her hungry train Swept o er the land that thou might st reign, And quench thy thirst for blood. Thy victory seemed so near and sure; Alas! such wrong cannot endure, Since there is still a God. " And thou art fall n and driven back To those wild tribes whose desert track Is white with dead men s bones. The fetters of the rescued slave Are laid as trophies on his grave Who hushed the bondman s groans. 89 "Lie down with us in black despair; Like wounded beasts we seek our lair, And gnash our teeth in pain:" Then, lifting up a horrid cry, They shook their chains in agony, Till the Pit rang amain. Written for, and sung at, the dedication of Colby Hall of Newton Theological Institution, in 1866. ETERNAL Wisdom, who dost give The skilful hand, the ready mind, Accept the offering that we bring, A thousand gifts in one combined. Accept these halls; with them receive The hard-earned mite, the earnest prayer, The love of learning and of truth, The love for Thee; for all are there. May Science here securely dwell, Firm as the granite hills around! Her hand upon God s Word, her brow With rays of heavenly lustre crowned. Eternal Truth, Lord Jesus Christ! Here let Thy light and glory shine; Let every mind and every heart, With all we know and are, be Thine. 90 Written in 1902, for Arbor Day, at Morgan Park, 111., when trees were planted between the Baptist Meet ing House and the Home for Missionaries Children. To the life-giving breeze Stretch forth your boughs, ye trees, Mid light and song. Strike deep your roots below, Wide your green shadows throw, Toward the glad heavens grow, Sturdy and strong. On thee, fair Home of love, May blessings from above Descend in showers. That thy strong sons may stand Like palms in many a land, Thy daughters be a band Of lily flowers. Thou, too, O church, most dear, Flourish immortal here, Grounded in love; Watered by grace divine, Fed by the heavenly Vine, And each ripe fruit of thine Garnered above. Read at the celebration of Aunt Lizzie Aikcn s seventieth birthday. Aunt Lizzie was born in Auburn, N. Y., spent her girlhood in Vermont and her early married life in Western Illinois. She was an army nurse during the Civil War and a church missionary in Chicago for many years. As one, who, weary on a rugged height, Pauses to rest, e en with the goal in sight, And fondly turns to view the landscape wide, The rushing stream, the rocky mountain side, The dreary waste, the valley s welcome sod, All the long road his hurrying foot has trod, While hope and memory meet in fond embrace, And shed a double brightness o er the place; So, as the gliding of the silver spheres Brings her we love the boon of seventy years, We, like the foot-sore pilgrim, would again Traverse in thought her three-score years and ten. At the horizon gainst the sky she sees Her lovely birthplace gleaming through the trees, Girdled like Ceres, with the golden grain, " Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain." Here, where the light first cheered her infant eyes, She saw the Sun of Righteousness arise, Here learned that song of trust, divinely given, Which makes the road of life the way to heaven. And now, Ascutney s cloud-flecked slopes are seen, And mountain pastures vie with meadows green, 92 New England skies bend over pure and clear, The song of many birds enchants the ear, The lambs are frisking in the valley wide, The breath of flowers fills all the country side. In this fair home, mid pleasures ever new, Close to her mother s heart the maiden grew. From that blest haven, from her father s side, Out to the restless world she passed, a bride. Image of heaven! Fair haunt of girlhood s years! The eyes that greet you, smile through all their tears. Here, where the moon views all the prairie wide, And scarce a leaf can in the shadow hide, Bordered with bloom and carpeted with sod, She finds a home fresh from the hand of God. As lonely as a ship far out at sea, Her little house stands on the boundless lea; Here in the silence, often in the dust, She learns anew her pilgrim song of trust. Draw we a veil across the weary years Sacred to sorrow and a mother s tears, As one by one, from off her tender breast, She lays her babes in Jesus arms to rest; As one by one her every staff and stay In swirling floods of grief is swept away, Till, turning full of anguish from the door, She bids her home farewell, forevermore. Down in yon valley, see the yellow wheat Threshed all too soon, too soon by hostile feet; 93 See the sun set, and the moon rise, in blood; Hear from the ground, cry out the sanguine flood. Valley of slaughter! Shall a woman s path Lead through the myriad horrors of God s wrath? Let those who saw her, answer why she came, Leaning on Christ and blessing in His name, Bringing a smile to brows that frowned with pain, Soothing the sleepless couch, the fevered brain, Feeding the hungry; by the dying bed Telling of Him who liveth and was dead. When, as the ghastly night came sad and dim, She, mid the wounded, sang her evening hymn, They knew no angel sent from God could be So good, so dear, so heavenly kind as she. And we have known her too. For many a day Her path and ours have run the self-same way. We know her tireless steps to help the poor, Her zeal to do, her patience to endure, Her love for those who, outcast and alone, She fain would save and cherish as her own. For, like a fountain, every day she lives, Freely receiving, freely, too, she gives. Three-score and ten ! Then she we love is old ; Gone is her silver youth, her years of gold. Long has she toiled. Our hearts within us burn, For all her goodness to make some return. Full well we know that her dear Lord one day Will take her home, to be with Him for aye. 94 Many are waiting by the gate, to fly And greet her fondly as she passes by. We also greet her. Long may it be ours To strew her pathway with love s fairest flowers. 95 POEMS DISTINCTIVELY CHRISTIAN WHAT SHALL I RENDER UNTO THE LORD? I HAVE a treasure fairer Than pearls beneath the sea, Than all the gems of sunlit lands: I bring it, Lord, to Thee. My costly gift to Thee I bring So gladly for Thy part; Take it for Thine. This precious thing Is my heart. I have a treasure sweeter Than the treasures of the bee, Than all the blooms of wood or field: I bring it, Lord, to Thee. White clouds of incense that aspire All earthly clouds above, A censer full of perfumed fire Is my love. I have a treasure nobler, More unsubdued and free Than the wild unfurrowed mountain: I bring it, Lord, to Thee. I place in Thy controlling hand This power of good or ill: Wield Thou my sceptre; take command Of my will. 99 I have a treasure deathless As is eternity, Outliving sun, and moon, and star: I bring it, Lord, to Thee. I would not offer Thee a part, But, joyful, give the whole; My love, my will, my life, my heart, And my soul. How poor is all my treasure, Lord, when compared with Thee, And all the wealth of pitying love Thou hast bestowed on me! And yet around my offerings may A light supernal shine, Since when Thou dost accept them, they All are Thine. ONLY ONE TALENT "Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house, save a pot of oil." II Kings iv, 2. OH, what am I, that you should wait Thus at my humble door, For how can I, e en though you die, Divide my scanty store? My nights are full of anxious care, My days are hard with toil. 100 Riches or treasure have I none, Except my pot of oil. Why will you gaze, and break my heart With wistful looks and sad? To feed your hungry souls with bread Would make me more than glad. Your griefs I know, your bitter wrongs Cause my quick blood to boil; But I have naught to save or share Except my pot of oil. It came to me from One who felt Your woes as well as mine; But if I pour it out for you How shall my own lamp shine? I watch it closely day by day, Lest it should change or spoil. Why will your eyes demand of me My precious pot of oil? And yet it was bestowed on me; Perchance, if I should give, I too might read the mystery That bids us die to live; I too might find some sunny spot Mid all this grief and moil, If I should fill your empty jars, And drain my pot of oil. 101 Then bring them here, of every size, And bring me not a few. Long as it lasts, my treasured store I ll share with each of you. Long as it lasts! It does not stay! The longer that I toil To empty it, the fuller grows My flowing pot of oil. " Pour " was the word the Master spake, "Till every jar o erflows; The treasure that is hidden wastes, He gains, who all bestows. Long as an empty vessel waits, Fear not! thyself despoil. Enough for thee, enough for all Is in thy pot of oil." TRUST IN THE UNSEEN THE varied beauties of Thy face, It was not ours to see, O Man of men, O God on earth, Blest from eternity. When Thou didst raise the sleeping dead, And wake the deadened soul, We did not hear Thy quickening voice Speak flesh and spirit whole. 1 02 Yet we have felt that mighty word, Have known the pardoning smile Beaming upon us from the skies, Though hidden for awhile; As, in the darkness of the night, Waking with sudden fear, The child puts forth its helpless hand To feel its mother near; It does not need to hear her voice, It does not care to see, But, resting on her loving arm, Sleeps in security. So though we cannot see Thee, Lord, We rest upon Thy love, Content in darkness as in light Thy faithfulness to prove. GOOD -NIGHT A LULLABY GOOD-NIGHT, dear child, good-night; Sleep in thy little bed, So soft, so lily white, Beneath thy golden head; Good-night. 103 Like sunshine on a flower, Thy tresses stray adown The pillow in a shower, And gild thy snowy gown; Good-night. Feet, restless as the rain, Your patter dies away Till morning wakes again, And calls you out to play; Good-night. Good-night, dear child, good-night; Breathed is thy evening prayer; Thy watch of angels bright Comes through the silent air; Good-night. We yield thee to their care, Until the shadows flee, Content that they should share In our felicity; Good-night. SORROW WHEN from His Father s heart of love, And from His Father s throne, The blessed Saviour stooped to make Our grief and tears His own, 104 Though myriad angels with Him came In pomp of heavenly state, He turned aside to take the hand Of Sorrow at the gate. She walked beside him all the way, She led His weary feet From Bethlehem till Calvary Saw sacrifice complete. She walked with Him, to her He gave Comforts to soothe her soul; He wiped her tears, her broken heart His riven heart made whole. SELF -SURRENDER LORD, I give myself to Thee, Thou art my hope and trust, Since Thou hast stooped from heaven to me, And raised me from the dust. 1 leave my lifelong hopes and fears, My will I cast aside, I fain would have no will but Thine, Thou who for me hast died. My selfish will and slavish fear Have held me captive long; 105 Deliver me from both, O Lord, Since I to Thee belong. And lead me like a little child, I cannot go alone, I fall and stumble by the way, My every hymn a groan. Now make me Thine, entirely Thine; I cast myself on Thee, I long to run the heavenly way, I faint Thy face to see. I AM THINE LORD JESUS, I am Thine, No more my soul can fear. Thy holy will is mine, Thy presence ever near. E en in the darkest night, Light in Thy light I see; I bless Thee for the sight, I fix mine eyes on Thee. Choose Thou mine onward way. Oh, lead me by the hand; So will I trust alway, Nor seek to understand. Thou who dost see the end, 1 06 Plan Thou my life for me. My Master and my Friend, Shall I not lean on Thee! If of the cup of tears I drink, it once was Thine; Bless it and it appears A sacrament divine. And if, by Thy command, On sorrow I am fed, It is Thy pierced hand That breaks the bitter bread. Thus, through the joy and pain Of my brief earthly day, Lord Jesus, I would fain Walk with Thee all the way; Walk with Thee without fear, Yea, closer to Thy side, When death s dark gates appear, Oh, Living One who died. According to Thy word Soon shall Thy servant be, My Master and my God, In Paradise with Thee. Fair mansions of Thy grace, Life s bright, unfading shore! There shall I see Thy face. Amen, forevermore. 107 " APPREHENDED OF CHRIST JESUS" WHEN I resigned my will to Thine, Jesus, there came at last The quiet of a summer sea, Whose storms are past. No more, no more will I contend, But, knowing I am Thine, I lay me down to rest within Thy hand divine. Like some wild bird I struggled long To free me from Thy hold, But now content, in perfect peace My wings I fold. Here shall my rest forever be: Too well Thy love I know To fear the hand that bled for me Would let me go. "THE LIVING TEMPLE" IN souls redeemed, Thou, Lord, canst see A costly temple raised to Thee; Not built by hands, but by that word Which unborn light responsive heard. 1 08 The corner-stone, that precious One Rejected once, Thy holy Son; All the foundations are the same, His wondrous work, His wondrous name. Slowly as islands from the deeps, The unfinished structure upward creeps; Each stone of faith, each gem of grace Is laid in its appointed place. But with what shoutings shall the last, The topmost be in heaven made fast ; That pure white stone, whose secret name Shall light the temple as a flame. Hallowed and pure through Jesus blood, The Father shall pronounce it good, And in His righteousness secure, Its wall shall stand, its gates endure. GOD S service maketh all things great: To Him there s nothing small. A thousand lives we cannot see, Each within each; how wondrously He careth for them all. So for His holy house He gave A pattern fair of old; 109 Not only for the cherubim, Or laver with its lily brim, But for the bowls of gold. Anointing oil in these should glow, In these the purple wine; The first fruits of the ripening field, And sacrificial blood that sealed A covenant divine. Symbols of human life were -they, Ever before the Lord, Of lowly labors manifold, These golden vessels formed to hold Man s offering to God. Humble and menial was their place, And so perchance is mine; Yet is the chalice of my days An altar bowl for work and praise, My life a thought divine. GOD OUR STRENGTH DRAW me to Thee, my God; Although I stray, My longing eyes pursue The narrow way. no My stumbling feet will fail, The path is steep; But in the King s highway I will not weep. Draw me to Thee, my God, Else shall I fall; Tis only by Thine aid I climb at all. Yet while Thy promise stands, Why should not I, With all Thy conquering hosts, Victory cry? ILLUMINATE THE CROSS HUSHED was the vast cathedral. The shadows gathered gray, The footsteps of the verger In echoes died away. East the great cross stood, shrouded In veils of falling gloom, And westward the rose window Showed neither light nor bloom, Until the sun, slow sinking, Just touched its rim with light, in And one by one its jewels Of color brought to sight. Far down the shadowy chancel, Athwart the shadowy nave, The rays, a tangled rainbow, Touched wall and architrave. Then, reaching like a finger The shadowy aisle across, They longest rest and linger T illuminate the cross. Shine through us, Sun of Glory! Though now as dark as night, The jewels of our window Will answer to Thy light. The emerald of courage, And hope s own sapphire ray, Shall waken from their darkness Thy summons to obey. The jasper and the jacinth, The topaz golden blaze, The amethyst s deep rapture Shall kindle in thy rays. 112 And from the very center, The whole dark world across, Shall love s own burning ruby Illuminate the cross. Shine through us, Sun of Glory! The world is very drear, In shadow sit the nations, The end is drawing near, And e en our light is hidden, Our beauty none can see, We too dwell in the darkness Unless we shine in Thee. In vain our boasted vantage, Our gain is but our loss, Unless our bright rose-windows Illuminate the cross. LOVEST TO THE END " Having loved his own that were in the world, he loved them unto the end." John xiii, i, New Ver. BLEST Saviour, who didst love thine own, Each doubting heart, each wavering friend, Who left Thee, grieved, to die alone, Thou lovedst to the end. "3 Thy heart divine, with love replete, On them its sweetness did expend; Their love was cold and incomplete, Thou lovedst to the end. And we, who through their word believe, Unto our weakness condescend, Let us this precious truth receive, Thou lovest to the end. Our trials Thou dost make Thine own, Our doubting souls dost comprehend, For all our sins Thou didst atone, Thou lovest to the end. All other love may pass away, All other friends we may offend, All other bliss lapse in dismay, Thou lovest to the end. Trial and sorrow bring Thee near, Death only leads us to our Friend, Not only now, not only here, Thou lovest to the end. But when, our earthly wanderings past, To heaven, to Thee we shall ascend, Long as eternity may last Thou lovest to the end. Oh, fill us with the love of God, Help us to know and comprehend The depths of that most precious word, Thou lovest to the end. " HE SHALL CARRY THE LAMBS IN HIS BOSOM " THE tender shepherd leads the sheep, And watches them with care; But in his bosom lie the lambs, At rest and quiet there. They look into his face, they hear The beatings of his heart, What danger then can make them fear The sharpness of its dart? Before the influence of his eye Their foes all turn and flee, He is secure from earth and hell Who trusts, O Lord, in Thee. To death itself, with all its waves, With songs and smiles they come, They trust Thy arms to bear them through Rejoicing to their home. Oh, Jesus, what so blessed lot Can human heart conceive As, safely in Thy bosom borne, To quietly believe. To strive no more for holiness That is apart from Thee; To rest and trust; to only live Where we Thy face can see. Oh, happy is the little child, More blest the childlike faith, Which, in the sunshine of God s smile, Fears neither life nor death. THE HEAVENLY GATES Rev. iii, 12; xxi, 25. THE pearly gates stand open. Each hinge of beaten gold Hides in its heart, forever, A melody untold. Since for the King of Glory, Returning to His throne, The two-leaved doors flew open, Closed have they been to none. The pearly gates stand open. Through the eternal day, The nations of the ransomed Throng up the shining way. 116 No night can cast the shadow Of danger and of fear, God is their sun forever Through all the heavenly year. The pearly gates stand open; But those who once pass through, Their wanderings in the desert Shall not commence anew. They feel no inward longing Their footsteps to retrace, Nor cast one look behind them Who gaze on Jesus face. The heavenly gates stand open. What is it keeps them out, That weary crowd of wailers Who stand and weep without? What strange mysterious safeguard Protects the open door, That not one guilty footstep Has stained the crystal floor? Ah! soul, why wonder further? Turn but one glance within. Thou hast the dreadful secret Hid in thy heart of sin. That heart which hates its Saviour, And spurns his love untold, Would dread the pearly portal And shun the streets of gold. 117 HABAKKUK, CHAPTER III GOD came from Teman in His strength, And filled the heavens with light; Holy and Just, earth sang His praise, And blessed His glory bright. Holding all power within His hand, And death beneath His feet, He stood, unto each kingdom proud Its just desert to mete. * I saw the heathen tents afar, Trembling with awful dread, The hills were bowed before His way, The lasting mountains fled. The deep, that saw Thy kingly train, Uttered a dreadful cry, And, lifting up its thousand hands, Adored Thy majesty. The sun and moon Thy spear eclipsed, Thy bow was naked made; What wonder that the nations were At Thy great might afraid! For the salvation of Thine own, Thou comest forth, O Lord, 118 With indignation and with wrath, Thou showest Thyself God. Although the vine should fail to bloom, The land with famine groan, Yet will I joy in God, my strength, Who battles for his own. CHRIST S SACRIFICE MY sacrifice is slain; The holy Lamb of God, To expiate my sin, Pours forth His saving blood; What pains He bore, no tongue can tell, To save my soul from death and hell. Each agonizing sigh, Each deep, heartrending groan Echoes from Calvary Wherever sin is known; Through every heart s black misery That echo cries, " For thee, for thee." The thorns upon his brow Are but the symbol dim Of deadly grief and throe Now lacerating him; That holy soul by woes is torn That do not heed the outward thorn. 119 Behold Him, O my soul, Look up to Him and live, He dies to make thee whole, He weeps lest thou shouldst grieve; Nay, hide thy face, with yonder sun, From the foul deed which thou hast done. Ah, what a cruel strife Now fills my wretched heart! I came to thee for life, Shame cries aloud, depart; Ah, whither, whither can I flee, My Saviour victim leaving Thee? Nay, weary soul, be still. Shall such surpassing love The mission not fulfil That brought it from above? Accept the boon of Calvary, And grateful cry, " For me, for me." EASTER MISSIONARY HYMN This was set to music by W. H. Doan. Lo! Christ the Lord is risen, Our Life, our Righteousness; He burst the grave s dark prison, He came the world to bless; 1 20 Let us who see His glory, So full of truth and grace, Declare the heavenly story Of peace, in every place. To-day the love of Jesus In heavenly courts is sung; To-day the name of Jesus Is praised in every tongue; " From Greenland s icy mountains " To " India s coral strand," The gospel s healing fountain Is known in every land. Awake, long promised morning, Glad Easter sun, arise; Illumine by thy dawning The darkness of earth s skies; Come, Hope of every nation, Thy light and life impart, Come, Author of Salvation, And dwell in every heart. SHALL I BE THERE? WHEN the angels touch of fire Lights the dead world s funeral pyre, And the red flames baleful light Cuts the blackness of the night, 121 In more black despair, Shall my soul be there? When the weary faithful feet, Christ shall come half-way to greet, When the angels fly to bring All His saints to meet their King, Lord, and can I dare Hope I may be there? When the conquering armies come, White-robed, palm-crowned victors, home, When the heavenly gates unfold, And gleam through the streets of gold, All their joys to share, Shall I too be there? When before His Father s face Stands the Saviour, full of grace, Takes th*e joy for which He came, Calls His ransomed ones by name, Jesus, hear my prayer, Grant I may be there. THE SMITTEN ROCK SMITTEN of God for us! Thirsting and scorched we lay, The water all was gone And sand filled up the way; 122 Twas then the smitten rock flowed o er, We drank and lived to thirst no more. Along the weary road, That leads to Canaan s hills, The waters from the rock Flow on in deep ning rills; We drink, refreshed we onward press, And sing e en in the wilderness. The very desert blooms And blossoms as the rose, The thorny shrub drops balm Where er this water flows; Whoever will may drink and know All that is found of heaven below. And on, forever on The healing river flows, The fissure in the rock No mortal power can close, Until that stream from neath God s throne It joins, and lo! the two are one. 123 GOD S CHILD THROUGH REDEMPTION BY Thy precious blood, dear Jesus, Washed and reconciled, Let me be Thy heavenly Father s True and loving child. Thou didst come to seek and save me, Though so far astray; Thorns and mockings, death and sorrow Filling all the way. Thou didst seek me still unwearied, Till, upon the rood, On Thy hands my name was written In redeeming blood. With that blood, Thy name, blest Saviour, Write upon my heart; That I may be Thine, forever With Thee where Thou art. THE HAPPY DAY OH, the joyful, happy day! When the clouds all roll away, And to our enraptured eyes, Like a star, shall Zion rise. Oh, the joyful, happy day! When our feet, no more to stray, Washed from earthly dust and sin Through her gates of pearl pass in. Oh, the joyful, happy day! When, in beautiful array, They embrace us, whom our tears Called for through the weary years. Oh, the joyful, happy day! Whose glad morning breaks for aye; Then we ll turn and look our last On a night forever past. GIVING MY HEART JESUS, take my sinful heart, Take it all with sin defiled, Full of pain and sorrow s smart, Doubting fear, foreboding wild. Tis, alas! no gift for Thee, Pure and holy as Thou art, But Thou askest it of me, Askest nothing but my heart. 125 All the wealth of earth is Thine, Thine the oceans and the hills, Thought and fancy cannot climb To the height Thy fullness fills. Still, O Lord, with fond desire Thou dost crave Thy creature s love; And Thy pity s holy fire Burns all other flames above. Take then, Lord, my guilty soul, Take my sin-cursed body, too; Save them, cleanse them, make them whole, New create them through and through. Dare I beg some humble part Of Thy matchless love, from Thee? Ah! Thou ne er hadst wished my heart If Thou hadst not first loved me. GOD -ATTUNED WE thank Thee, we love Thee, O Lord, We praise Thy most glorious name, We joy in the thought of Thy grace, From ages to ages the same. Oh, that Thou wouldst touch all our tongues, And teach them to worthily sing; 126 Oh, that Thou wouldst tune all our hearts, And tighten each sin-loosened string. Then, then shall we utter Thy praise, When death blows this dust once away, That each dulcet stop may breathe forth The music which slumbers to-day. Then, then shall the angels rejoice, Complete be the heavenly song, When the blood-bought, the ransomed shall add The strain which was wanting so long. THE FATHER S WELCOME THY Father s door stands open, O wanderer, return, Accept the joyful token, His grace and pity learn. Thy Father s heart is ready To greet thee and forgive; Ah! hear the invitation, " Fly unto me and live." Thy Father s house is open, He waiteth at the door, He has looked long to see thee, He calls thee o er and o er. 127 Arise and haste to meet Him, As He comes thee to greet, Cast all thy sin and sorrow, Thyself cast, at His feet. Thy Father will receive thee; On His forgiving breast, Thy guilt all left behind thee, Thou shalt forever rest. DELIVERANCE FROM SIN I AM weary of my sin; Whither, whither shall I flee? Thou canst make me clean within, Saviour, I will fly to Thee. I would hide me in Thy breast, From this fierce, this tireless foe; I would come to Thee for rest; Hold me, Lord, nor let me go. Though I put my hand in Thine, Walking in the narrow way, Though I see Thy glory shine, Sin still haunts me night and day. It is not enough, O Lord, That Thou takest away my guilt; 128 Speak one saving, freeing word, Thou whose blood for me was spilt. Take away the sin I hate, Let me conquer though I die; Nothing is for Thee too great, Thou canst free, canst purify. Give me Thy sufficient grace, Which can make me clean within, Let me look upon Thy face, See Thy smile and cease to sin. THE SABBATH SWEET Sabbath, all thy hours of prayer And hallowed praise are past; With what a wistful, lingering heart, I part from thee at last. Guest from the heavenly land of peace, Thou comest to hush our strife; One day in seven we walk with thee The blessed way of life. And now to heaven thou dost return The record sad to bear Of heartless songs, of service vain, Of vacant, soulless prayer. 129 For in our hearts the altar fire Burns down to ashes soon; The joy of morning, like the dew, Is dried away by noon. We strive to spend one day with God, But, through the half shut door, The whispering world attracts our thoughts, And our short heaven is o er. Oh, shall it ever be that this Sad truth must be confessed, That we who say we love our God, Still love ourselves the best? Sweet Sabbath, injured guest, farewell, Yet since thou must depart, Drop one rich blessing from thy wing Deep down into my heart. And let, through every coming day Until thy glad return, Some thought of thee and heaven make My heart within me burn. JESUS ADORED JESUS, my soul adores Thee And loves Thee for Thy grace, Which shines, the Father s glory, Revealed in Thy dear face. 130 Here at Thy Cross of Anguish I lay my burdens down; Thou takest all my sorrows And givest instead a crown. A crown of joy and gladness, Oh, happiness complete! I cannot wait till heaven, To cast it at Thy feet. Those blessed feet, once pierced, I would I had been there, With grateful tears to bathe them, And wipe them with my hair. Oh, holy face of Jesus, Disfigured once for me, Thou art the sun of glory, Light of eternity. I bless Thee, Christ and Saviour, I love Thee for Thy love, I prize Thy smile and favor All other joys above. FOR BAPTISM THOU holy Lamb of God, It is Thy flowing blood, Poured out for me, that makes me clean. In Thee, in Thee I claim, And solely through Thy name, A heart in which no stain is seen. Even the Father s eye No longer can espy Aught that its purity offends. He looks upon Thy face, Its beauty and its grace He sees reflected in Thy friends. And now, with humble love, My outward act would prove And seal the purchase Thou hast made. Where I Thy footsteps see, I would most joyfully Obey, e en as my Lord obeyed. Oh, what a joy it is, What ecstasy, what bliss, To tread the path which Thou hast trod, Jesus, to follow Thee 132 To all eternity, To die to sin, to live to God. Hold me and keep me true, Whate er I think or do; Tis only in Thy strength I stand. My comfort and my bliss, My only safeguard is Thy pardoning love, Thy helping hand. OUR SAVIOUR -KING OF Jesus, our Saviour, we joyfully sing, And humbly adore Him, our Ruler and King. Oh, happy the land that submits to His reign; His service is freedom; He breaks every chain. REFRAIN Oh, sing of our Saviour-King, Sing of our Saviour-King, Sing of our Saviour-King, Mighty to save. Oh, crown Him with praises, the friend of the weak; He sends forth His servants, the erring to seek; No soul He created shall e er be forgot, No creature so poor that the Lord knows him not. Though seated in glory, the Lamb on the throne Is with us forever to succor His own; 133 His power, His goodness shall carry clear through The work He has chosen His children to do. Oh, trust in His mercy, take hold on His strength; He has led us thus far, we shall triumph at length And the land that we love, from sea unto sea, The land of Immanuel, our Saviour, shall be. DAY OF LIGHT AND GLADNESS Tune " Vesper Hymns" 7 s and 8 s. HAIL, blest day of light and gladness Which our eyes with joy behold Darkest clouds of sin and sadness Flee before thy rising gold. See, the mountain tops are gleaming And the valleys catch the glow; Soon the blessed sunlight streaming Shall the whole dark earth o erflow. Hasten, hasten in thy glory Where the tribes in shadow lie, Until death itself, grown hoary, From excess of light shall die. 134 LIGHT -HOUSE LAMPS Air "He Leadeth Me." HELP us mid life s wild waves to shine Bright light-house lamps o er rock and brine, To guide the wand rers on that sea To a safe harbor, Lord, in Thee. REFRAIN To shine for Thee, to shine for Thee, Help us, O Lord, to shine for Thee. Lights in the world we fain would be, Help us, O Lord, to shine for Thee. Help us on time s dark hills to blaze Strong beacon-fires with steadfast rays, To lead the lost and erring right, To urge the lingering to the fight. Help us on every darksome way To hold the gathering shades at bay, Like sunbeams clear, to light the road That leads to happiness and God. Help us, O God, each in his place, Fed by the sacred oil of grace, Like temple lamps forever bright, To burn before Thee day and night. 135 THE GOSPEL TRIUMPHANT Tune "Hark, Ten Thousand Harps and Voices. JESUS, hail! the King of Glory, Earth rejoices in Thy sway; Heathen nations hear Thy story, Heathen darkness yields to day. Every idol falls before Thee, Seeks the night from whence it came, While ten thousand souls adore Thee, Trophies of Thy saving name. Zion, wake, and hail the morning; Zion, rise, and greet thy king; Like the birds, in this glad dawning, Lift thy voice and joyful sing. Sing till Jesus worthy praises Sound in every palmy grove; Till each jungle s tangled mazes Echo with His matchless love. 136 GOD S GLORIOUS DAY Tune "Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone." GOD S glorious day will surely come, E en now the hour makes haste; The dry land gleams with water brooks, And blooms the barren waste. Upon the distant mountain tops The watchmen lift their voice; The islands mid the far-off seas Have heard them, and rejoice. The nations leave their broken gods, And hasten to proclaim Immanuel, the Prince of Peace, And bless His saving name. How blest the eyes that shall behold That glory promised long; How blest the ears that glad shall hear That earth-encircling song. 137 A FRIEND From the German of Julius Pabst. MOURNFUL long I stood and lone, Oft my deepest soul made moan; How forsaken was my case, Since I would so fain embrace A friend, And still had none. Ah! no, not one Who loved me truly. Warm and quickly beat my heart Oft for joy, and oft for smart, Gladly would it overflow, Share its pleasure and its woe With a friend, And still had none. Ah! no, not one Who loved me truly. Oft my tearful eyes around Longing searched, but no one found, Who to know my heart was given; And my prayers besieged high heaven For a friend; Ah! but for one, 138 A faithful one, To love me ever. See, then from the heavenly land Jesus came, and laid His hand On my heart, which now grew still; Peaceful thoughts my bosom fill Of a friend. The earth hath none Such faithful one, Who loves me ever. THE APPLE BLOSSOM Adapted from the German. WHILE musing through the wak ning fields Of blooming spring I strayed, I saw the orchards in their robe Of white and red arrayed. A blossom from the apple-tree I, thoughtful, bore away, And read me, from its fragrant leaves, The sermon of the May. How dainty is its little cup! How sweet its perfumed wine! Its beauty is my Father s thought, He drew each tender line. 139 No creature is so mean or small, But, rightly understood, Reveals His wisdom and His power, Proclaims Him mild and good. Yes, even in this apple flower, As in a glass, I view My Saviour s spotless image traced In touches firm and true. Tis red without, since holy blood To cleanse my sin must flow; But ah! how white the soul within No apple-bloom can show. " SALVE CAPUT CRUENTATUM " This great passion-hymn of Bernard is the fountain from which some of our most beautiful religious poems have flowed; but no one, so far as I know, has at tempted anything like a literal translation of it. Ger- hardt s German hymn beginning " O, Haupt roll Blut und Wunden," catches the spirit of the Latin hymn, but is far from a representation of its real contents; while Mrs. Charles s rendering of it, found in SchafFs " Christ in Song," treats the original with great free dom, the thought of which often merely suggests her own. Whatever may be the merit of these stanzas, I have endeavored faithfully to reproduce in them the thought of Bernard s hymn. The number of syllables in the Latin hymn and in this translation is the same. HAIL, holy head! blood-stained and torn, Crowned only with the cruel thorn, 140 So crushed and wounded, marred and bruised, And by the smiting reed abused, O face so vilely spat upon! Hail! Thou whose countenance most sweet Is changed, and with distress replete, Changed all its freshness and its bloom, For the dread pallor of the tomb, Thee angels trembling look upon. Vigor and life are faded quite I turn in sadness from the sight; Death sets his seal upon Thy brow, All weakness hangs Thy body now, Worn and consumed by agony. Thus, in affliction and disdain, For me rejected, suffering, slain; Though I by sin am worthless made, With all those marks of love displayed, O glorious face, appear to me. In this, Thy passion and Thy blood, Own me as Thine, O Shepherd good; From the pure fountain of Thy lips The sweetest milk and honey drips, Sweeter than earth s delicious charms. Me, though condemned, still do not spurn, Nor, though unworthy, from me turn; As death draws near, Thy head divine Hither in mercy, Lord, incline, And dying, rest Thee in my arms. 141 In this, Thy holy sacrifice, Let me, rejoicing, sympathize; Grant, since I love Thy cross, that I Upon this cross with Thee may die; Beneath it my last hour I ll spend. Dear Jesus, for Thy bitter death I ll thank Thee with my latest breath; Thou, who art God so full of grace, Hear when Thy guilty suppliant prays, And be Thou with me to the end. When I in death at length must groan, Ah! leave me not to die alone; In that tremendous hour I pray Come, Jesus, come without delay, Defend me, Lord, and set me free. When Thou dost bid me, Jesus dear, From earth depart, then, then appear, O Friend, most loving to my soul Upon that cross which makes me whole Thy very self show Thou to me. 142 THE BIOGRAPHY THE BIOGRAPHY I. ANCESTRY AND EARLY TRAVELS MY wife, Mary Eleanor Roberts, daughter of Elbridge Gerry and Mary Kendall Freeman Roberts, came of sturdy New England stock. Her paternal forebears, John Roberts, born in Ipswich in 1646, and Hannah Bray, his wife, made Gloucester, Massachu setts, their home. In 1667, they settled in West Gloucester, then called the West Parish, on a piece of land granted him by the town for his prowess in fighting the Indians. A few years ago, when Mary and I were spending a summer vacation in that charming seaside city, we visited the quaint old house, built by John Roberts, with its huge oak beams, low ceilings, cavernous cup boards, great fireplace, high wainscoting and heavy doors hung on long wrought-iron hinges. Mary had seen it once before, when it was being repaired, and those then occupying it gave her one of the door hinges as a souvenir of the house of her ancestors. She had the hinge neatly mounted on a board twenty- five by ten inches, and opposite the small end of it 145 she had painted in white and golden letters these original lines: Through the door that turn d with me, In and out the tide of life Ebbed and flowed unceasingly, Full two hundred years. Thou that readest, wouldst thou see All their joy and all their strife? Ask the heart that stirs in thee; Measure thine own tears. Her paternal grandfather, Charles Lincoln Roberts, was a prosperous ship-chandler of Gloucester. He built a square, commodious house on Middle Street. He married Elizabeth Low, one of the family of the ancestors of the late Seth Low of New York. Ten children were the fruit of this union. The parents were persons of devout piety, Universalists of the older type, who believed that Christ by His death secured the ultimate salvation of every individual of our race. They daily read the Scriptures at the hour of family worship and prayed with, and for, their children. They also required each of them to learn by heart a passage of the Bible every Lord s Day. The outcome of this careful Christian training must have been disappointing to these pious Universalist parents since seven of their children became Baptists and three Presbyterians. And one of the three that united with the Presbyterian Church insisted on de claring his faith in Christ by immersion, and was bap- 146 tized by William R. Williams of the Amity Street Baptist Church, New York. On her mother s side, her ancestry is still more distinguished. It reaches back in direct line to Will iam Brewster, who came to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the Mayflower, on her first voyage, and to Thomas Prence - sometimes written Prince who was one of the Leyden Pilgrims and the Governor of Plymouth Colony for twenty years. Her maternal grandfather was Gorham Lovell Freeman, a native of Brewster, Cape Cod, a Boston business man, the head of the dry-goods house famous in its day of Freeman and Cobb. He was also a downright, manly Christian. For a time he seriously contemplated entering the Christian ministry, and while he finally decided that it was his duty to continue in business, he remained a very active member of the Church and for some years was a tower of strength to Dr. Thomas Baldwin, pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Boston. He was distinguished as a liberal and unostentatious giver to benevolent objects. Tract Societies, home and foreign missions, theological institutions and Sun day Schools were the recipients of his generous gifts. He also had marked literary ability, which manifested itself in occasional addresses on Christian experience and efficiency and in his writing of both prose and poetry. But his great usefulness soon came to a seemingly untimely end. When only thirty- four years old he died of consumption, at Nice, whither he had 147 fled with the vain hope of escaping from that relent less disease. Keen intellect and fervent piety were combined in Mary s maternal grandmother, Mary Kendall. Like her Lord, she lived for the good of others. She strove earnestly to win the impenitent to faith in Christ, and did much to alleviate the suffering of the poor and sick. After her husband s death, she found her greatest comfort in doing the duties of a manager of the Widows and Fatherless Society. To relieve dis tress she gave bountifully from her own purse and aided in distributing the money liberally donated by her brother-in-law, Nathaniel Cobb. Like her hus band she possessed rare literary talent. She was a clear, forceful writer, and like him she too died early, passing consciously and peacefully away at the age of thirty-two. These grandparents left several children. The old est of them was a beautiful young woman with black eyes and black hair, and a fair skin, whose bright color changed with every strong emotion. Elbridge Gerry Roberts of Gloucester, who had already per manently left his native home, loved and won her. In September, 1835, they were married in Brookline, Massachusetts, and were spoken of by all who knew them as an unusually handsome bride and groom. To crown all, both of them were decided Christians and faithful church members. Their only daughter, Mary, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, July 21, 1840. From the facts above presented it is clear that 148 she was an offshoot of a strong, intellectual Christian ancestry. Her father, a merchant, was a partner in the dry- goods house of Roberts Brothers, New York. For some years he was the buyer for the firm in foreign markets. In the discharge of his duties he frequently went to England, often alone, but occasionally he took his household with him, and for months they resided in some English city or town. When his daughter was only eighteen months old, in January, 1842, he sailed with his family for England on the Great Western, the first regular steam packet that carried passengers between New York and Liverpool. Young as little Mary was, she remembered being tied in a chair on deck to keep her from creeping overboard. Of this voyage, going and returning, she could recol lect nothing more. In 1845, Mr. Roberts took his whole family across the ocean to England in a packet sailing ship, the Ashburton. For two or three months a hired fur nished house in Manchester was their home. This house Mary, when grown to womanhood, could but dimly call to mind; but she did distinctly remember her rides in the carriage with her mother, some heads of ripened wheat, to her then a thing absolutely new, shown her by the coachman, who told her how they grew in the fields, her low socks that were prone to disappear in her ankle-tie shoes, hurting the soles of her feet by rolling into folds under them, and her pink parasol, of which she was very proud. 149 As the summer advanced the family removed to the village of Bowden, near Manchester. While in this suburban place, Mrs. Roberts often took walks with her two children, Edward and Mary. In after years, Mary fondly called to mind the green lanes and daisied fields where they rambled. Well she re membered a cottage with a thatched roof, and a bright, prim garden-border running up to the door from a wicket gate, where in their strolls they often stopped, and an old woman in a blue dress and a big white cap sold them cups of milk, which they drank, sitting on the doorstep. She herself says, " In the border grew old-time flowers, stockgillies and sops-in- wine. I never see Brompton Stocks or garden pinks without a vision of the Bowden cottage and my pretty young mother. There are but few links of association between us and I have always been glad that the perfume of a flower has the magical power to show me her face." In October, 1846, Mrs. Roberts with her children and servant sailed for New York on the same ship, the Ashburton, that the year before brought them to England. Mary, though but six years old, never for got the droning songs of the sailors as they pushed the heavy iron bars of the capstan, or reefed the sails, or holystoned the decks, " Brandy and gin, brandy and gin," or " A wild goose motion, A-sailing on the ocean, Is a very pretty motion, A very pretty motion." 150 A part of the passage was very rough. The rage of the sea so deeply impressed her, that, more than sixty years after, she vividly described their experiences in the fiercest storm that overtook them. " Suddenly a squall out of some unforeseen quarter threw the vessel far over onto her side, and at the same time a wave sweeping over the deck, broke the lights above the saloon. The water poured in, swept all the dishes from the table to the floor and broke half of them. The water was almost ankle-deep, and I remember well how gaily the plates and glasses bobbed about as the ship swayed to and fro." So the little daughter of the household was being educated on the sea by storm and tempest. Once more, in 1853, M r - Roberts sailed to England with all his family, except his older son. They made the passage on a Cunarder, the Baltic. At first they found lodgings in London, not far from the British Museum. Now began a new chapter in Mary s education. When she and her younger brother were sent out to walk, asking no questions before they started and telling no tales after their return, for a good many days they went straight to the British Museum, preferring the sights there to the dingy streets that were often enveloped in fog. Layard had then just begun to send home from Nineveh sculptured, bull-headed lions; these and hundreds of other inter esting objects daily delighted and instructed these susceptible, inquisitive children. Mr. Roberts, finding it necessary to return to New York and expecting soon to come back to England, found lodgings for his family at Leamington in War wickshire. During the winter his daughter and younger son were tutored two hours a day in their lodgings, but when spring came even this small amount of instruction was intermitted, and the children, with the consent of the head of the house, gave themselves up to exploring every nook and corner of the lovely country around Leamington. In Mary s own words: " Up and down the lanes, in and out through woods and meadows, over stiles and across rustic bridges, we studied the geography and history of the whole countryside, till we knew it by heart. We watched the hedges bloom, we gathered daisies in the grass and primroses in the lanes. We went frequently to Warwick. Its castle, its church, its Beauchamp Hospital became very familiar to us. Ivy-covered Kenilworth we visited two or three times. We knew the whole place and Walter Scott was our entrancing guide. Fancy what a treat this was for a girl of thirteen!" In April, 1854, the family again crossed the Atlantic to New York, in the same steamship, the Baltic. The passage had enough danger in it to make it piquant. The captain ran the vessel for a long distance into a vast ice-field from which, the channel closing before him, he was compelled to back out. In a fierce storm, Mary remembered well stealthily creeping up on deck, clinging to the railing without any sense of danger, and greatly enjoying the fury of the sea; and also 152 being on deck when the fog suddenly lifted, disclosing an iceberg close at hand. So the scenes of beautiful, rural England and of the storm-lashed ocean with its glittering, menacing ice floes were woven into her childish mind and became part and parcel of her very being. Before she was fourteen she had crossed the Atlantic six times, twice in a sailing ship. These rovings over land and sea early implanted within her an ardent love of travel. In after life she was always exquisitely happy when ever she was permitted to journey to new places and to look upon new scenes. Southern California, with its wealth of flowers even in midwinter, was her special delight. The fiords of Norway, thrust in between the precipitous mountains of its wild and rocky coast, enchanted her; while the North Cape, glowing under the midnight sun and, in July, bedecked with double buttercups, and the sea, in which it dips its foot, touched by the sunbeams, rippling like liquid gold, captivated her. The mountains of Switzerland with gleaming lakes at their feet, vineyards, orchards, meadows, pastures and forests on their sides, their heads wrapped about with eternal snow, on which she looked and some of which she climbed, were to her a source of unending pleasure. Whatever scenes of beauty and grandeur she surveyed became her per manent possession. Ever after they vividly lived in her imagination. Her intense desire to travel, she said, was aptly 153 expressed in the following stanzas by Josephine Preston Peabody: "The little Road says, Go, The little House says, Stay: And O, it s bonny here at home, But I must go away. " The little Road, like me, Would seek and turn and know; And forth I must, to learn the things The little Road would show! " And go I must, my dears, And journey while I may, Though heart be sore for the little House That had no word but Stay. " Maybe, no other way Your child could ever know Why a little house would have you stay, When a little Road says, Go." Although she travelled much, it seemed a pity that her desire for new scenes could not have been even more fully gratified. But she used to say that she ex pected, when this life was over, to be permitted to go where she pleased and see the greatest wonders of God s creation. II. ADVERSE INFLUENCES HER mother, when but thirty years old, died sud denly in the night, while her little daughter, only six years of age, was asleep. Young as Mary was, she always had a vivid remembrance of her. She dis tinctly recollected hearing her sing, as she played the piano : " Flow gently, sweet Afton, amid thy green braes, Flow gently, I ll sing thee a song in thy praise, For my Mary s asleep by the murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream." And Mary could never forget how her mother, as she sang the last two lines of that stanza, smiling, stooped and kissed her. She was indelibly impressed with the fact that her mother loved her. Others had difficulty in controlling the high-spirited child, but her mother swayed and subdued her by love. " Love never faileth." When Mary was three score and ten she wrote: " I cannot remember my mother ever doing anything but loving me." She said, " I like to write down my childish memories, for each one of them recalls my mother, who has always been so dear and lovely a presence in my heart." Little incidents, as we have already seen, like the fragrance of a flower, suggested her mother s face. " Very well," she wrote, " do I remem ber attending Dudley Street Baptist Church, sitting on a hassock and going to sleep, my head on my mother s lap, while my new gypsy hat, trimmed with a wreath of rosebuds, lay on the cushion of the pew." In the very last years of her life, nearly seventy years after her mother s death, at times when she 155 spoke of her, her voice choked with emotion and her eyes filled with tears. After her death, I found in her commonplace book, the following poem expressive of her profound and tender love of her mother. The title is, TO MY MOTHER IN HEAVEN And dost thou think of me in heaven? Or dost thou quite forget? And is each tender heartstring riven, Each memory faded yet? Ah! turn and look on me from heaven One little moment s space, Turn from the burning " spirits seven " Thy rapt and wondering face. One moment hush thy anthem clear, A trembling human voice to hear, And from thy crown of asphodel Send circling down, thy love to tell, Some leaves of fadeless green With blossoms white between. Ah ! many a year from green to white Has faded since that dreadful night When thou in death, in slumber I, Drifted apart, as streams that lie Blent in one spring among the hills, And which in overflowing spills One river where the sun may shine Forever on its silver line, Another that must onward creep Long years through caverns dark and deep, 156 Till cheered by many a struggling ray, At last it slips out into day. Then forth into the unknown seas, My rudder lost, my compass gone, So early I set sail alone, T explore a world of mysteries. So early from my mother s knees And her fond bosom, orphaned, went A way in which the churchyard trees With early blossoms strangely blent, While every joy and every place, Brought with it still a hidden pain, Which made me long to turn again, Missing the sunshine of thy face. And yet I know not why I wept Through all those far-off childish years ; Twas still a happy, changeful life, And yet I welcomed it with tears. Oh, why, sweet mother, wast thou gone? While hour by hour and day by day Thy faithful heart to lean upon Had made a rose-walk of the way. Now, what was the character of this six-year-old child so suddenly and unexpectedly left motherless? First of all, she was extremely sensitive. Every nerve in her body quivered either with pain or pleasure. Any unjust criticism of her conduct, or even any seem ing slight or neglect cut her to the quick. She was also unusually imaginative. She herself told me that, in her early girlhood, all fairies in fairy stories were to her real persons beyond the shadow of 157 a doubt. In a letter written by her mother in 1844, I find this naive testimony to the vivid imagination of her little daughter, who was then only four years old: " She talks to her dolls as if they were real babies and is quite grieved if I talk about sticking a pin into them, fearing that it would hurt them. She is a little, wild creature, and if she gets into the country this summer will, I doubt not, commence climbing fences in fine style. You would be amused to hear her talk, as she suspects, concludes, etc., equal to any grown person." She was not only excessively sensitive and imagi native, but also high-spirited and quick-tempered. She was very apt, especially when she thought some one did her wrong, to fly into a towering passion. Of this she has herself borne witness. Writing to one of her granddaughters, who was then eight years old, and seeking to persuade her to follow " our dear Lord Jesus," she said, " when I was a little girl I had a very naughty temper and I some times got very angry about very little things. I am afraid that I did not always try to help screaming and stamping my foot about things that did not please me. But when I gave myself to my Saviour, I knew that this angry temper was His enemy and I promised Him that I would never give way to it again. One day I forgot, and oh, how sorry and ashamed I was. I told the Lord Jesus that I could not make myself patient and that He would have to do it. I have been very naughty sometimes since, but I have 158 never wanted to get angry in that way again. The Lord is stronger than our sins." She has also borne witness to another instance of her hot temper. She wrote: " October sixth, 1845, was born Frederick Lincoln Roberts, the dear little brother. Of course I wanted to see him . . . but that was not permitted. Every day I watched my chance, and at last I saw the nurse come out of my mother s room with her hands full of dishes. I slipped off my ankle-tie slippers and crept very silently into the room, through a little crack, for the door was not shut quite close. It was so dark that I stood still, hardly breath ing for a minute or two, before I could see anything distinctly. Over by the crib stood a chair, on which I silently mounted, turned down the clothes that were about his face and looked entranced at the baby. I fell in love with him that moment. He seemed to me the dearest, sweetest creature I had ever seen. Suddenly I was picked up in no very gentle manner and set out into the hall and the door closed against me. I lay down on the floor, screamed at the top of my voice and called my mother to come and help me. After a minute or two, the same cross-faced woman, who had put me out, appeared and said, You naughty girl, you have waked your mother and the baby, go away. But I would not go. I heard a faint voice say, Oh, let her come in, and in a rush of victory and joy I found myself snuggled up beside my dear mama, too happy almost to speak." Some whose duty it was to care for her, utterly 159 misapprehending her disposition and character, by their censures and chastisements augmented, instead of overcoming her fault. What she needed, while being firmly dealt with, was intelligent but tender sympathy. She freely gave love and deeply craved it. Her mother understood her and through love easily and perfectly controlled her. When she was about five years old there came into her life a most baleful influence. She was put under the care of an English nurse, named Ann Woolley, who was a good servant when under the eye and immediate direction of her mistress, but, when left alone, being ignorant and superstitious, was utterly unfit to take in hand the training of bright, quick witted children. She at once took a fancy to the youngest of them, little Freddie, but conceived a deep dislike to Mary and her older brother, and undertook to rule them by fear. She frequently told them that they were born to be hung. Thoroughly believing all the superstitious tales of the lower classes of England, she told some of them over and over again in order to terrify into obedience the lively, roguish youngsters temporarily committed to her care. Some of these gruesome stories are too horrible to repeat, but among the milder of them was this, in Mary s own words: " She told every day about a wicked boy, who did not mind his nurse and was haunted by Satan in the shape of a black cat, invisible to all others, which, when he was dying, leaped upon his chest and inhaled his soul in his latest breath. No words can 160 tell my horror and dread of that cat." In the vigor of her mature womanhood she always shrank with a shiver from the fiery eyes of a black cat. This foolish nurse one day took little Mary up upon her knee and gravely said to her, "If you keep on being such a naughty child, you will grow smaller and smaller until at last you will slip into a hole in the ground and go and serve the fairies." Now, as we have already seen, this imaginative child believed fairies to be real beings and this prophetic threat filled her with alarm. Then in an unexpected way the ominous words of her nurse seemingly began to be fulfilled. Her father came into the nursery and ascertained the comparative stature of his children by standing them against the door and making a mark to show the height of each, and said, " I will measure you each month to see who grows the fastest." He of course knew nothing of what the nurse had said to his little daughter. But whenever Ann accused her of being bad, Mary measured herself by putting a book on her head, holding the end of it firmly against the door and slipping from under it. If the book was at her mark on the door she was happy. But one morning she thoughtlessly measured herself before she put on her shoes, and finding the end of the book below her mark, believed that she was growing shorter and her heart sank in despair. The nurse also enforced her commands by punish ment. At times she shut up the two older children in a dark closet, saying to them, " If you make a 161 noise the rats will bite your toes." Mary said, " How many hours have I spent in that closet, hopping from one foot to the other in order to discourage the rats." Why was this permitted? The mother was dead, and the busy father was much of the time away from home, often in England, and Mary s aunt, with whom for a season she lived, burdened with a thousand cares, so long as her little niece was well, which was most of the time, left the motherless child, shy and hot-tem pered, to the tender mercies of that dreaded nurse, who tried to rule her by threatening her with hobgob lins. She was too high-spirited not to rebel at times. She said, " I remember distinctly standing with my back to a lamp-post, angry and determined, and hav ing a passing old gentleman advise me to be good and mind my mother. My mother! I called after him; this is my nurse. ; She often planned to tell her father, when he came home, of Ann s stories and threats, but she herself so devoutly believed in fairies, spooks and goblins dire that in downright terror of Ann her heart failed her, so the abuse went on unchecked. But Mary was called to battle with another adverse influence. In the spring of 1852 her father married Miss Marianne Synear. She was about thirty years old, an orphan with sufficient money to have lived comfortably single. Her parents were English. She was an only child. She never had had any experience that fitted her to care for children. She had however considerable culture and refinement, having taken in 162 New York City a course of training in what was then called a finishing school. She had also the discipline, practical and moral, that came from caring for her widowed mother during a long and painful illness. Take her all in all, she was a woman of a fairly forceful character ; but she was afflicted with deafness, and in disposition was somewhat jealous. If the children of the household conversed with each other and she failed to hear what they were saying, she surmised that they were talking about her. In groundless resentment she often spoke bitterly to them, sharply reproving them for what they had neither said nor done. If Mary s father even kissed her good night it awoke the demon of jealousy in her stepmother. The whole family lived oppressed under a cloud of suspicion. Mary, fond of reading and study, at one time rose at an early hour that she might undisturbed read her Vergil. When her step mother discovered this, she put the breakfast an hour earlier so as to deprive Mary of this privilege. The older son, a bright, playfully mischievous boy, who sometimes reprehensibly enjoyed annoying his sus picious stepmother, before he was ten years old was temporarily driven from his home; his father, to save the peace of the household, putting him into a private school in Newport, R. I., while he, with all the rest of the family, went to England. But the sensitive, sus ceptible Mary, often quivering with pain under groundless suspicion and false accusation, lived on, bearing with heroism her bitter burden, but often 163 finding some relief in tears during the silent watches of the night. She was not of course utterly desolate. When her father, away much of the time on business, came home, he always brought sunshine and cheer into the household. Moreover she had many resources of happiness in herself. Her ear was ever attent to the rapturous voices of nature that cheered her and for considerable periods drove sadness from her heart. And above all she found in her younger brother, whom she ardently loved, a well-spring of contentment and joy. But so deep were the wounds in her heart, unwittingly made by her jealous stepmother, that it took a long time to heal them. For at least ten years after her marriage, if she did anything that she thought might be questioned, she would at once begin an earnest defense of it. When kindly assured that no one for a moment doubted the propriety of what she had done, she would reply, " I was so long found fault with for whatever I did, to defend myself has become a second nature." How easy it is thoughtlessly to wound a sensitive soul, but how difficult it is to obliterate the mischief done! III. MULTIPLICITY OF HOMES A PERMANENT home has unquestionably marked advantages and on the whole may be most desirable; but a multiplicity of residences has also its beneficent 164 educational influences. It refreshes the soul with variety of scene, stimulates thinking by suggesting new ideas, keeps the mind out of ruts, and enlarges our knowledge of men and of society. At all events the subject of this sketch enjoyed to the full what ever advantages may be justly claimed for it. We have already incidentally noted her places of temporary abode in England and the beautiful, his toric scenes which in her early life were there woven forever into her thoughts and became a priceless pos session. But here also in her own country her life was quite freed from monotony by her ever-changing environment. She first opened her eyes in Roxbury, Massachu setts, where she also spent a part of her childhood, and clearly remembered the scenes that then deeply impressed her. She always carried in her mind a picture of the place where she resided. The house was called a cottage, but it had several good sized rooms. It stood in a large garden, full of fruit and enclosed by a high stonewall. " There were rows of currant and raspberry bushes, and apricots were trained upon the walls of the stable " in which she played with her older brother and her cousin, Agnes Mcjannett. She recollected that she slept in a mahogany crib and ate her meals under the charge of a nurse, named Caroline; that her father, returning from England, brought her " a doll as tall as herself, with beautiful wax head, hands and feet, long brown curls and a wire that being pulled opened and shut 165 its eyes;" and that she and her cousin greatly pre ferred their rag dolls with cheeks painted red. She distinctly remembered the long parlor where her father sat Sunday afternoons, reading the Baptist weekly newspaper, and the " fans made of peacock feathers, hanging on each side of the empty fireplace, where the bright andirons were crossed in summer inactivity." Such was one of the homes of her early life, where her every want was met and satisfied, a home filled with, and surrounded by, beautiful objects that min istered to the taste, and above all irradiated by her father s and mother s love. Young as she was, only five years old, its gracious influence followed her to the end of her days. When she was brought home from her second visit to England, her father, who had preceded his family, welcomed them to a house, that he had hired and into which he had moved all their furniture, on Harrison Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. Although a mere child, she remembered how delighted she was with her new mug and her pretty crib, and how elated she was because, for the first time in her life, she was put into a room by herself, in the second story, above the front door and next to the room occupied by her parents. It was here that that dreadful calamity suddenly over took her, the death of her adored mother. Her bitter affliction was somewhat mitigated by the presence in the household of her Aunt Sarah Freeman, her mother s sister. She was about two years younger 166 than her mother, and was " very sweet and kind." Her father also made much of his little daughter, taking her crib into his own room. This house, which at first was to Mary radiant with joy, was in a night transformed into a place of unutterable sadness and gloom. Ever after it seemed to her to be the valley and shadow of death. Anxious to get away from the sad associations of the place where the wife of his early manhood, the idol of his heart, had so suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, in the spring of 1847, Mr. Roberts took his family to Mamaroneck, Westchester County, N. Y., on Long Island Sound, to spend the summer. Mary s remembrance of this temporary home are altogether pleasant. The celebration of the Fourth of July, when early in the morning, some one exploded firecrackers in a barrel under her window, the great Newfoundland dog, the excursions in sailboats on Long Island Sound, the overturning of their boat once as they were coming up to the wharf so that all aboard got a fright and a wetting, but gained the landing without personal injury, during all her after life never faded from her memory. In the autumn she was brought back to Brooklyn and the family lived on Sidney Place, in the house of her Aunt Elizabeth, her father s sister, who was the mother of Agnes Mcjannett, one of her favorite cousins. She and Agnes were about the same age and very fond of each other. They had the freedom of the house. To their unbounded delight they con- 167 stantly played and romped together, attended the same school and received the loving care of Mary s Aunt Sarah Freeman. A year passed by when, in September, 1848, her father made her Aunt Sarah his wife. The testimony is abundant that she was a lovely woman both in face and character. For several years she had been a member of the family and the children were warmly attached to her. They could not love her any more than they had before, but, after her marriage, they called her Aunt Sarah Mama. But she was frail in body, having inherited from her father a tendency to consumption. On account of her delicate health, wishing to remove her from the too exhilarating air of the ocean, Mr. Roberts, early in the summer of 1849, removed to Sing Sing. He took his family into a spacious board ing-house. It was a cool place with a large garden and overlooked the State Prison. Here Mary attended a public school. Here too she had her first sickness, suffering from measles. This, she said, was the first time that she ever remembered to have had an ache or a pain. She recollected the excitement in the board ing-house, when the prison guards tracked across the flower beds, in the garden, some fugitive prisoners that were attempting to escape from " durance vile," and she also distinctly remembered the startling news circulated among the school children, as though it were a dreadful calamity, that one of the little girls in the school had a stepmother. She said, " I had one 1 68 myself, but I never realized it." She did however learn later that there is a vast difference between stepmothers. Late in the season her gentle, loving stepmother passed away. On her death-bed she assured her sor rowing husband that the year just ending had been the happiest of her life and " whispering the twenty- third Psalm she went home." In 1850, when Mary was ten years old, her father, expecting to be away from home, took his children and their nurse, Ann, to Newton Centre, Massachu setts, and established them in a boarding-house, near the home of her Aunt Mary Colby, that, in a general way, they might be under her supervision and care. Here in pleasant surroundings, under the loving watch-care of her favorite aunt, and playing and frolicking with her cousins, Charles and Henry Colby, she spent a happy summer. The wall in front of the Colby estate was then being built and out of the slabs of slate the children constructed mimic wigwams and played Indian. The joyful experiences of that summer were golden threads woven into the warp of her life. Soon after the advent of the deaf and jealous step mother by her father s third marriage, the family lived for a year at Flushing, Long Island. Their house, fairly large and painted white, was pleasant and attractive. Behind it was a large garden, plenti fully stocked with small fruits. There was also an apple orchard and a pasture. On either side of the 169 drive from the highway to the barn was a row of fine old cherry-trees, starred over with blossoms in the spring and red with fruit in the summer. There too the birds nested and sang and feasted. In the barn was a bran-new brougham and in the stable were fine carriage-horses. The children enjoyed many pleasant drives over the country roads. In the house and about the place there were a plenty of servants. Though the stay at Flushing was short, the family enjoyed there freedom, ease and beauty, and the susceptible Mary absorbed all that ministered to her esthetic taste. Her father, still engaged in business in New York, left Flushing early each week-day morning, and, on his return in the evening, his daughter seldom missed greeting him with a fervid kiss. He reciprocated her love with all the warmth of his great heart. His tender affection was for the time being a fairly effec tual foil to the suspicion of her stepmother. The happy days that she spent at Flushing always lingered like sunshine in her heart. Nevertheless in the house at times things were not lovely. Mary said that her new " Mama had never been taught housekeeping and had to depend largely on servants. Finally she added a housekeeper to the lot and had to turn everybody away on account of quarrels. The coachman threatened to stab the housekeeper because she ordered his wife, the cook, about. So I learned by watching the tribulations of my elders, how not to do it." 170 Her next home, on this side of the Atlantic, was just outside the village of Tariffville, Connecticut. The family, returning from England in 1854, thought it unwise to spend the summer at their old residence in Brooklyn. Mary s Uncle Charles Roberts, after the great business panic of 1837, when the dry-goods house of Roberts Brothers failed, went to Tariffville, where he still owned a factory of Marseilles quilts, and for some years superintended it. At last this also closed its doors. He then bought a farm about a mile beyond the village, where he lived in quietude and comfort to the end of his days. He was a large- hearted, generous soul, and he now welcomed under his hospitable roof his brother s family on their return from Europe. They, however, soon rented a vacant cottage, standing in the woods, not far from his house, and continued to live there for three or four years. This solitary residence, surrounded by forests, entered so largely into the life and character of Mary, that she shall herself describe it. " We set up housekeep ing again in this secluded place. A wagon road lead ing up to the cottage wound for a long way through a beautiful wood; but back of the house there was a clearing across which a foot-path ran. Before the house was a garden, and beyond the garden a fringe of pine-trees on the brow of a little elevation, that overlooked a wide landscape. The forest itself was principally of pine and hemlock and so lonely that if we (i. e. we children) heard any one approaching, we turned out of the path and hid in the thicket. But 171 on the edge of the wood, near the house, there was a growth of the Kalmia or mountain laurel, that, in its blooming time, was a glory of white and pink flowers, sculptured like shells. Below these again grew all kinds of violets, but chiefly the large bird s foot variety. The soil was very sandy and nothing grew very well in the garden, but we tried hard to make it yield all sorts of things. Not far away in the meadow was a brook that we crossed on our way to Uncle Charles house. It was quite hidden by trees, as was our whole outside world. This brook was our delight and our playfellow. There the little boys fished and bathed, and there Ned " (her older brother) " set up his water-wheels and other contrivances. " Through the summer we were very happy here. A Mr. Bowles, pastor of the church in Tariffville, came over afternoons and was supposed to tutor us in Latin and other things. I remember that we learned the first declension by his naming the different trees penna, pennae, etc., as he taught us, reclining upon sweet pine needles, on the slope of the hill. We liked him very much, for he was not at all strenuous. And while we did not learn a great deal, we thrived on the sweet summer air, and absorbed the beauty of the wood. " When the two little watermelons that we had raised with difficulty in our barren garden patch were ripe, we showed them to Mr. Bowles and offered him the choice of our treasures. We were quite overcome when he said that he would take both and went home 172 with one under each arm. I have always been sorry that he did this. I doubt if he would have done it had he known that we would remember it for fifty years and more." So the beauty of the forest and flowers, the crystal brook singing on its winding way through the meadow, the Sittings and the songs of the birds, the sandy garden grudgingly responding to their toil were the teachers of these happy children, roaming with free dom in the fields. They there found " tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing." Of parental care they had but little. Their father came home only on Saturday nights; but, to the joy of their hearts, he spent Sundays with them. But the stepmother could never understand these wide awake, bustling children, who by marriage had become her care. Nothing that the two older ones did ever seemed to please her. The older son by degrees grew callous to her censures and at times even received them with merriment, which naturally could not fail to enrage her. Of course neither stepmother nor stepson was wholly right. But least of all could she penetrate the character of her stepdaughter, barely fourteen years old, who preferred to dish-washing, sweeping and dusting, romping in the fields and woods, or reading any book on which she could lay her hands. In reviewing Mary s life up to this time, we find that before she was fourteen years old, she had had, including her places of residence in England, thirteen 173 different homes. Variety in scene and society had been superabundant. Her study of geography was not wholly theoretical but largely experimental; not simply by map but by sight and touch. IV. SCHOOLS ATTENDED To get any adequate understanding of the influ ences by which Mary s character was moulded, we must not only take into account her varied places of abode, but also the schools that she attended, some of which were also her temporary homes. Her parents, with a single exception, sent her to private or select schools. The first was at Roxbury, kept by a teacher who then seemed to her to be very old, but was perhaps not more than twenty-five. The large school-room was divided into two parts by a green baize curtain. She said " the big children were on one side, the little tots on the other. I learned to spell and read. Afterwards I studied Peter Parley s Geography and a little arithmetic on the abacus that hung on the wall, learning to add and subtract by counting its bright balls. I was taught also to sew a little patchwork and made a bedquilt for my doll." This was the beginning of her education in letters, science and practical life. Before she was six years old, she could read with ease. On her sixth birthday a Bible was given her because she could read and pronounce correctly most of the hard words in it. 174 She said: " As I, like most children, woke early in the morning and understood that I must not disturb father s sleep, I became very fond of reading my Bible in bed. My favorite books were Ezekiel and the Revelation, not that I understood what they meant, for I read them as I might have read fairy tales. What I enjoyed was the imagery and sweep of the language. Then, too, since my mother had gone to heaven, I liked to read something about the place where she was." Wherever the family sojourned for a time she was either tutored at home or sent to some school in the neighborhood. In 1847 sne was among the juveniles of Packer Institute, Brooklyn; in 1848 in a district school at Sing Sing. We have however no record of what she learned in these transient spells of schooling. But a mind so alert and receptive could not have failed to add much to its accumulating stores of knowledge. There was, however, one school that she attended, which deserves special consideration on account of its influence upon her whole subsequent career. She spent, as we have already seen, the summer of 1850 at Newton Centre, under the wise and tender oversight of her Aunt Mary Colby, who, noting the baleful in fluence of her nurse upon her mind and heart, in the autumn persuaded her father to send her to the school of the Misses Anable, in Philadelphia. There were four of them, Miss Anna Maria, Miss Hattie, Miss Fanny, and Miss Mary. With them lived their 175 mother, their maiden aunt, Miss Cynthia Sheldon, and their young brother, then studying law, but who after wards was Dr. Courtland Anable of the Baptist minis try. I name them all because each became a force in forming the character of the timid child of ten now committed to their care. Their school, among the many schools for girls then scattered over the country, was noted for its excellence. Among its pupils were the daughters of distinguished missionaries. Abbie Ann Judson, Nellie Bennett and Rosa Gate were there, also a daughter of Samuel F. Smith, the author of our national hymn. Mary was the youngest of the group. Motherless herself, a motherless girl only a little older than she, Helen Sappington of Havre de Grace, Maryland, whose black mourning dress con trasted with her fair skin and golden hair, became her chief friend. On the fourth floor of the house occupied by the Anable family and their school, 311 Walnut Street, " there was," Mary said, " a hall, in which, behind the balustrades of the staircase, and hidden by two large wardrobes from the bedroom doors, was a big old lounge, lighted at one end by a window. How many happy hours have I spent with Nellie in that safe retreat! Perched there we played and read, read the Bible through several times, just to see which could do it the quickest." Such is one of the pictures that she drew of herself and her boon companion in that select school. She thought that Miss Hattie Anable looked like her adored Aunt Sarah Mama and she at once loved 1/6 her with all her heart. Miss Hattie became her spe cial guardian, tenderly caring for her so long as she remained in the school. She learned that the special love of one is better than the general love of four. When she first entered the Philadelphia school, she occupied, with six or seven other girls, a large third- story front room stretching across the whole width of the house. Besides the necessary furniture, there was a large bookcase, filled with books on all sorts of subjects. She says, " It was not long before I lighted on this treasure." In fact she became so absorbed in reading that she quite neglected her studies and her practising on the piano. To correct this fault she was required to practise evenings in the hall, so that her teacher, sitting below in the parlor, could know that she was attending to business. The older girls, bent on fun, dressed themselves up in sheets, poured cologne into their soap dishes, and setting it afire, came in single file, blew out her candle, danced around her, the pale flames of the cologne giving them a ghostly appearance, in order to see how frightened she would be; they knowing that she would neither dare to scream nor to stop playing for fear of Miss Fanny, who was a strict disciplinarian. This gives us another peep into both the discipline and fun of this once famous girls school. After a time Mary was at night separated from the other girls and put into Miss Cynthia s room, to sleep, so that this venerable spinster might superin- 177 tend her toilet operations. She was not only the youngest girl in the school but was very small for her age. Her nurse at home, always having regarded her as a little child, had never taught her to put on her own clothes, had even brushed her teeth for her, and she needed some one to teach her how to care for herself, and none could render this necessary service better than Miss Cynthia, who also undertook with her nostrums to minister to her, when she was over taken with any slight ailment. She was subject to severe nervous headaches. " When these showed themselves," she said, " Miss Cynthia doctored me with all sorts of vile medicine. I remember particu larly the cayenne pepper she used to make me take in a wine-glass of water." Still she was generally happy under her kind and aged caretaker. Opposite their room was a closet under the stairs, where sometimes she hid with books, which she had taken from the library and read them lying on the floor, propping her head on her hands. She said, " Shelley I liked best, though of course 1 did not understand him. I also read Keats, Jane Eyre, Shakespeare and all the rest." When her head ached severely she was excused from her classes. So she declares, " I became so entranced with Lalla Rookh, that in order to cut school and finish it, I banged my head against the door till I could truth fully say I had a headache." At that time she had but a slight appreciation of the perversity of such conduct. The sharp conviction of that came later. 178 But she goes on to say, " In the meantime Miss Hattie allowed me to read Plutarch s Lives and Sparks United States History, which doubtless served as a balance. I remember very well sitting on a cricket in her room and swallowing whole Uncle Tom s Cabin." And she was not yet quite twelve years old. Surely this thirst for reading the best English litera ture was somewhat extraordinary in a girl of that age, who had never had any permanent home, nor any persistent intellectual drill and for a large part of her life had been under the care of an ignorant, supersti tious nurse. Moreover, she says that her father did all he could to spoil her. He bought her everything she asked for, and she was very proud of her bronze boots and kid gloves. When visiting her in Philadelphia, he brought a champagne basket full of gifts. Among them, she says, were " a bag of red and white sugar hearts, fruit and cakes, nuts and candy, everything that Papa thought I would like. So all the girls, that had not gone home for the holidays, had a feast. But the next day, Miss Cynthia, her wig on one side of her head and her cap on the other as usual, found it necessary to administer salts and senna to at least one sick child." While at school in Philadelphia she enjoyed some outside social privileges. At either of two houses in the city she occasionally spent a Saturday afternoon. One of them was the home of Miss Margie Robertson, a day scholar, whose uncle, while in China, made the acquaintance of Mary s uncle there. Hence the tie between them; the other was the pleasant, attractive residence of Mrs. Weir, a warm friend of her Aunt Georgette. She says, " There was a garden that I enjoyed to the full, not having even a flower in a pot at the school." Moreover she spent her long vacation, in the sum mer of 1851, in Brookline, Massachusetts, with her numerous uncles, aunts and cousins, who resided there. They had pleasant homes with attractive grounds. Most of them had intimately known her mother, whom they highly esteemed and ardently loved, and for her sake they naturally made much of her only daughter. That summer was a bright and happy spot in Mary s early life. Dr. Fife of Woodstock, Ontario, who mar ried her mother s Aunt Rebecca, was there. He loved to take long walks and often took her along with him. " He knew," she said, " all the flowers of the region, but if he was at a loss for the name of a flower, I always had one ready at the tip of my tongue." This declara tion reveals an important fact in her life. From her girlhood she was a practical botanist. Wherever she went she very soon became acquainted with every flower, shrub and tree and called each one by its com mon or scientific name, usually by both. In her own words, "I had a very lovely summer. Aunt Susie took me with her to visit the sick and the poor. The pastor at that time was Dr. Shailer, who had a lame little daughter. We used to gather raspberries in the garden for her and I was allowed to carry them to the 1 80 parsonage. There were in this garden some old apple- trees with low branches. In one of them I had a favorite corner where I could sit on one limb and rest my feet on another. Though the apples were green they never seemed to hurt me, and I often had a lunch of Aunt Susie s nice fluted gingerbread, which she kept in a certain tin box for my delectation. In a little room upstairs were cases full of books, belonging to Uncle Daniel. These too were devoured in my nest in the apple-tree." In 1852 she left the school in Philadelphia, where she had spent two years. She did not while there wake up to the importance of careful hard study. She had done but little if any of it up to the time when she bade good-by to the City of Brotherly Love. But the passion for reading had been fanned to a fiercer flame and burned on till the end of her earthly life. Many years afterwards she gave her estimate of the school of the Misses Anable in the following words: " It was a real old-fashioned girls school. We spoke nothing but French at meals, or were supposed to do so. We went to walk two and two with a teacher at each end of the line, and the little boys in the street occasionally called us the menagerie. We learned to play a little on the piano, to draw a little, in fact to do a little of everything. The best thing however that came to us was our association with four highly cultivated Christian ladies, who really tried to make good and fine women out of us." We find her next in a private school at Flushing, 181 Long Island, kept by a Quaker family in their own house. Here she went on with her French. Having been required by the Misses Anable to speak that language more or less while in Philadelphia, she found her knowledge of it quite equal to that of the daughter of the house, who now undertook to teach her. She was soon promoted to read alone with her instructor the history of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome. It was easy French and she was at once deeply interested in the biographical events narrated. She took her copy of the book home and read it through in a single evening. This quite upset her tall, sandy-haired, angular teacher, who wanted her to read only half a page a day. The other things taught her were much like those that she had been called upon to learn in Philadelphia. She says, " We were taught a lot of things that were of no particular use to us in our more mature life; a little drumming on the piano, a good deal of fine stitching, which the sewing machine has superseded, the making of ugly embroideries at the risk of our eyes, the preserving of fruit in the most expensive manner, which the process of canning and the large importation of fruit have made almost obsolete. All these things we learned and hated." Her most important training in school now demands our attention. In 1854 the family was at Tariffville, Connecticut. The stepmother grew more and more weary of the two older children. The tension was near the breaking point. To relieve it and avoid a 182 catastrophe, Mr. Roberts decided to send his older son to school at Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson River, and his daughter to a " Female Academy " at Hudson, a small but thriving and beautiful city, the capital of Columbia County, N. Y., on the east bank of the Hudson River, thirty-six miles south of Albany. Its environment was attractive; the broad river, with its steamboats and sailing craft constantly passing up and down stream, was a stimulating sight. The Academy was a private enterprise, built up, and pre sided over, by Rev. John B. Hague, an accurate scholar and an enthusiastic teacher. When Mary entered this Academy she found her self among about thirty or forty young women. Speaking of her first experience there she said: " I was a very shy little girl of fourteen, very small for my age, with no education to speak of except a smat tering of French, a little Latin and Watts on the Mind." Her discursive education, her general knowl edge of things, was probably beyond that of most of her associates; but that did not materially help her in the specific studies which now confronted her. She was quite ignorant of arithmetic; she herself declares that she hardly knew the multiplication table, yet her teachers put her into algebra and followed that with geometry and trigonometry. This was probably done because it was so set down in the prescribed course of study. When* she began her work at Hudson she had but little self-confidence. She says, " I had been told all 183 my life, first by Ann, my nurse, and then by my step mother, that I was stupid, awkward, unreliable and good for nothing generally. I was afraid to say that my soul was my own, unless some one hurt my feelings and then I was often thrown into a passion. I loved and enjoyed nature and was living a life in books quite apart from the daily routine. I was profoundly unhappy. Mama did not love me. My father could not show me any endearment without exciting her jealousy. I used often to add to my evening devotions a prayer that I might die." It was a sad day to her when she was left alone at Hudson. But soon she says, " A fair-haired girl about my own age, with the loveliest blue eyes, came to me and said, We are both strangers, let us be friends, and led me out into the natural life of a boarding- school student." She now discovered that the young ladies, into whose society she had been thrown, were very con siderate of each other. Several of the older ones were devoted Christians. They established a Saturday evening prayer-meeting in one of their rooms and talked to the younger students that attended it in the most direct and loving way, and led them gently into the kingdom of our Lord. She soon came to love warmly these happy, earnest Christian young women, who were so solicitous for the salvation of all in the school. While she was always very reticent about her deepest, most sacred experiences, it is pretty clear that here her heart was touched and transformed by 184 the Spirit of God. From that time she was always on the most intimate terms with her Saviour. She no more doubted His constant and intimate presence with her than she did the beating of her heart or the acts of her will. To hear her pray was an inspiration, since it brought one into the immediate presence of our divine Lord. What intellectual work did this Academy require of its students? As I write, its four years course of study lies before me. In it Latin, Mathematics, Ancient History, the English Classics and Intellectual and Moral Science were specially emphasized, while in the last year of the course French and German were required. It was a good disciplinary course of study, such as was in vogue in those days. This course Mary and her intimate life-long friend, Miss Sophie L. Savage, completed in three years. The latter writes me, " Mary was a hard-working, conscientious ^student. We often dug out our Latin and mathemat ics together, and there was a small circle of us, who greatly enjoyed reading together the best English literature." This comradeship in study may have been carried too far for the highest good of all. It is often very beneficial to the one in the group that leads, but is apt to be quite detrimental to those that dependency follow. Mary has left her testimony, which throws a sidelight on what occurred in her immediate coterie. She said, " I was again the youngest in my class but I got along pretty well in most of my studies, being 185 carried bodily through my mathematics by Sophie and Rose, who did my examples if I would help them read their Latin." The leader in each case walked ahead without help, while those that followed must have gone on crutches, probably losing power as they hobbled on behind. But in spite of all drawbacks, Mary acquired in this school real intellectual discipline, the power to think clearly and consecutively and to express her thoughts in a simple, direct, forceful style. Poetic in temperament, a strain that flowed down to her from her maternal grandfather, she responded to a like strain in her gifted teacher and began to write in verse, many stanzas of which had the imaginative, creative touch of genuine poetry. A single specimen from her many early effusions, will confirm and illus trate what I say. The following poem on Forests was written before she was seventeen. Standing by river side, Bathed by the ocean s tide, Far o er the country wide, Lovely and green ! Waving now branches light, Now plumes as dark as night, Shading the fountains bright, Forests are seen. Birds, with their joyous lay, Brooks, singing on their way, Winds, with the leaves at play, Fill them with song ! 1 86 Moss, soft to squirrels feet, Wild rose and lily sweet, The hare and rabbit fleet, To them belong. They stand as temples grand, Pure from their Maker s hand, Through every clime and land, Pointing to Heaven ; They lift their heads on high, Resting against the sky, E er Him to glorify, Who them has given. And when the Autumn flings Joy from her rosy wings, And clothes all earthly things In her rich dyes, Doffing its mantle green, Robed as of earth the queen, The wood awhile is seen, Till Autumn flies. Like hues that sometimes grace A pale but lovely face, Fading away apace, As the life wanes ; Beauteous they meet the eye, Hiding the ills that lie Seeming far off, yet nigh, Till power death gains. And though through Winter drear, Hung with the icy spear, Their leaves all brown and sere, The forests stand ; 187 Yet when returning Spring The song-bird back shall bring, Their green shade shall they fling Far through the land. Thus in the darksome grave We lay the good and brave, Returning what He gave Unto the Giver ; Rising from death s cold night Into the Heaven s blessed light, Sorrows all put to flight, They live forever. While at Hudson one social force outside the school did much toward cultivating her tastes and moulding her character. About twenty-five miles down the river there lived at Ellerslie, an estate near Rhinebeck, Mr. and Mrs. William Kelly and his sister, Miss Mary Jane. Mr. Kelly, having inherited a fortune, bought this attractive place of several hundred acres. On it was a large, white colonial mansion, on three sides of which were wide unroofed piazzas. It stood so high that from it the river could be seen for a long distance as it wound toward the sea. There were near it ex tensive green-houses. The table was supplied from them with foreign grapes, pineapples, early straw berries and vegetables. Every morning during the winter, trays of flowers were brought into the house, which made the rooms a continual bower of beauty and fragrance. There were also times in spring and autumn when the gardens and groves were a dream of 1 88 beauty. In short, Ellerslie was Mary s ideal of all that was picturesque and lovely. Mr. Kelly was a warm personal friend of her father and about once a month invited her to spend Saturday and Sunday under his roof. The lavish kindness which she met there, all that she saw and heard con tributed not only to her happiness but also to her development of mind and heart. She met there Miss Julia Stuart, who became a life long friend. Miss Stuart was the daughter of a New York artist, and an orphan. The Kellys out of sheer benevolence had in fact adopted her all but in name. Here is a picture of Mary s glad fellowship with her friend, drawn by her own hand. They had a copy of Longfellow s Hiawatha, which had just come from the press, and together they read it through one winter afternoon. " We snuggled among the cushions of the big, dark green velvet sofa-settee, which was drawn up in front of a great wood fire always blazing during the winter in the fireplace of the long dining-room. Major, the St. Bernard, made a comfortable foot stool, and Gyp, the pet ring-dove, lighted on Julia s shoulder or strutted, cooing, up and down the back of the sofa. I never see the book, Hiawatha, without recalling the whole scene, the great fire, the long windows on both sides, six of them in all, each, with its beautiful wintry view of the grounds or the river, the organ, with its gilded pipes, at the end of the room, the sideboard, heavy with plate and decanters, and old Jim, the mulatto butler, with his frosty head, 189 stealing in and out like a shadow." The gracious influence of this Christian home must have a large place among the educative forces that shaped the character and life of Mary. V. GRADUATION, CHOSEN PURSUIT, BAPTISM AND MARRIAGE THE last of June, 1857, before her seventeenth birthday, she graduated from the Academy at Hud son. She calls it a " pleasant school." Mr. Hague and the other teachers at least " taught me how to study." She was sorry to leave her dear friends and text-books. She would have gladly gone on for many years, but as that was impossible, she went back to Simsbury, near Tariffville, " to the cottage, to Mama and to all her perplexities." So she puts it. Still she acknowledges that she learned, during the year after her graduation, more or less about cooking, sewing and caring for the house. Immediately after her graduation from the Acad emy she was quite determined to make teaching her life-work. Through her Uncle Gardner Colby, she made a verbal contract to teach Latin in a private school of high grade. But her father failed to appre ciate the dignity of her chosen pursuit. He could not bear the thought that his only daughter should sup port herself by any employment. She loved him tenderly and since he so emphatically disapproved of 190 her teaching, she asked to be released from her en gagement and reluctantly abandoned her purpose. At this time she was also earnestly considering the question of making an open profession of her faith and uniting with some church. All the circumstances of her life had led her to do her own thinking and she now determined that she would not become a Baptist just because her father and mother were. So she secured and attentively read anti-Baptistic books, that she might know, and carefully consider the views of scholarly pedo-Baptist authors, secretly desiring that those views might prove altogether convincing and satisfactory. But after having read and conned them with open mind, she was still in doubt. So she turned to the New Testament, concluding to follow its teach ings whithersoever they might lead her. In 1858 a great revival of religion swept over the country. Young men from Hartford came to Tariffville and held a protracted meeting. She now decided to con fess her Lord in what she believed to be His own appointed way, and asked the Baptist Church at Tariffville for baptism and church membership. She and her two brothers, on a lovely Sunday morning in April, were baptized in the Farmington River, that, not far away, flowed by their cottage in the wood. Whenever she called up this incident in her life, she claimed that she was not an hereditary Baptist, but by independent investigation became one from con viction, against her natural inclination. To her great joy she spent six weeks of the follow- 10! ing summer with her Aunt Mary Colby at Newton Centre, Massachusetts. There she enjoyed the society of her cousins, one of whom was engaged to be married, another, a jolly fellow, had just graduated from Brown University, and another was to enter the University in the fall. Her aunt, to enhance the pleasure of them all, sent for her cousin, Agnes Mcjannett, with whom Mary had played in her child hood and who was specially dear to her, taking in her affections the place of a sister. These young people, brimming over with all sorts of fun, had the freedom of the Colby buildings and grounds, and each day brought to them fresh delights. Mary felt that she had been ushered into an earthly paradise. The warm affection of her aunt, her occasional visits to her Great-grandmother Kendall and her Aunt Susie at Brookline, the mirthful group of which she was a conscious part, their daily round of jointly contrived amusements in the house, the barn, the orchard and the wood gave her a new view of family life. She declared it to be the happiest time of her girlhood. But this bright, delightful summer was soon over and Mary went back to her home and her stepmother at Simsbury. Near the close of 1859, a New York dry-goods firm requested her father to open for them a branch house in St. Louis. Yielding to their solicitation, he removed his family thither. They made the journey from their Connecticut home by easy stages, stopping for a few days at Ellerslie on the Hudson in the attrac- 192 tive home of the Kellys, spending Christmas in Detroit, tarrying a day or two in Chicago, which was then being lifted up in sections out of the mud by jack-screws, and travelling through Illinois on the thirty-first of December. To Mary, passionately fond of the hills and mountains of New England, the journey was unattractive and disappointing. She said, " I have never forgotten how utterly dreary and forlorn the winter landscape seemed to me as we rode through Illinois, always the same, sometimes a little station with a man or two and a dog on the platform, great prairies stretching to the horizon, partly rough stubble land, partly covered with snow. If this were the West, I saw all I wanted of it on the last day of the year 1859." Later in life this esti mate was replaced by another, when she had explored the still greater West, gazed on the snow-crowned Sierra Nevada, the gorgeous wonders of the Grand Canon of the Colorado, the entrancing views of the Yosemite Valley and the sublimities of the Canadian Rockies. Arriving at St. Louis Saturday night, the family put up at the Planter s Hotel. I was then pastor of the Second Baptist Church of that city. The next day the children with their father worshipped with us. That was the first time that I saw Mary. She was then a rosy-cheeked young woman with black hair, and black, or very dark, eyes. She was a good listener, such as always helps the preacher. Meeting her during that week at an evening party, she asked 193 for the reasons of certain declarations that I had made in my sermon on Sunday. I gave her the information that she sought and was delighted to find that I had a hearer who was so intelligent and inquisitive. She soon became a teacher in the Sunday School. She was given a class of girls from twelve to fifteen years of age and in a few weeks had the great joy of seeing them all converted and baptized. A few months passed by and I found myself mak ing rather frequent calls at her father s house. In short, we loved and plighted to each other our undying affection. She was at that time nearly twenty-one; I was twenty-nine. On April 23, 1861, we were married. The wedding was strictly private. Only a few of our respective families that chanced to be in St. Louis, together with some very intimate personal friends, were invited. A few weeks before, Mary s younger brother, to whom with unusual tenderness she was attached, had died. The state of the stricken family forbade any public ceremony. Rev. Melvin Jameson, of Alton, Illinois, a college mate of mine, officiated. At the time all Missouri was seething with political excitement and St. Louis was rent in twain between the Secessionists and Unionists. Already Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, under the fire of rebel guns had surrendered and threatening war clouds were gathering over our city. So we were wedded in dark and troublous days. There had been some violent outbreaks in St. Louis and such was the temper of the public mind that I 194 did not feel justified in being absent from my church and congregation for more than eight or ten days. So we began our honeymoon by taking an evening train for Cincinnati. Our first journey as husband and wife was marked by one ludicrous but disagreeable event. There were no sleeping cars, so we occupied two seats, bolstering ourselves up as comfortably as we could with cushions and shawls. We were just insensibly slipping into the land of nod, when the great watering hose, with which they had just filled the steam-boiler, carelessly left in a horizontal position, as the cars moved on, poured its full stream of water against the windows of our coach. The impact broke our .window and drenched us from head to foot. Our plight though serious was at the same time so comic that we in voluntarily broke out into laughter. My wife wore a poplin travelling dress, which, drying during the night, shrank amazingly. So when we reached our destination, early the next morning, her dress was so shrivelled up that she looked like anything but a bride. We at first were merry over our dilapidated appear ance, and then patriotically thrilled as we looked on that great city of Southern Ohio, blossoming with star-spangled banners. When we left St. Louis the evening before, there were in that whole city only two national banners hung out to the public gaze, but at the rising of the sun we saw this neighboring city, where from every house, office, store and public build ing the stars and stripes were flung to the breeze. 195 That universal, spontaneous expression of loyalty and patriotism stirred our souls to their depths, and that glad hour could never be forgotten. Having spent a delightful week in and around Cincinnati, we returned to St. Louis. When we reached the ferry landing opposite the city, we were quite surprised to find several deacons of the church there to greet us. We saw at a glance that they were sober and anxious. And this is the explanation of it. The Sunday evening before our marriage, unable any longer to hold in silence my patriotic views, even to preserve the public peace, I had preached an out and out sermon against secession and in favor of main taining the Union. It was the first pulpit utterance of the kind heard in our city. And to cap the climax, we sang at the close of the service, My Country, tis of Thee. This, as might have been expected, incited to wrath the rougher and specially vindictive element of the Secessionists. On the Sunday night of our absence, a vengeful crowd gathered in the streets by my church to chastise me. They belonged to that class of Southern men who, in that day, answered an oppo nent s arguments by putting a bullet through him. They began that Sunday night by throwing a brickbat through a window opposite the pulpit, but, learning in some way that I was not there, disappointed of their prey, they, cursing their luck, sullenly dispersed. My good deacons had come to the ferry to persuade me, if possible, to prolong my wedding tour, fearing that my 196 home-coming just then might court disaster. But I assured them that I had no fear, and contended that those comprising that mob, controlled by the floating gossip of the hour, had utterly mistaken the spirit of my sermon, and to correct their misapprehension, I would at once publish it. So, returning to my house, without a moment s delay, I sat down by my study- table and never rose till I had written out in full that offending discourse. The next morning it appeared in the Missouri Republican, a Democratic paper, a Semi-secession sheet, that all the disloyal eagerly read. The perusal of my sermon quelled, as I thought it would, for the time being, the mob spirit. This discourse, that disturbed somewhat our honeymoon, afterwards became a part of Moore s Rebellion Record. VI. MEETING NEW RESPONSIBILITIES WE must now note how the youthful bride met her new and onerous responsibilities. When she became the mistress of my home, she found there, heartily to greet her, an older sister of mine, Mrs. Lucy Whelan, who for months had presided over my household with rare tact and fidelity; also a daughter of my sister, a bright, active school-girl. Henry C. Leach, one of my young deacons, was also living with me. My sister and niece stayed with us for several weeks and were a great help and comfort to Mary. At last they re- 197 turned to their home in Western New York and the youthful deacon left, lured by enterprises farther West. We were now alone, and Mary was not only in name but in reality sole mistress of her new home. The house on Chestnut, second door from Thir teenth, Street, opposite a livery stable, was one in a continuous brick block, built out to the sidewalk. Nearly all of St. Louis at that time was red brick, brick stores, brick houses, brick sidewalks. Our hired house had three stories with a two-story L, surrounded by a gallery in Southern fashion; this made the back rooms dark. In fact the whole house was a rather dismal place, with heavy old-fashioned furniture, and the light quite effectually shut out from the parlors by sombre rep curtains. When my bride found herself in sole possession, she at once made some changes that added not a little to my comfort and efficiency. My study had been on the ground floor, immediately over the basement kitchen, in the dreary back parlor, with only one window, looking out on a backyard, paved with those ubiquitous, ugly red bricks. She contended that such an unattractive, unpoetical environment must be a handicap to the. making of decent sermons. So she transferred the books, chairs and study-table to the front room on the second floor, into which the sunlight streamed through two large windows. It was the most cheerful, heartsome room in the house. She herself often sat with me in the new study. Having acquired a smattering of the Greek grammar, 198 she joined me in reading the Greek New Testament. She says in her reminiscences of those days: " My husband did all the work and I learned quite a good deal following his reading. It was a pleasant break in the morning s duties for me to go into the study and look up words in the dictionary. After awhile I could read my verse in turn fairly well. We kept this up for a long time. I often brought in the baby to play on the rug while we read." This is a side light on " the elect lady " of the manse. But she allowed nothing to trench on her domestic duties. She kept her whole house firmly in hand and, without friction, it was well ordered. It was always tidy and attractive. Little, but important, things, the tasteful grouping of the furnishings and colors of a room, bouquets of flowers deftly arranged, made it inviting and restful, and it was ever irradiated by the sunshine of her heart. However humble in some respects it might have been, its atmosphere of love was manifest to all. When she came into my household I had an adopted boy, Thomas Calvert. He was an orphan that I found one day when making pastoral calls. He was a bright little fellow, full of mischief, and did, for a child, a good deal of clear thinking. The care of him was no inconsiderable burden, and I hesitated to lay it upon my young bride. But no objection to this responsibility fell from her lips. Gladly accepting the task as from her divine Lord, she took the child at once into her heart. She became to him a true, 199 affectionate mother, and he found rest and joy in her tender love. But the blood of poor Tommie was tainted with scrofula, which at first manifested itself in hip-disease. This was very painful and at times exceedingly offen sive, yet for months she was his patient, gentle nurse. She was so full of sympathy for the suffering child that she suffered with him, taking up into herself his manifold distresses. From this attack he became a cripple and went on crutches the rest of his short life; but under her teaching, he very early became a true believer in Jesus as his Saviour, and in that faith he passed on to the " better country." While she nursed and tenderly cared for the adopted, invalid boy, God blessed her with two sons of her own. As in the case of every true wife, capable of bearing children, maternity was to her an unmixed joy. The coming into her arms of healthful, sturdy children gave her exquisite happiness. But while her cares were thus multiplied and her responsibilities greatly augmented, she never lost, even for an hour, her sweet serenity of spirit. But her cares extended beyond her own servants and children. We tried to cultivate the grace of Christian hospitality, as we believed every Christian pastor should do. We often welcomed strangers to our home, and many times rich was our reward. We were delighted to entertain for several days Rev. Mr. Wiberg and wife of Sweden. For many years he was the celebrated leader of the Baptists of that country. 200 Every hour of their stay was a joy and blessing to us. I remember also that Dr. C. F. Tolman, a returned missionary from Assam, and Dr. Hiscox of New York at different times tarried with us for awhile and left behind them the pleasantest of memories. But in this life we have alternately light and shade, the sweet and the bitter. So a man claiming to have been a college mate of mine, of whom I had at the best but the dimmest recollection, pulled our door-bell and asked for entertainment. He was received and stayed for a full week. He was getting together a steamboat load of horses to take to market somewhere on the lower Mississippi. He made himself quite at home in my library. He read my Shakespeare and freely made annotations on the margins of the leaves, utterly spoiling for me the plays that he read. As much as we gloried in being hospitable, we were not sorry politely to say good-by to that college-bred horse- trader. An utter stranger came to us. He proved to be an excellent Christian man and rendered some service in a city mission that I was caring for. But he never seemed to work very hard. He was evidently poor in pocket and liked the abode into which he had unceremoniously drifted. He stayed for three months and then regretfully departed, when Mary, whose patience had never given away, diffidently and gently told him that she was sorry to disturb him, but that she must really have the room he occupied to enter- 20 1 tain some friends that were coming from a distance to see her. Mary was gifted in her practice of hospitality. She was naturally social and brimming over with good will. Widely read, she was an entertaining conver sationalist. Bright and witty in repartee, she put her guests at ease and provoked their mirth. She had that priceless knack of making them feel perfectly at home. Being a glad hostess, she made glad guests. While efficiently caring for her new home in St. Louis, she now, as the pastor s wife, entered with augmented zeal into church work. She did not how ever, young as she was and comparatively a stranger, assume to be a leader. Naturally modest and shrink ing, she was glad to do whatever came to her hand, following the lead of those who were older and who for many years had shaped and guided the activities of the women in the church. The Civil War then raging, their labors became broader and more manifold than ever before. To the full measure of her strength, she bore her part with others in scraping lint and preparing bandages for the army surgeons, in feeding and clothing the refugees, both white and colored, that in great numbers streamed into St. Louis, and in caring for sick and wounded soldiers in the hos pitals. She was intensely patriotic. The blood of the Pilgrim fathers ran in her veins. She hated slavery. She was ready to make any sacrifice to help her country then in its Gethsemane, sweating great drops of blood. She was constantly working to pro- 202 mote the welfare and happiness of the volunteer soldiers. She even saved all valuable papers and magazines that came into the house and distributed them among the soldiers encamped in, or near, the city, and often gave them to regiments marching by our door. Her fervid love of country at times broke forth into songs that appeared in influential journals and were widely read. She had of course some trials. Who, that is worth anything, has not? Some of the church born and bred in the South and strongly pro-slavery in sentiment, openly disapproved of her, and even refused to asso ciate with her. She uncomplainingly bore such rude and senseless rebuffs. She expressed no resentment either in word or act. With quiet dignity she kept on about her own work; in fact, at times she seemed to be genuinely amused with conduct that was so mani festly absurd. Those who thus refused to recognize her were very few in number; the great mass of the church heartily welcomed her. In her reminiscences of those days she says, " The whole city was like a house rocked by a cyclone. Every action and thought was influenced by the national crisis. It even affected my church life as wife of the pastor. When it was understood that he was to marry the newcomer from the East, who had been quite unguarded in answering leading questions as to her views on the burning problems of the day and utterly unsuspicious of the reputation of being an abolitionist, then so easily manufactured, the Southern 203 element rose up in protest. . . . Some of them received me kindly and were always my good friends, but others never spoke to me again." At times she was feverishly anxious for my safety. My life was threatened. Warnings from friendly sources were repeated again and again that there was a conspiracy to take it. I was urged not to go out nights. But she never asked me to flee from apparently imminent danger, but stood bravely by my side, urging me, in spite of any disaster that might come, to do faithfully my whole duty to our church, our adopted city and our country. One of the many scenes of which she was a part will reveal her flaming patriotism in the days of the war for the maintenance of the Union. She says: " When the nation was greatly depressed by a series of defeats and the criticisms of the grumblers, a meeting was called at Mercantile Library Hall to endorse the action of the government in carrying on the war. There was a great crowd of intensely loyal people packed into the largest hall in the city. We listened to speakers who passionately poured forth their thoughts, but the climax was reached when a woman in white, carrying the stars and stripes, sang The Star-Spangled Banner. The whole assembly rose to their feet; handkerchiefs were waved; every demonstration seemed too powerless to express our swelling emotions. We broke down in tears as we joined in the chorus, which then meant so much to us. 204 :< Tis the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave, O er the land of the free and the home of the brave." They who did not live in those times may love their country and their flag, but we almost adored them. They then personified our life, our liberty and our sacred honor." VII. CHANGE OF PLACE AND OCCUPATION BUT our stay in St. Louis was hastening to an end. I had already suffered from fever which took me for three months from my pastorate. I proposed to resign, but my church refused to listen to it and voted me a year s absence. I took about eight months of it, spending that time with Mary and our children in Wisconsin and on the Southern Shore of Lake Superior. Having regained, as I believed, my usual vigor, I returned to my manifold labors as preacher and pastor in a city still torn by political factions and filled with helpless, suffering victims of the ruth less war. For a time my work was a luxury and a joy, but a few months sufficed to show that a change to some different line of mental activity would be wisest and best. An altogether unexpected call to the chair of Homiletics, Church Polity and Pastoral Duties came to me from Newton Theological Institution. After long and anxious deliberation I decided to accept it. In the summer of 1866, I went with my 205 family to Newton Centre, Massachusetts. We stopped for a few days in Brockport, Western New York, where our dear adopted boy was attacked with brain disease and died. We sent his body back to St. Louis for burial in Bellefontaine Cemetery and we went on our way to Newton with sad and chastened hearts. There, in the autumn, I began my work as a theolog ical professor. To Mary this change of residence was most grate ful. She was now near the place of her birth. Here lived her favorite aunt, Mrs. Gardner Colby. She and her generous husband, when we came, received us under their hospitable roof with open hearts and arms. We secured a dwelling-house not far from them, on the same street. To get away from the dust and turmoil of a great smoky city and sit down amid the quietude and beauty of Newton was to my wife an unspeakable delight. She at once took on new life. Her pen was soon busy. It broke out into song. She sang the glories of the old pine-tree that stood by the gate. To the delight of her little sons, she poured forth a dirge over the black Spanish hen, that died of a broken heart because a malodorous prowler devoured all her chicks; and at night she sang her babies to sleep with original lullabies. Her happiness was also greatly enhanced by her father s fourth marriage. He wooed and wedded in London a daughter of a retired officer of the English army. She was only three or four years older than Mary and was a lady of gentle, refined manners, 206 with a great, warm, loving heart. Stepmother and stepdaughter at once fell in love with each other, and in each other s society were the happiest of women. But this exquisite joy that came so suddenly into Mary s life as suddenly departed. A few months after her warm, cordial welcome into the family, this greatly beloved stepmother passed away. We all deeply suffered from her departure, but it was an especially bitter grief to her stepdaughter. During the first two years of my professorship at Newton another shadow at times rested on our happi ness. By my harassing labors in St. Louis, my health had been considerably impaired. The trustees of Newton Theological Institution generously granted me a year s absence in Europe that I might regain my normal strength. Then the question arose whether I should go alone or take wife and children with me. This Mary herself decided. It would have been heroic for her to have remained at home, but it was still more heroic for her to go. We now had three children. The oldest was six, the youngest, a precious little daughter, was barely six months old. Yet Mary, insisting that I was too ill properly to care for myself, gently but resolutely insisted on going with me. She had her way, which proved to be wisest and best. Early in the spring of 1868, we took our priceless brood with the necessary bags and baggage and sailed to Europe. After spending a few days in England, we pushed on up the Rhine and finally made our way to Heidelberg. Here under the shadow of its cele- 207 brated university, near the ruins of its famous castle, charmed with the fruitful, intensely cultivated valley of the Neckar and amid vine-clad hills we spent the summer of 1868. It was a beautiful and restful place. Each day furnished us some new, pleasant and instruct ive experience and it was with some regret that in the early autumn we turned our backs on this ancient historic city and went to Berlin. Here for four or five months we settled down and together studied German, under the guidance of a very accomplished lady teacher. To test our acquisition of the language we translated into English a pamphlet, written by the German Baptist pastor of the city, giving a history of his church and setting forth its pressing financial needs. He used our translation in raising money in the United States to carry forward his church enter prise. We also orally translated a treatise of about sixty pages in which the author contended that Ger man was destined to become the universal language, and that at no distant day Germany would politically dominate the whole world. We heard the same notions expressed and advocated at our table. And this was before the German Empire was founded. So what we hear now of the universal prevalence of German " kultur " is hardly new. The current of our life was now divided and for three or four months flowed in two channels. I met at Berlin some American students, who were planning to visit Egypt, Palestine and Syria, and they urged me to accompany them. This, at first blush, I decided 208 that I could not do. It would be akin to cruelty to leave Mary alone in a strange land to care for our children, while I made such an enticing trip. But when she learned of the invitation, she insisted that I must accept it; that probably I would never have another such opportunity. I finally reluctantly yielded to her wishes. We went first to Dresden, where she and the children were established in comfort able quarters. When they had become wonted to their surroundings, I joined the party from Berlin on their way to the Orient. This self-forgetfulness for my sake strikingly reveals Mary s character. From the day of our betrothal she was always laboring, often quite regardless of her own comfort, to enhance my happiness and usefulness. I strove to pay her in the same coin, but she manifestly outstript me. Within ten days after I left her in Dresden our oldest son came down with the measles. The family that kept the pension were unduly frightened. She had instanter to seek other accommodations, which she speedily found to her own advantage. She was always resourceful in trying exigencies. When this flurry was over she determined to get, in my absence, a fair mastery of German. She bought Liibke on Art, read ten pages of it every day and visited the Art Gallery two or three times a week to apply to the paintings and sculpture there the principles of art that she had learned. So while she was acquiring the language she was at the same time enlarging her knowledge of 209 art. She also read German novels and employed a German nurse, who was absolutely ignorant of English, and so could speak with her only in German. When I returned from the East she could speak German fluently. Moreover, indulging her propensity for travel, she had explored the beauties of Saxon Switzerland. After nearly four months, the longest period of separation from each other during our married life, I returned to my wife and children. In Athens I parted with my companions in travel. They went to Constantinople, I to Syracuse, Sicily, and from there up through Italy, and over the Alps in a diligence to Zurich. There I met Mary and our little ones, who a few days before had come over from Dresden to meet me. All except the baby were quite well. Her stupid nurse had fed her ham and she nearly died of cholera infantum, but was now happily convales cent. Our cup of joy overflowed. Mary, narrating her experiences, said that every Monday morning but one since my departure she received a letter from me. This was a happy but strange incident. I was going farther and farther from Dresden, making no plan to have my missives reach her at any given time, but He who determines the fall of a sparrow so di rected events that the lonely wife and mother received, save once, a letter from me each Monday morning for about four months. We soon went over to Lucerne and to neighboring cities and cantons. Together we walked to the top 210 of Rigi and, before reaching the summit, were caught in a snow-storm which made walking difficult, es pecially for a lady. We stayed over night at the tip top hotel, that in the morning we might see the great snow-capped mountains flushed and gilded with the first rays of the rising sun. It was an entrancing sight. But Mary was so lame from the previous day s struggles through the snow that she had to be carried down the mountain on a litter. But she greatly en joyed this novel experience. At last we reluctantly turned our backs on these scenes of mingled beauty and sublimity and went westward to Berne, Geneva, Lyons and Paris and northward to London and Liverpool, stopping for a time at these great centres of life, that we might learn something of the peculiarities of each, and then across the Atlantic to the land that we loved above all others. We reached our home at Newton Centre, Massachusetts, in August, 1869. The duties laid aside about sixteen months before, were now resumed. My health was fully restored. Work in the study, the classroom and the pulpit, was a joy. Our old house with its surroundings, on the side of Institution Hill, was a constant pleasure. Every plant in the garden, every tree, shrub and flower in the yard augmented our happiness. The plumage and song of every bird in the leafy grove hard by charmed us. Those were halcyon days for us both. Mary became deeply interested in the theological 211 students, and whenever opportunity offered gladly welcomed them to our house and table. She did what she could to prepare the wives of the married students for their future responsibilities, frequently talking over with them the unique opportunities that they would have to do good and to make effective the labors of their husbands. She also resumed her writ ing both in prose and verse. Her pen was more pro lific than ever before, while her children with their unfolding powers of body and mind filled her with unspeakable satisfaction. But there were duties beyond her own home and the Theological Institution to which she gave herself. She recognized the claims of the kingdom of God as supreme. Always profoundly interested in missions she now worked and wrote for them with renewed zeal. It was at Newton Centre that the Woman s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society was formed and she was one of its constituent members. VIII. LIFE IN BROOKLYN, CHICAGO, SALEM AND GRANVILLE BUT to her lasting regret, her varied activities at Newton were finally interrupted. There sprang up within me an intense longing to get back into the pulpit and pastorate. Three fields at once opened to me, Rochester, Cambridge and Brooklyn. I decided for Brooklyn and became pastor of the Strong Place 212 Baptist Church of that city. This proved to have been an unfortunate choice. Not that the post was not an important one; I spent three prosperous years there. During that brief period two hundred and seventy-two were added to the church, one hundred and thirty-three by letter and one hundred and thirty- nine by baptism. But Mary had there an utter nervous breakdown. Some occurrences in the parish worried her. There were some poor in the church for whose comfort and betterment she assiduously worked; this she greatly enjoyed. She taught the infant class in the Mission Sunday School, was gently but persistently pressed into taking the lead in some of the women s benevolent societies, and before we apprehended the insidious approach of danger, she had almost fatally overtaxed herself. We now learned for the first time that the air of the ocean had greatly over-excited her nervous system. She was laid help less upon her bed. We almost despaired of her life. One Sunday morning, to my great surprise, she spoke only German. When asked why she did so, she re plied that she could not call to mind any English words. In alarm I summoned my physician, who allayed my fears by saying that it was merely a symp tom of her nervous disease, that would soon pass away. As the evening approached she began to speak English again. But the physician now assured me that she could not continue to live in Brooklyn, that to reside there much longer would be fatal to her. I was soon called to the Second Baptist Church of 213 Chicago, and began preaching there in the spring of 1876. In the meantime, Mary having thrown off most of her usual burdens, had partially recovered her strength and was once more taking the oversight and care of her household. After spending a few weeks in a quiet retreat on the Hudson, she started West with our four children, stopping a few days for further rest and recreation with relatives in LeRoy, ^Western New York. She then went on with our children to Marquette, Michigan, on the Southern Shore of Lake Superior. Leaving, for a short vacation, my new charge at Chicago, I joined her there. She was happy amid these new scenes. She was already learning the limitations of her bodily strength and, when she strictly observed them, she still found zest in living. But her nervous collapse in Brooklyn was the be ginning of a new and marked epoch in her life. For eleven years after she was unable to hear a lecture or sermon. Occasionally she tried to sit through an ordinary church service, but before she had listened to the preacher ten minutes she was compelled to fly the sanctuary. She said, " I seem to be unable to have a man talk to me continuously." While she deplored her enforced absence from public worship, she declared, " I have learned from experience that when one cannot attend church, it is quite possible, with great personal profit, to worship God at home." Yet after her death, I found in her commonplace book a pathetic song from her pen in which she sorrowfully 214 expresses a keen sense of her great loss in being de prived of worshipping on Sundays with God s people. " Sweet Sabbath bells, your distant voice Is calling, through the dewy air, On all to worship and rejoice, In God s own house ; for He is there. " Yet I alone and silent bide, Far from the courts of prayer and praise, I hear the vespers of the thrush Ring clearly through the evening haze. " Like him I lonely sing to God, From the dark corner where I dwell, And He who hears the choir s sweet song Can hear my faltering voice as well. " He knows that with a thankful heart My offering of praise I bring, As joining with the warbling thrush, Praise God, for God is good, I sing. " My short outing on the shore of the great Lake was too soon over. I returned to my duties in Chicago, leaving Mary and our children to linger a little longer in the bracing atmosphere of the North. When their vacation was over they took a steamer for Chicago. The second morning after, at the breakfast table, glancing at my newspaper, I read that the steamer had foundered with all on board. I hastened to the office of the steamboat company and found the authorities there quite confident that the rumor was 215 unfounded. Still with feverish anxiety I waited for definite news. About noon Mary telegraphed me that they had met with a mishap but all were safe. So my half day of agony ended in great gladness. The next day we all, a happy, joyful family, entered our new Chicago home. The open-hearted, open-handed mem bers of my church had quite unostentatiously filled our house with all things necessary for our comfort. They gave us a warm, hearty, royal welcome. On December 24th our third son and last child was born. For a long time Mary s vitality was at a low ebb. Towards spring, while slowly gaining strength she began to ride out, first around only one square, then around two or more, and finally to the nearest parks, where the early flowers and flowering shrubs were just bursting into bloom, and the birds, that had just returned from the sunny south, amid leafing branches were pouring forth their passionate songs. Such scenes and sounds gave her great delight, inspired her with hope and invigorated both mind and body. During Mary s long illness, Aunt Lizzie Aiken, the missionary of my church, often came in to cheer her up. In all that she said and did, she showed such tact, wit and wisdom that Mary was both charmed and captivated. Her comforter was a rare spirit, keen in intellect and unusually rich in Christian experience. Without designing to do so, in free, informal chit chats, Aunt Lizzie gave in fragments the salient points of her strangely eventful life. Mary was so deeply impressed with it that she said to me, " Somebody 216 ought to write and publish the life of this remarkable woman. And any one that does it must do it now before Aunt Lizzie passes away. It can never be written after her death. To her biographer she must tell her own story." Very soon Mary determined to write it herself. She asked her physician if she could safely undertake it. At first he shook his head, but noticing how anxious she was to do it, he decided that she might attempt it, if she would work at her task only twenty minutes a day and at the end of the allotted time would resolutely lay it aside. She joyfully accepted these prescribed conditions, and, entering on her chosen work, soon proved that one could accomplish much by faithfully working but twenty minutes in every twenty-four hours. When her considerate and sym pathetic physician saw that she was rather benefited than injured by what she did, he doubled the time. Attentively watching his patient, he soon permitted her to write an hour a day and at last he made the time an hour and a half. On this last allowance of time, she triumphantly finished The Story of Aunt Lizzie Aiken. No one who reads it would ever suspect that the author was ill when she wrote it. Her procedure in writing it adds interest to it. Aunt Lizzie at appointed times told little by little the whole story of her life, while Mary closely questioned her that, as far as possible, she might get an accurate knowledge of all the facts. Of these conversations she took copious notes. Moreover, for some years, 217 Aunt Lizzie had kept a diary in which was a fairly full record of her manifold experiences with her com ments on them. This she put into Mary s hand together with many letters that she had received from those who had intimate knowledge of her varied activities. Mary also corresponded with many who, in past years, had been conversant with the labors of Aunt Lizzie. By this correspondence she verified, corrected and elucidated what Aunt Lizzie had related. Having at last all the evidence before her she carefully analyzed and sifted it that she might get at the exact truth. She now began to write out the unique story of this marvellous Christian worker. We have already noticed the difficulties that she pluckily overcame in completing it. She sent the manuscript to Jansen and McClurg of Chicago, who at once accepted it but in sisted that she should cut it down one-fourth. This was a rigorous exaction on a sick woman but she uttered no protest. What the publishers asked was soon done, but to the detriment of the book, since in its condensation much of the most interesting illustrative material was cut out. It however proved to be a good seller. But the author refused to receive any royalty from it. She said that she wrote it simply to help Aunt Lizzie. One hundred and ten dollars from it came into her hand. This she turned over to the Foreign Mission Society as the gift of Aunt Lizzie. The first edition was soon exhausted. Then Miss 218 Ellen Sprague, a close friend of both Mary and Aunt Lizzie, bought the plates and, with the full approval of all parties interested, proceeded to issue the book as her own private enterprise. Her laudable object was to accumulate by the sale of the book a fund for Aunt Lizzie, who in caring for the poor could never keep any money, but generously, without a thought for herself, gave away all that she had. Miss Sprague was a shrewd, enterprising business woman, and was largely successful in her venture. When Aunt Lizzie died she had three thousand dollars which came from the sale of her biography. This entire sum she left by will to the Second Baptist Church of Chicago, that ardently loved and greatly honored her, and which for many years she had served with rare fidelity and unusual efficiency. The recipients of this bequest, I am sure, will ever gratefully remember Aunt Lizzie Aiken, Mary Eleanor Anderson and Ellen Sprague. Through their united service they created this fund. Neither of them alone did this. It was achieved by three loving hearts, each one of whom, forgetful of self, sought to serve others. Mary at last so far recovered her health that she enjoyed doing her ordinary duties. She efficiently directed her household. She gloried in her children. Like the Roman Cornelia she regarded them as her jewels. She made home attractive for them and care fully watched over the development of their bodies, minds and hearts. She wielded over them a queenly 219 authority to which they yielded without being con scious of any restraint. She swayed and controlled them with the mightiest of all influences, the effective and delightful influence of love. She entered with zest into, and helped them in, all their healthful, innocent sports. She led them to read books that interested and delighted them, and told them Bible stories. In this she was an expert. She knew what the stories meant and had the imaginative power to narrate them vividly. She selected books for them that fascinated them with biblical biography and history and so implanted deep in their minds and hearts a love for the Bible. She did but little work outside her own home during my pastorate in Chicago. Still, while unable even to attend the meet ings of the church, she had the liveliest interest in all that it was doing for the advancement of the Kingdom of God both at home and abroad. For this she prayed and gave and wrote. After a pastorate of two years, as delightful as ever fell to the lot of any preacher, I was called to the presidency of the University of Chicago now styled the Old University and accepted the position. We left our home on the west side of Chicago, removing to Kenwood, Hyde Park, where we first occupied a large, rambling brick house on Greenwood Avenue, near Forty-seventh Street. The house was airy and cool in summer, but shivering cold in the winter. To add to our distress we found our selves in financial straits. Some gentlemen who 220 promised to see that my salary was paid evidently forgot the verbal contract that they had made, and so I had a plenty of hard work but " short commons." Among Mary s notes I find this naive testimony to our financial pinch. She says, " One time when I had absolutely nothing to give to our woman s missionary work, a little story that I sent to the St. Nicholas, brought me a return of twenty-five dollars; a part of this I spent for necessary clothes for my little girls and had enough for my yearly donation so we were helped along." Soon after she was surprised to learn that her Uncle Gardner Colby had left her by will an annuity of two hundred dollars. It was a great and wholly unexpected kindness that thereafter tided her over many a financial strait and filled her heart with gratitude to her. generous benefactor. In 1 88 1 her father rented an estate on Shrewsbury River, N. J., not far from Red Bank. He renovated the house and refurnished it, put into the barn a comfortable family carriage and a span of fine horses, cleaned up the grounds and made the place very at tractive and homelike. He invited Mary and her family to spend the summer with him. With great gladness she responded to his warm and urgent in vitation, and before the Commencement of the Uni versity went to him in New Jersey. He was of course very happy to have his only daughter once more under his roof and at his table, especially since she came with her five children. He celebrated the Fourth of July with feasting and elaborate fireworks. But his 221 expectation of a season of social enjoyment with his daughter and her family came to a sad and sudden end. Having months before suffered a slight attack of paralysis, from which he seemed in large measure to have recovered, it slowly and insidiously crept upon him once more. He became restless and sleepless and five or six days after the festivities of the glorious Fourth, with those around him whom he most loved, he passed away. This was a crisis in Mary s life. She had not been called to pass through a trial so great and bitter since she had grown up to girlhood and womanhood. But her grief was assuaged by her Christian resignation. She had anticipated great joy in spending two or three months with her father; for a few days that joy was hers, but it quickly ended in tears. Still she was able to say through her tears, not as I will but as Thou wilt. She very tenderly loved her father, still she quite clearly understood his character, both its excellences and its defects, and has left an appreciative and just estimate of him. She says, " My father was a man of lively affections, much beloved by many friends and his kindred, always sympathetic and of a generous nature, ready to believe in every new business enter prise offered to him, too optimistic in spite of his many failures; though to be sure, he made and lost more than one fortune. To me he was mother as well as father. We knew and trusted each other in perfect love. He carried, through a life of many changes and great sorrows, the light of a spiritual faith with a 222 steady hand. He always conducted family prayers and asked a blessing on our meals. He taught us from the Bible Sunday afternoons regularly and was deeply anxious for our conversion. While far from what is called Puritanical in either his early training or his own ideas, he believed profoundly the truths of the Christian religion, and, social as he was by nature, lived the pure, upright life of a child of God. Such men are the salt of the earth. They make no pretensions to sanctity, they are the life of any circle to which they belong, but they keep themselves from the evil of the world and are a blessing to their families and their country." By means which her father left to Mary we finally built a good house at Fiftieth Street and Greenwood Avenue. Here our family life was all that heart could wish. As to activities outside the household, for nearly eight years we toiled unremittingly to free from debt and build up an unendowed university that seemed to have but few friends. The debts were an inheritance into which I came, having been unwisely contracted during the administrations of my prede cessors in office. The floating debts, amounting to more than thirty thousand dollars, were paid, but the mortgage debt of nearly two hundred thousand dollars we failed to cancel. During this time of stress, Mary gave herself mainly to the education of our children, all of whom were in school of one grade or another. So far as she was able she entered with delight into the subjects they 223 were called upon to master arid in their linguistic studies often lent a helping hand. At times she enter tained in our home both the faculty and students of the University, always eager to do what she could to promote and enrich their social life. As a bur lesque on a Greek letter fraternity, a band of students organized the " Eta Pi Society." Perhaps their main object was not simply to eat, but at times they met to feast on pies. Mary caught the spirit of their innocent fun and sometimes for their delectation sent them from her own kitchen pies of various kinds and shapes. Once under her own roof she gave them eight courses of different kinds of pie. From public func tions, both on account of unsteady nerves and natural modesty, she instinctively shrank; still, when the annual receptions of the University were held, she bore her part in that unconventional, graceful manner, which is the natural effluence of genuine culture. For a few months in 1885 and 1886, I served, as pastor, the First Baptist Church of Salem, Massa chusetts. But as that quaint old city sits hard by the ocean, Mary s experience in Brooklyn was to a considerable degree repeated. Her nerves were over excited by the sea air. Her whole history, while in that historical city of Roger Williams and the witches can be written in three words: she was sick. Much of the time she was under the watchful care of a physician. In the summer of 1886, we carried her to the cars and took her up to New London, New Hampshire. A few hours after drinking in the moun- 224 tain air her depression of spirit was gone, her nerves calmed and she began to ramble with pleasure among the hills. It now became clear that she could not continue to live in Salem. The first of January, 1887, I became president of Denison University and we set up housekeeping at Granville, Ohio. Mary s health had greatly improved and she thoroughly enjoyed the hills and fertile valleys of Licking County. To help on her return ing vigor, during the pleasant days of summer and autumn, she took long top-buggy rides with me after a gentle but spirited horse. The beauty of the land scape, the trees, the flowers delighted her. Before our house, on the hillside, was a large yard, where she cultivated blooming shrubs, roses, crocuses, hyacinths and other common flowers. She could never forget seeing from her window, in early spring, a green, unsophisticated student, from " Ole Virginny," he said, get down on his hands and knees and fondly kiss some crocuses that had just pushed their fresh, bright faces up through the soil. At the side of the house was a large garden, where grew plentifully vege tables, small fruits, peaches and apples. To furnish sweet butter for our table, rich cream for our straw berries, raspberries and peaches and ice cream to cool our tongues in hot days, a fawn-like Jersey cow grazed in a pasture hard by. But Mary s activities as usual reached out beyond her own home. She planted ivy by the bare brick walls of the main col lege building and sedulously cared for it, hoping that 225 at no distant day it might in summer hide their ugli ness with a mantle of green. She made flower beds in front of the college buildings to render the campus more attractive and to give at least a hint of the importance of esthetic culture. She often generously entertained the students of the college and at times many of the church and people of the village. More over she joined hands with the Baptist women of the State, working heart and soul with them for the ad vancement of missions both domestic and foreign. But our stay in Granville was only three years. I left that excellent school wholly of my own choice. I naturally drifted back to Chicago with its larger life, where I had so long worked, and took the chair of Homiletics, Church Polity and Pastoral Duties, in the Baptist Union Theological Seminary at Morgan Park. Here we built a house and, as a recreative aside, cultivated flowers, making roses a specialty. In this Mary took a leading part and our success was unexpectedly great. Barely two years passed by when our Theological Seminary became the Divinity School of the Uni versity of Chicago. Since we could not, like a snail, take our house with us, we continued to live at Mor gan Park, and each day I made quite a journey to reach my classroom, utilizing the time while going in furbishing the lecture I was about to deliver. At last we abandoned our rural home with its trees and blossoming shrubs and fragrant roses, and lived in the city, cooped up in some hotel with its monotonous 226 and tasteless meals, or in some apartment, whose front windows looked out on a paved street, and whose rear windows revealed our own and our neighbor s back yards with their trumpery and variegated clothes horses. While work in the University absorbed and delighted me, Mary revelled in books, wrote to help on philanthropies and missions and dreamed of fields and groves and flowers and longed for the coming of my vacation. If it came in the winter, we usually sought rest in the sunny South or amid ever-bloom ing flowers in Southern California. IX. RETIREMENT IN NEW ENGLAND AFTER twelve years of service I laid down the active duties of my professorship in the University, under a rule of administration, just then adopted, that all professors must be retired at seventy. I was how ever seventy-one, and in perfect health, doing the best work of my life. I was made professor Emeritus, a barren honor! and was at liberty to go where I pleased. So, since both of us were specially fond of the hills and mountains and society of New England, we determined to make our future home there. But while Newton Centre, Massachusetts, became our political domicile, we spent some of our winters in Washington or Florida or California, and, for several years, our summers in New Hampshire. Mary bought a very pleasant house in New Hampton. She revelled in its gardens of flowers and vegetables, its umbra- 227 geous grove of oak, ash and maple and its abundant small fruits and apples. The amphitheater of verdant hills and wooded mountains were an unceasing pleas ure, while the plain but cozy library room, with its open fire on chilly rainy days, was an alluring re treat. She was thrice happy in welcoming her chil dren and grandchildren under our roof; but as it was extremely difficult to secure help in the kitchen, she at last, finding the very hospitality that she so greatly enjoyed too great a burden for her sensitive nerves, sold the place that she had greatly improved and so keenly enjoyed. Beginning in 1909, we spent five summers on Bear Island, one of the larger of the numerous islands of Lake Winnepesaukee, one season in the hotel there, four in a rustic cottage hard by the Lake. Each summer I carried to that quaint, unplastered house, with its cheerful fireplace, an armful of the newest and best books and together we feasted upon them. It was a free and easy and restful nook. Bush and blossom and berry and bird enticed us. The moun tain scenery about us was a constant inspiration. Often the evening skies flamed with gorgeous sunsets. At night, when the heavens were cloudless, the re flected light of the moon or stars stretched in broad bands of rippling silver across the Lake. The laps ing waters on the shore lulled us to slumber. It was a sort of earthly paradise. The joys of litera ture and religion within, the wonderful revelations of God through His works without. 228 During the period from 1904 to 1915, I gave to the press five books. Into all my labor in writing them Mary entered with the deepest interest. Her counsel was invaluable. She was a sane, sharp, sug gestive critic. In 1911 our Golden Wedding was celebrated. It fell on Sunday, the 23rd of April. To avoid all possi ble offence our children decided to observe it on the 22nd and the 24th. The family was then unbroken. While some of the five children lived in Chicago and some in New England, they all came to share in this consummation of a long and happy married life. The Golden Wedding celebration was held April 22nd at the house of our second son, Elbridge R. Anderson, on Main Street, Wenham, Massachusetts. Here in the afternoon, an elegant buffet luncheon was served and an admirable group picture of the entire household was taken. Speeches were made by the different members of the family and a beautiful orig inal poem was read by our older daughter, Mrs. Lucy C. Owen, and our oldest son, Professor Frederick L. Anderson, read Sidney Lanier s The Golden Wed ding. Letters and telegrams were sent to us by ab sent friends, also some presents and flowers. Among the latter were twelve fragrant roses from Mrs. Sophie Burns, who was Mary s bridesmaid. Both bride and bridesmaid, after fifty eventful years, were still well and happy and the one was greeting the other with fragrant flowers. On the 24th the Golden Wedding Reception was 229 held at the house of our oldest son, 169 Homer Street, Newton Centre. Here, besides our own immediate family, many relatives and old friends, with whom in the church and in institutions of learning we had been in former years associated, personally greeted us. To see all our children together once more, accompanied by some of our grandchildren, and to receive con gratulatory missives from those that were absent was no common joy. It gave us both a new grip on life. X. MARY S LITERARY WORK BUT our sketch of Mary s career would be quite incomplete if I should fail to call especial attention to her preeminent activity. During her entire married life she was always busy with her pen. She did not however write merely for the sake of writing. She never seemed to be in the least ambitious for literary distinction, but always wrote with some important practical end in view. She was, as we have already seen, intensely in terested in missions. For several years, both while in Chicago and in Newton, her contributions, both prose and poetry, so constantly appeared in the columns of The Helping Hand, that many of its read ers thought she was on the editorial staff. The sum total of her articles in this mission paper would make a good-sized volume. She also contributed to The King s Messengers to Heathen Lands a series of six 230 articles, which fascinatingly set forth the remarkable career of a Shan boy, I Tway. She did this espe cially to awaken the interest of the young in foreign missions. To implant in the hearts of the children of our churches a love for the heathen and to stimulate them to give and work for their salvation, she wrote dia logues presenting both to the ear and the eye the doctrines and customs of heathen lands. The chil dren, when reciting one of these dialogues, were dressed in the costumes of the country represented. Copies of the dialogues were multiplied, so that they were repeated in many different churches. A mission ary from Burma, listening to one that set forth the notions and customs of that country, said, " She has lived there, has she not? " Of course she had not, but she had diligently studied the society and scenery of the lands where our missions are planted, and hav ing a vivid historical imagination, she was able truth fully to set forth not only their religious teachings but also faithfully to depict their daily life. She sometimes said to me, " I have an ardent longing to sail up the Irawadi River. I know just how it looks and I know all the principal towns and cities on its banks. I can shut my eyes and see it and them." She was also deeply interested in Home Missions. Before me lie six tracts of hers, published by the Woman s American Baptist Home Mission Society of Chicago. One of them, general in its character, is on The Religious Condition of Children in the United 231 States; the remaining five, more specific, are on the condition of Mormon children, of Chinese children, of immigrant children, of colored children and of Indian children in this country. These tracts present, for popular effect, the main facts in each case in a clear, simple, forceful style. She also left a paper on Mor- monism, read before the Home Mission Circles of the different evangelical denominations of Newton Centre, Massachusetts. It is a strong, incisive essay, grasping and clearly unfolding the innermost principles of that corrupt and corrupting apostacy. When caring for her children, like any fond mother, she sang to them, not often the ordinary nursery lulla bies, but she composed cradle songs as she crooned her darling infants to sleep. At last I said to her, " Those lullabies are so good, you better write them down and preserve them." She acted on the hint and the final outcome was the volume, New Songs for Little People, published by Lee and Shepard, Bos- tion, 1874, and illustrated by Lizzie B. Humphrey. It sold well. The royalty that came from it was a great happiness to the author. The consciousness of possessing money coined out of her nursery ditties was a new and exceedingly gratifying experience. The publishers finally purchased her rights in the book and continued to issue it in conjunction with other poems. Sixteen of these songs, with her consent, were incorporated in The Normal Music Course by Tufts and Holt, seven in the First Reader, nine in the Sec- ond Reader, prepared for the use of the public schools. She also wrote extensively for the religious jour nals. In The Christian Times, now The Standard, she discussed with freshness and vigor Sunday School songs, Sunday School literature and the importance of taking children to church. She not only pointed out glaring defects in the selection of songs and books for the children, but suggested the remedies for them. She also wrote a series of articles for The Standard, under the caption, Half Hours with Aunt Anna, in structing young girls how to care for their rooms, their bodies, minds and hearts and how to regard and treat their parents. When Dr. Bright was the editor of The Examiner and Chronicle, for a long time she was a regular con tributor to its columns, one of his favorite correspond ents. She first wrote a series of letters over the pseudonym, Dorothy Doe. They were addressed to Dick, her supposed son, who was about to enter the ministry. She discussed in these letters important practical questions pertaining to the Christian life, such as the conduct of church members, lazy Chris tians, what sermons should be in thought and style and how they should be delivered if the preacher would interest and stir up those in the pews. These articles were very popular, but a prominent pastor, sharply dissenting from some of her views on preaching, tartly replied to her and declared that her masquerading as a woman was to any one with eyes 233 an obvious sham. He called upon her to throw off her disguise and come out into the open. He, how ever, soon found out his awkward mistake, when she, bubbling over with mirth, punctured his hostile stric tures and declared that if he had anything further to say she would gladly waive a woman s privilege of having the last word. For the same journal she wrote a captivating ac count of What Two Small Boys Saw in Europe. This was for the entertainment and instruction of children. Among other things, she drew a vivid picture of what the people in the larger German cities do at Christ mas time. She painted to the life their great bazars, their vast stores of toys, and praised their enchanting music. For a whole year, while she was in Europe, she was a regular correspondent of The Christian Era of Bos ton. Her letters from Berlin, Dresden and Switzer land, were full of important information and suggest ive criticism. And these references indicate but a part of her journalistic activities. She delighted at times to try her hand on more difficult literary tasks. She left a charmingly written essay on Chrysostom s Last Days; also a translation of Theremin s discussion of What is the best Sermon? in which he maintains that that sermon is best which pleases God best. There also lies before me her dis sertation on the oldest Christian hymn, by Clement of Alexandria, followed by her translation of it from 234 the Greek. And here is also her translation of Ber nard s Salve Caput Crucntatum, having the same num ber of syllables as the original. It is not only a faith ful translation but it reflects the free, vigorous poetical movement of the Latin hymn. Moreover, she was a facile letter writer. In her ordinary epistles, dashed off with great rapidity, she expressed her thought with artless naturalness and great lucidity. When her children were all married, when all the five birds had flown from the parental nest, and mated, she felt it to be one of her missions in life to keep them closely united in love with one another and with us by frequent missives from her warm, motherly heart. Every week she wrote them all. She accomplished her purpose. It was an added triumph of love. She constantly bore them all in her great throbbing heart and they, in turn, lavished on her their tenderest affection. They all outlived her and before her departure she had the joy of seeing them come to honor. So far as her strength permitted she also corre sponded with her grandchildren, twelve in number. In her letters to them she sometimes broke out into song. It was only a simple and natural outpouring of her heart, designed for no eye but that of the one to whom she wrote. But the following is in a letter written to her oldest granddaughter, when eight years of age, the quoting of which the grandmother might excuse. 235 "Life is a tree, dear child, Love is its flower, Needing the sunny light, Needing the shower. " So, like a summer rose, Do not complain, Welcome the cloudless days, Welcome the rain." We have already noticed her student life at Hudson Female Academy. Very few at that time thought that girls were able to master a college course of study, but she made the most of such opportunities as she had in that school for girls and after her graduation manifested a marked aptitude for teaching. This was made clear from her unusual success in in teresting her Sunday School classes in their Bible lessons and in the drill that she gave her own children in the studies that they pursued both in the public school and in college. In view of what she did in coaching them she used playfully to say that she richly deserved an A. B. from some reputable institu tion of learning. . She had also an insatiable passion for reading. She devoured all sorts of good books, historical, literary and scientific. What she read she mastered and re tained. The knowledge thus acquired was in her mind clearly classified and always ready for service on call. She read not only English books but French and German with facility and pleasure. During our married life we read together all of Chaucer, Spenser, 236 Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson and most of modern English and American poetry. Advancing age did not dull her zest for reading and study. Amid the enchanting scenery of New Hampshire, she be came more than three score and ten, but she was still a keen observer and an eager learner. With open mind and heart she was still drinking in new thought and newly discovered truth. She continued to grow in intellectual strength and spiritual power to the last day of her earthly life. XI. HER TRAITS OF MIND AND HEART IN what I have already written the qualities of her mind and heart have been incidentally set forth. One thing is at once obvious, she had a thoroughly disci plined mind. She had the power and habit of clear, orderly thinking. Straight as an arrow she went by keen analysis to the core of any subject that she took in hand. While, as we have seen, she read much, there was nothing haphazard about it. She was always investigating some subject. When she visited the libraries, as she habitually did, she knew just what she wanted, books that would throw light upon the topic to which she was then giving special attention. While in this orderly fashion she was accumulating knowledge in many fields of thought, by constantly writing she acquired a concise and forceful style. She always kept on her study-table Rogct s Thesaurus of 237 English Words and Phrases, as a help in selecting the words best fitted to express her conceptions accurately. She also entered with avidity into all my literary work, wrote at my dictation the plans of toy sermons, read the proof of what I gave to the press, and was my best, most unsparing critic. Coupled with her power of clear thinking was large administrative ability. Everything pertaining to the management of her household was wisely ordered. But perhaps the severest test of her administrative skill was in handling her servants successfully. Here a humanitarian and an economic question confronted each other. How to get the work of the house promptly and thoroughly done and at the same time to treat justly and generously the employees was the problem. To solve it aright she first of all took her servants into her confidence. She kindly told them what they were expected to do, showed them where they were to work and the utensils they were to use. She looked after their comfort, providing them with good sleeping rooms and decent beds. She however required of them strict fidelity, which they usually rendered in response to her considerate care. Not that the domestic machinery always ran smoothly. Sometimes her maids took French leave, sometimes she had to dismiss some of them for incompetence or some worse fault, but most of them had for her gen uine affection. She followed with tender interest a number of them for years after they left her and rejoiced greatly when some of them rose to positions 238 of influence and honor. She purposed writing and publishing a history of a half dozen of them and made notes for the contemplated volume, but, I regret to say, left it unfinished; but it is a joy to record the fact that she bestowed Christian care on those that toiled in her kitchen, wash-room and bedchambers and not a few of them, having rendered faithful service, rose up to do her honor. Her administrative ability not only manifested itself in the management of her servants but also in many of the ordinary duties of every-day life. When the family were to go on a picnic, to have a vacation or to make a journey long or short, she at once had in hand every detail. What many esteem drudgery, she regarded a pleasure. Lunch baskets or trunks, as the case might be, were quickly and neatly packed and the time for starting and arrival was ascertained. Every detail was provided for and by the orderly execution of the plan the expedition was made a joy to all its participants. But in a higher sphere, in her work on behalf of the women s missionary societies, her executive tal ent was manifest to all. Her conduct of meetings in the churches to awaken greater interest in missions, her suggestions, when she labored on committees raised to consider the more important and difficult problems belonging to missions in Asiatic countries, most favorably impressed her co-workers, so that the Woman s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society of Chicago, on whose Executive Committee she served 239 for two years, offered her its secretaryship and urged her to accept it. To her it was an enticing opening. In every way but one she was amply qualified for the work. I encouraged her to undertake it. But after much thought and prayer, she felt herself compelled to decline the tempting offer from lack of physical strength to discharge its weighty public duties. This incident in her career brought out in bold relief a trait of her character, that we have already incidentally mentioned, her extreme modesty. She always instinctively shrank from taking part in public functions. The thought of reading a report or an ad dress or of speaking before any considerable audience quite overwhelmed her. Still, when pressed into such a service she always did it well. She had however a very humble view of her own powers. She wrote much, as we have seen, but used her pen sometimes perhaps for the mere pleasure of writing, but usually only to do good, seemingly with no thought beyond that. If I spoke to her of the merits of one of her essays or poems, she felt quite sure that it was an overestimation by a fond husband. Still, she was evi dently conscious of her power to bring good things to pass, but instead of glorying in the power she re joiced rather in the things that she did; and if she could have obtained the mastery over her native diffidence, she might have become an able public speaker. When we were once in Richmond, Virginia, we visited Hartshorn Memorial College. The students 240 assembled in the Chapel and I addressed them. At the close of my speech the young ladies called for Mrs. Anderson. To my astonishment she at once arose and began to speak and delivered offhand a clear, simple, practical address that took right hold of their minds and hearts. It was just what they needed to hear, and when she sat down they gave her prolonged and hearty applause by clapping their hands. When we left the institution, I said to her, " You quite surprised me. I thought that you could not speak in public." She replied, " Some things came into my mind that I wanted to say, and I just said them." I advised her to keep on doing that, and she said, "Puff!" giving me to understand that my advice was to her mind quite absurd. Combined with her consciousness of power to do things worth while was her great eagerness to under take needed enterprises. Having the ability to bless others she felt it to be both her duty and privilege to use it. This she did to the limit of her physical strength. To go beyond that, she had learned by sad experience, caused her days, and sometimes weeks, of nervous prostration. She used to say that she was tethered to a stake and could not go beyond the length of her chain. She longingly kept looking beyond and was eager for the race from which she was held in leash. Notwithstanding this sore limitation of her activities she seldom if ever repined at her lot. Occa sionally a tear stole down her cheek as she thought of her enforced restraint, but that was like the passing 241 of a cloud on a summer day. Eager as she was to contribute more largely to world-wide benevolence, she accepted her limitations as the mysterious, yet wise, providence of God. She happily found much useful work that she could do. She joyfully did her important duties in directing and guiding her own household, and in many ways did much for the build ing up of the kingdom of God in all the earth; yet she was always eager to do more. But Mary, doing her lifework under such rigorous limitations, found much to enhance her happiness in the material creation. It is no exaggeration to say that her love of nature was intense, and her appre hension of its innermost meaning unusually clear. She gloried in the clouds, the manifold and exquisite effects of light in the hiavens, on the mountains, the lakes and the ocean, the varied and delicate colors of the sky, the glow and afterglow of the sunsets, the trees, the shrubs, the grass, the flowers, the purling brooks, the dashing mountain streams, and the plu mage and songs of the birds. While she keenly appreciated for its own sake the intrinsic beauty of these multifarious objects, she saw in and through them all the revelation of God. She met Him face to face in all the beauties and sublimi ties of His works. He unveiled Himself to her both in the violet and in the thunder-storm, when " he bowed the heavens and came down and darkness was under his feet." This was a manifestation of His power. Still it required the same omnipotence to un- 242 fold the tiniest blossom on the hillside or in the meadow, but in this quieter display of His omnipo tence, God revealed also His love of beauty. So in her passionate love of the beautiful in the material crea tion, she entered into conscious fellowship with Him. And since God was in Christ and through Christ all things were made, the grandeur and beauty of nature were the revelation to her of her Elder Brother. In her communion with nature she came into a higher communion with Him, through whom and unto whom " all things have been created," and in whom " all things consist." The wisdom with which the objects of creation were fashioned were His wisdom, the sub limities of nature were the manifestations of His almightiness, the beauties of the sun or sky or flowers or birds were but glimpses of His matchless beauty. To her the glory of the divine Artificer and ever pres ent worker shone through all the objects of His creation. A soul so in love with nature and finding God in the manifold objects of His creation, naturally saw Him still more clearly in those made in His own image. And so marked was her sympathy with them, and so confident was her hope for them, that, how ever marred by sin they were, she rejoiced in what they might become through Jesus Christ. Having such profound sympathy with, and hope for, men of all classes and conditions, she had the broadest char ity for all. While she quickly apprehended the real characters of those around her and unerringly de- 243 tected all shams, upon which at times she poured forth her withering scorn, she was quite free from suspi cion of others. Yet, she was very sensitive, and sensitive souls are apt to be suspicious, but she was sensitive without being suspicious. Her habit of mind was that of confidence instead of distrust. She was frank, sincere, open-hearted, and always inclined to put the best interpretation on the words and acts of others. So she was hopeful, optimistic, ever looking on the bright side of things. To her the darkest cloud on its opposite and unseen side was necessarily ra diant with the sunlight. However momentarily dis couraging the prospect might be, she felt quite sure that righteousness would ultimately triumph both in individuals and society. She herself walked in the light, and instead of living in apprehension of ap proaching darkness, she was always expecting an even brighter day. Combined with her optimism was large benevolence. She had but little property. Her father left her only a few thousand dollars. This I invested for her. For many years she and I kept separate bank accounts. I never meddled with hers nor she with mine, while we always stood ready to help each other in time of need. Neither had enough to excite the envy of our neighbors, but we had sufficient to meet our necessi ties and to gratify to a limited extent our tastes. We could buy some books and pictures, and we managed to travel considerably both in our own country and in Europe and Asia. But for mere money Mary cared 244 nothing. She was interested in it only for what it would buy. What she had she spent freely, not mainly for her own gratification but chiefly for the good of others. If any of her children needed finan cial help they found mother s heart and purse open. If any of her neighbors were in want, she esteemed it a joy, to the extent of her ability, to relieve them. She gave with open hand to missions, at times even beyond her means. Her whole life was characterized by giving. To others she gave herself, her bodily strength, her powers of mind and heart, her money. She never gave "grudgingly;" she was a genuine example of Paul s " cheerful giver," whom God loves. The following incident shows how little she esteemed money for its own sake and how easily she was able to forego even that which money would pur chase. When we built our house at Kenwood, she had, with no little self-denial, laid aside five or six hundred dollars to perfect the furnishing of it. This money we foolishly put into a personal bank that had been highly recommended to us. The bank soon shamefully failed and her money was lost. With no little trepidation I apprised her of this financial disaster, and while she must have been sorely disap pointed, she treated her unexpected loss as though it were the merest trifle, not worthy of a moment s anxiety. She said, " It is nothing but a little money gone and we must not care for it." After that she never even once referred to it. But crowning all, she was a downright, clear-headed, 245 well-balanced Christian. She had a positive, out standing Christian experience, not confined to the be ginning of her spiritual life but stretching on through all her days, ever growing in depth, richness and power. When converted she had an intimate, per sonal transaction with her Lord. He called her by name and she responded by joyfully devoting herself unreservedly to His service. Ever after, day by day she communed with Him, talced with Him in prayer, and was never so happy as when endeavoring to save or help those for whom He died and now lives to per fect their salvation. Her faith was immovably based upon the crucified and risen Lord. To her He was all and in all. Any act or word that seemed to her to be the slightest disparagement of Him, at once awoke all her powers in His defence. By her faith and love she had be come one with Him, so that she could say with the great apostle, " For me to live is Christ." This was the hidden spring of all her manifold activities. The love of Christ constrained her. Since she was thus united to Christ, she implicitly believed His word. She never for a moment doubted that her children would be regenerated and saved. A friend asked her, " Why are you so confident of this? " She unhesitatingly replied, " Because I have asked the Lord for it, who said, Ask and ye shall receive, and I know that what I ask is according to His mind, since He is not willing that any should perish." The 246 Lord honored her unshakable faith and all her chil dren early in life came into the Kingdom. With like faith she prayed for the conversion of her twelve grandchildren. Before her death five of them; by their voluntary baptism, had declared their faith in the buried and risen Saviour. For the rest her prayers like sweet incense are preserved in " golden bowls " before God, and in His own time will be answered. No true prayer is ever lost. Her faith was also strikingly manifest in her con quest over herself. She had, as we have . already noted, naturally a fiery, imperious temper. When she first gave herself to Christ for a time she had a hard struggle to overcome it, but in that sharp fight she achieved a complete victory. To me it was an ever growing wonder that a woman so high strung, with her nervous system for some years so completely upset that the tones of a church organ sounded to her like thunder, and the notes emitted by drawing the bow across the strings of a violin assailed her ears like the shrieks of a locomotive, could move on un ruffled and cheerful day by day, often grappling with difficulties that might have tried even the patience of Job. But it was a victory won through her intimate fellowship with her divine Lord. She had become a partaker of His life and patience. For over fifty-five years we walked together as husband and wife and I cannot now recall the slightest friction between us during all that long period, or any faultfinding or censorious word that ever fell from her lips. We 247 lived in perfect accord, in cloudless love. We be came one soul in two bodies. Our honeymoon never set, it never waned but always waxed. The same sweet spirit of unvarying kindness was ever mani fested by her to her children, to her servants and to all with whom she had to do in the church and in society. At the same time she had her own inde pendent views on all questions of the day and, being clear and incisive in thought, on all proper occasions fully stated, and vigorously defended, them. But she did this without narrowness or bitterness and so sel dom if ever offended those holding opposite opinions. This luminous soul, her husband s heart and stay, her children s and grandchildren s pride and glory, honored and loved by all who knew her, left us sud denly. Her fatal sickness was only for ten minutes. I was called to Chicago to take part in the celebra tion of the Quarter Centennial of the University. She, glad of the opportunity of visiting once more her older daughter and youngest son, together with their households, went with me. She had spent a joyful week with her kith and kin. Our tickets were purchased for our return trip to our home in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, and we had planned to leave Chicago the next morning at 10.30 A.M. It was the eleventh of June, a beautiful Lord s Day. In the evening we were having our final visit with the family of our youngest son, when, without the slightest pre- intimation, the summons came for her departure from the earth. She did not have even the privilege of bidding us good-by. Instead of returning the next day, as she had purposed to do, to her home and loved ones in the East, God s plan was that she should go that night to the " better country " and greet her friends there, many of whom had long waited to re ceive her into the " everlasting habitations." " Man proposes, God disposes." In a letter that she left with her will, giving me directions as to the disposal of some of her things, she wrote, of course for no eye but mine, still to me it appears fitting that I should insert here the words of her heart, words that seem to trickle with her tears, but in which we catch a distinct note of tri umph: " When you read this I shall be gone, but you must never forget that I shall wait and watch for you every day until we meet again. I shall be where it is your greatest desire to be, where I see the face of our blessed Lord Jesus, and soon you will be with me, ascribing to Him who loved us and bought us with His blood, honor and glory, world without end. And so I only say, good-by till we meet again." These parting words are the fitting climax of this biographical sketch. They are the overflow of her great soul as she passed on and up into unending glory. One of her favorite passages of Scripture was: "The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." " Clothed upon with our house which is from heaven," she now has eyes by which she sees the things that are eternal. Her oldest son, Prof. Frederick L. Anderson, in 249 his tribute to his mother, said: " But, most of all, we shall miss her loving-kindness. There never was a more faithful and affectionate wife nor a more con siderate and loving mother. She was always planning kindnesses, and their number, done in secret, was legion. Her Christian faith was deep and true. She was extraordinarily well versed in the things of the Spirit. Prayer was her vital breath, and simple trust the root of her freedom and courage. In spite of her crippling illness, she had a very happy life, with few great sorrows, and her going at the end of a perfect day was not the least of her mercies. And she was as useful as she was happy." APPENDIX I FOUND among her papers this prayer and the frag ment of a prayer that reveal her view of the relation of God in Christ to nature. MY LORD: It has pleased Thee to reveal Thyself to Thy chil dren, and as we walk abroad with Thee, up and down the summer places, or cluster around the winter fire, Thou dost tell us, eagerly listening, of Thy works in the days of long ago. That Thou art great and we but lowly is as nothing to Thee. The little spaces between monarch and serf disappear before the far- seeing eyes of the Lord of lords and King of kings. * 250 All are alike humble as children of the dust, all are alike glorious as children of the almighty Father. And so I may praise Thee, may, so far as in me lies, recognize Thy plans and understand Thy methods of work. How precious are Thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! I walk among the mountains, I hear the mighty psalm of the forests, the eternal antiphonal of the rushing mountain tor rents. It was Thy thought, my Redeemer, that made them answer to my soul, deep unto deep. I mark the long reflection, on the wavering surface of the lake, of the evening star, I see the aurora weaving mystic dances in the northern sky, the white wake of the comet across the heavens, and I recognize the touch of Thy finger, O Lover of Men. Nothing can affright me, nothing can make me desolate or for saken, Thou, Thou, my Brother and Friend, hast made all these things. But and if my weakness bids me remember how small I am, like the flower of the grass that the wind passes over and it is gone, then I note the shading of the colors on the poppy blossom, I breathe the fragrance of the white violet. I note the hidden beauties of the geode. The very flower of the grass, to which Thou hast likened my life, is as azure as the sky, and I see before me the glories of Thy thoughts. With Thee, the tiniest atom is as worthy of Thy thought and Thy perfect beauty, as Arcturus or Aldebaran the Light-bearer. 2"? I It is not some far-away God, who has made all these things. It is Thyself, Fairest Lord Jesus. Every lily of the field reveals Thee near, is a poem that Thou hast written. The fragrance of sweet peas recalls ever to my heart the touch of a vanished hand. I never see the humble portulaca flowering across the garden beds, but I see before me my father, who loved it. A strain of music heard at night on the river, the song of an evening thrush, the feather of smoke from a far-away camp, seen across the trees, each of these is a link that binds me forever to those whom I have loved and may not see again. But all things, every thing I see, or hear or know, leads my mind to Thee, my Lord, who made all things, and without whom was nothing made that was made. For this I bless and praise Thee. Nothing stands be tween me and Thee in the great visible creation. To no angel was delegated this beautiful work. Thou hast taken delight in all this wonderful unfolding of Thy cosmic thought. Thou hast carefully fitted to gether the mosaic of the flowering gardens of the Sierra. Thou hast made the sea and the dry land. Thy thoughts stretch from eternity to eternity. Yet I, even I my life is one of Thy thoughts I am poor and needy but the Lord thinketh upon me and saves my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, my feet from falling. Accept the adoration of the least of Thy children. 252 MY LORD: I would thank Thee to-day not only for Thy won derful creation, which stretches above, beneath and around me, but also for the adorable method which Thou didst adopt, so that hidden gifts are always being discovered ready to be revealed at the best time. Not only were the flowers and the fruits planted, as in Eden, for the use of Thy children, but they were so framed that their latent sweets and perfections should gradually be developed by culture, and every garden become a delight to the mind as well as to the senses of man. Every grain of corn, every blade of grass contains potentialities that ages of experiments have not ex hausted. When the cactus is a desert plant its thorns protect it, but man may get rid of these when the cattle need food. There is bread in the wheat, there is wine in the grape, there is every dye of the sunset heavens in the coal. Like well wrapped gifts on the Christmas tree, every field and mountain is waiting to surprise and delight Thy searching children. Thou didst hide the ruby in the rock, the diamond in the gravel, the gold in the pocket of the hill, the coal and the light-giving oil in the darkness of the earth. The marble of Carrara, the sugar in the maple- tree, these too were Thy secret gifts to man. Men and they too the work of Thy hand may call Thee, Nature. They shrink from the use of Thy great name. It may be from awe, or from unbelief, but can Nature create? Is Nature God? Has Nature 253 a soul or even personality? Is the garment in which Thou dost reveal Thy power and love, Thyself? Behold, the stars are but the dust that shines at the touch of the finger of God! The lilies of the field, who painted them? DATE DUE GAYLORD II mil inn illinium A 000 535 968 2