oo MARY E. STEARNS Mary E. Stearns Mary E. Stearns By Millicent Todd One of her Pupils Cambridge Printed at the Riverside Press , .909 Preface MRS. STEARNS was not a famous woman. Why should her life be written ? We, her pupils, wanted to have this book made, not because parts of her life were ro- mantic, nor because she was universally ad- mired and loved, though both are true; not even because she achieved success in the eyes of the world, though that is also true; but be- cause we know that the character she perfected is a very tangible success, because it brought sweetness, strength, inspiration to us all. The book is a very small tribute of our very great love for Mrs. Stearns. A study of her shows what can be done with adversity. It shows how much a human soul can bear, not with resignation, but with cheerfulness, when filled with divine power. Her life proves how real a thing this power can be, for the essence of her genius was religion. To attempt an enumeration of Mrs. Stearns's religious views would be not only an intrusion, but an impossibility. And the breadth of a [ v] PREFACE Christian life whose extent of influence can be exceeded only by the grandeur within the soul If, could hardly have been comprehended by a girl in her teens. She could only revere and deeply love. On this plea I have tried to write about Mrs. Stearns, from my point of view as her pupil I can mention only those traits which I admired, rather than a thousand and one things which others older than I, and more suited to under- st.irul them, did appreciate. This book cannot fail in being incomplete; for fully to understand her character would necessitate a depth of reli- gious thought not less than her own. If any words I have written serve even to suggest the dear living Mrs. Stearns, then it will comfort my sadness in realizing how in- adequately I have set forth one of the noblest women who ever lived. M. T. Amhcrst, Macsachuietti, October 18, 1909. [vi] Content^ INTRODUCTION I Childhood and Girlhood ... 3 PART I. MARRIED LIFE . . . .41 I. First Year in Bombay . . 43 n. Matheran 88 in. Indian Incidents ... 95 iv. Various Journeys .... 108 v. The Persian Gulf . . .121 vi. Home Life in India . . . 140 vii. Paris 160 vin. Mr. Stearns's Failure . . .184 ix. Last Year in India . . . 203 x. Orange 212 xi. Death of Mr. Stearns . . 226 INTERLUDE 235 PART II. LIFE ALONE .... 243 I. Beginning of Life in Amherst . 245 n. Opening of the School . . 255 in. Early Years of the School . . 268 iv. Amherst Activities . . .288 v. Later Years of the School . .301 vi. Closing of the School, and Death 317 APPENDIX 341 Illustrations MARY E. STEARNS .... Frontispiece MARY E. STEARNS, 1859 .... 38 MOUNT PLEASANT, MALABAR HILL, BOMBAY 44 WILLIAM FRENCH STEARNS . . . .84 MARY E. STEARNS, PARIS, 1866 . . 166 MATHURA DHONDIBA SALVE .... 346 INTRODUCTION Childhood and Girlhood Mary E. Stearns Childhood and Girlhood AMONG the hills of southern New Hampshire there is a little village called Mont Vernon. It is on top of a high ridge, bared here and there in unexpected places, with a view of forty miles in every direction. The one long road is bordered with old-fashioned houses, and over- shadowed by tall trees. Here and there are open spaces, rocky pastures, apple-orchards, and frequent little bright-green glades, out- lined by stone walls. Deep pine woods crowd about the town, with under-thickets of hem- lock, laurel and high-bush blueberries, for which it is famous. It is famous, too, for its apples, which keep longer than those of any other place; perhaps equally for its Indian brook, the Quohquinnepassakessananagnog ! Winters in Mont Vernon are long and se- vere. There are stories of sleighing parties on May-day in the olden time. But in summer it is the home of birds with highly burnished [3] INTRODUCTION treble voices, and of wild, timid creatures of many kinds, for there is, even yet, no railroad near. One still conies to Mont Vernon in an old, yellow stage-coach, \\huli st.nts from the tinn .it Milford, five miles away. The road \\inds through mcadous imirvk-d by dark woods where deer are frequently seen, skirts a clear mill-pond in a hollow of the hills, and then plunges into the woods. Suddenly, a mile and a half from the centre of Mont Vernon, it confronts the "long hill." When the horses stop on a thank-you-ma'am, at a cross-roads about half-way up this hill, a sign points toward "Purgatory" on the left, and toward "Am- lu rst," two and a half miles distant on the right. If one turned to the left and passed an old farmhouse, one would see, at the end of a double row of giant maples, a cellar all over- grown with brambles and lilac bushes. A little lane wanders up the hill behind, edged by thick- ets and stone walls. Near by a brook comes out of the woods, skims across the ledges, and tumbles down into a fairy glen. Across the road there is a direct fall to more woods. The whole world seems spread out beyond ! The [4] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD air is full of pine smells, and the sound of high bird-songs and water falling. This was the childhood home of Mrs. Stearns. Mary Emmeline Kittredge was born in Mont Vernon on the twenty-fifth of July, 1834. Her father was Captain Timothy Kittredge, a title received as an officer in the militia during the War of 1812. He had taught school, but had become later a farmer, and was an active, high-minded, deeply religious man. Every Sunday two carriage-loads went to church from his house, one a wagon, the other a rock- away, referred to in the local History as the "toniest vehicle in town." As for himself, he never missed but one service at the white meet- ing-house on the hill. On that occasion the entire congregation adjourned to his house after the service, to find out what the matter was! Mrs. Kittredge was a remarkable woman. Tradition has it that several of her ancestors set out on foot from their comfortable Massachu- setts homes for the New Hampshire wilderness. One of them, a woman, after weeks of weary tramping, sank down at the foot of a great tree. [si INTRODUCTION 44 Will you go back ? It is not too late ! " said her husband. "No, no," she answered. 44 What a pri\i- lege to start life from a new beginning with you!" The pioneer spirit was still alive in this he- roic woman's descendant. Mrs. Kittredge had run away from home when a young girl in order to study, putting herself under the protection of a cousin, who was also a clergyman. She helped with the care of his children, teaching them by a sort of kindergarten method invented by herself, and which she used successfully with her own chil- dren later on. One of her Mont Vernon friends, now more than ninety years old, recalls that Mrs. Kittredge was the first one to use the abacus for instructing small children. When the Froebel system was coming into vogue, Mrs. Kittredge went to Boston for the purpose of studying it. Her mother, too, had been a teacher. There is still a curious document in the family, which certifies that she was quali- fied to teach and could calculate an eclipse. Mrs. Kittredge was interested in all world movements, and showed a wisdom and breadth [6] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD of outlook remarkable in a person who had spent her life in a far-away New England vil- lage. Her son-in-law used to say many, many years later that of all the letters which came to him in India, hers were of the most universal interest. At twenty-one she had married Captain Kittredge, fifteen years her senior. The ideals of her parents became those of little " Emmie." They were hers without effort. They came as naturally as the love of country lanes and meadows. From them she learned that no incident is without its meaning; that deprivations and calamities are really oppor- tunities for growth of character; that suffering is educational, and that every experience is providentially sent. Face to face with great sorrow, self-discipline was not a new idea to her. When, at various crises, she amazed even those who knew her best by her fortitude and serenity, they would not have been surprised, could they have known for how long a time her preparation had been going on ! If we would understand the power which carried her through her later life alone, calm and con- tented, that part of her life during which most [7] INTRODUCTION of us knew her, then we must look at the long reground," beginning with In r upward-gaz- ing childhood. From her earliest years gradual, steady, progressive growth of character was her purpose, growth which produces aston- ishing power late in life, unlike the dazzling genius which manifests itsrlf in \ c ry early years. Many household duties must be performed, and four younger brothers and sisters taken care of. The schools in Mont Vernon were an u ncertain quantity. Being much older than the others, Emmie helped with their instruction. To quote her words : " My own mother's way . . . was to have us learn to read at five. When once we had commenced, she never allowed us to relax, except for a vacation. When there was no school in the place, she would direct our studies herself, sometimes asking the children of the neighbourhood to join us in a spelling class . . . that we might not lose our interest." And so she had, from the first, the privilege, to her a joyous one, of being useful. Her gaze was always directed out and not in, and her personality her greatest capital through life, [8] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD was already forming. She realized that she alone was responsible for her conduct, and never felt it necessary to assume the weak- nesses characteristic of any age whether of youth or middle life. Even as a girl she was not thoughtless or frivolous. Besides, was not all in the earth and sky green fields and bird- songs, pure country air and the individuality of the seasons her friend, to last as a real influence through life ? To have gained a love of high ideals within and a love of nature without, what could be a more fortunate childhood, or a more competent equipment for life? Mrs. Kittredge saw in her serious, care- taking daughter that curious quality which elicits deference from complete strangers. She realized that Emmie ought to have the advantage of a more extensive education than her little hill-town could afford. Her sister, Mrs. Dimick, for whom Emmie was named, lived in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. She, too, was impressed with the dark-eyed girl, who had the knack of making people happy wherever she went. Upon her asking Emmie to come and stay with her, and go to school, [9] KODUCTION the young girl left M mon for Cam- bridge, it-turning to the hills in vacation time glorious summer months in tin fields, with I'M Js and flowers and her little brothers and sisters, who eagerly waited the return of their sweet-voiced sister. \\ith that characteristic whole-hearted nrxs which made her throw herself into the life of the place where she happened to be as if that were the only life of interest to her, she found Cambridge school-days all-absorbing. She de- lighted in her studies, and as long as she lived liked to recall certain lectures that Professor Agassiz gave to the High School pupils on n.irural history and one in particular, called "The Character and Personality of the Creator, as revealed in the Organic World." Quickly adapting herself to the life of the large town, she perceived instinctively which of her < gifts could be of use in the new community. It was not long before she was singing in the choir of the Prospect Street Church, where her aunt took her every Sunday, and whose pastor was the Reverend William A. Stearns, D. D. His eldest son, William, of about Emmie's age, was one of her schoolmates. [ '0] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD During their school-days they were the best of friends. In his own words: "We walk to singing school together and home from evening meeting, and when Em stops to rehearse at noon and has to walk home, somehow or other I always happen . . . to be in the front yard, and wonderful to relate, again happen to look up just as Miss Kittredge gets opposite the gate, and am very much astonished indeed to see who it is ! And then, somehow or other, in a most unaccountable manner, [I am] just pass- ing the church Saturday night when the choir get through singing, and as Em is going my way, volunteer to accompany her!" By nature they were strangely opposite. There was a quiet dignity and reserve about her. His playfulness " ridiculous capers," he called it and sunny disposition made him a universal favourite. He was full of the joy of life, confident of the uprightness of men in general, and of his own bright future. He had a strong spirit of adventure. When he was only sixteen he had begged his father to let him seek his fortune in India. They contrasted in appearance as well. Em- mie, although a noticeably fine-looking girl, INTRODUCTION "elegant" was Will's adjective for her, - would not have been called handsome. He was extremely so, with a finely cut nose and perfect teeth. She was dark and rather pale. He had reddish hair and brilliant colour. He was six feet tall, straight as an arrow, and radiant with health. It is remarkable to see together so perfect a face and so superb a physique. He was attracted by her depth of nature. She was fascinated by a sort of roman- tic interest in the handsome boy, so gloriously dissatisfied with a peaceful, comfortable life in Cambridge. In one thing, however, they agreed from the first, their religious feeling. They did not reserve religion as a solace for some remote contingency, a sort of last resort, when their own resources had failed. It was, on the contrary, a practical necessity of every-d ay living. They believed that God was interested in their individual welfare, in a " detailed Providence." This conviction was the source of their motives, gave them enthusiasm and courage, and, in the last analysis, was the in- spiration of every act. They continually spoke of it to each other. For those who feel that a [ 12] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD person's religion is for himself alone, that no one else has a right to know the deepest feel- ings of his heart, the point of view of Will Stearns and Emmie Kittredge may be hard to understand. Before she was twenty she had said : " Religion does not do much good if we keep it to ourselves. By our silence we may hinder others from making a right de- cision." It was a matter of conviction to them both that if God was in their lives, "in their thoughts, feelings, purposes and achievements, He would necessarily be in their words." The fact that religion was more discussed then than now, that what one believed was a matter of general inquiry, cannot wholly explain their attitude. Emmie graduated from the Cambridge High School in 1853 at the age of eighteen, and returned to her parents in Mont Vernon. Her time was to be occupied with caring for the children, and a few music pupils. What a pic- ture she draws of herself as she " bounded down the hill with light heart and elastic step," when a letter came from Will! She had hardly reached home when he began to urge her to come and study French in Cambridge. She [13] INTRODUCTION n't know of hmv miuli t would be to her in her after life! Besides, his fatlu i \\.is on the sihool board and could get her a position to teach in the High School, if she \\ishrd. It would IK- far preferable to taking music scholars in Mont Vernon. Did n't she think so ? I Yrhaps she did, for she wrote him : "I ac- knowledge that I dare not trust myself to sit and think for a long time of Cambridge. Am I not foolish ? But tears will sometimes come, in spite of every effort to restrain them. . There is something in the very name of Cam- bridge that excites emotions I cannot describe, there are so many things I love there." He, meanwhile, remained in Boston. He had entered the employ of Messrs. Weld and Minot. They owned many ships that brought queer things from far-off lands. "Come," he would urge his friends, "come! I am ex- pecting a ship full of curiosities from Cal- cutta." The things they brought, and the life which the captains described to him, continued to draw him more than ever toward the distant Orient. "He was accustomed during this time to [ u] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD walk in and out of Boston, a distance of two and one half miles each way, keeping in his pocket the omnibus tickets for emergencies . . . and coming home at night still fresh and strong and not infrequently whistling and singing as he came." He amused himself " committing pieces of poetry to memory and repeating them on these . . . often solitary walks." Before long it was decided that Emmie should return to her beloved Cambridge, to teach in the same school where she had so re- cently been a pupil. This experience, as well as others, was not without use to her in later life. In the fall of 1854 she began her work as "general assistant" in the English course of the Cambridge High School, at a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a year! The School Committee report says: "Miss Kittredge is a graduate of the school, and while connected with it occupied a high rank as a scholar. She manifests much skill and tact in conducting her recitations, and will attain emi- nence in her profession." For the first half- year she taught algebra, geometry, and some ad- [is] INTRODUCTION v.mced French, that of the in the 1 Mulish course; and the second half-year, geography, history, and Scott's "Marn or " Lady of the Lake." Mr. William F. Bradbury, who was, \vlu n Miss Kittrtilgc taught there, the newly ap- pointed sub-master, recalls her as "a fine looking, cultivated lady, whom one would no- tice anywhere." As a teacher she was very pop- ular, he remembers. Every morning in school there was singing, without instruments, by the scholars. Miss Kittredge's high, lovely voice led all the rest. "Yes," Mr. Bradbury added, "she was genial, bright, amiable, everything that one could wish." He also said that he drove thirteen miles to Mont Vernon and back over the New Hampshire hills one day, merely to call upon her, "so you can see how nice she was!" Some verses have been found, signed by William Winter, and addressed to Emmeline Kittredge. They were written on the sixth of February, 1855, when their author was a stu- dent at the Harvard Law School. [ 16] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD TO EMMA If unto thee a nobler, purer soul Could light new graces on thy beaming brow, 'T would not avail, when we have said the whole, To make us love thee more than we do now. God bless thee, Emma! I have known but few Who, for their gentle worth and purity, Might claim a fond affection as their due. But thou art one; and I award it thee! Teaching duties did not entirely fill her life. There is a tradition of a " dashing southerner," who drove about with very fast horses. He was a Harvard student, the pet of Cambridge society, and extremely handsome. Much to the envy of all the girls, it was Emmie Kittredge whom he used to invite to drive, and his habit of offering his carnage ended by his offering himself! Another young person was so persistent that she was greatly troubled. He pictured to her what her life would be if she married him : her freedom from care, the beautiful house she should live in, the servants and carriages she should have. One day toward the last he told her she might have his whole fortune [17] INTRODUCTION to devote to missions! Canny man! We may imagine the momentary temptation, for even in those early days hn mt< n-st in missions was deeply established. She went to her pa to ask him \\liat to do. Or S teams said: " I inmie, do you love him : " "N-n-no." "Then I have no more to say." And she went away, light-hearted. In spite of the fact that neither of them ap- proved of early engagements, and in spite of the fact that they were both just twenty, it was in this eventful winter that Will Stearns and Emmie Kittredge became engaged. His life, through his letters, was as much hers in his ab- sence as in his presence. It is hard, from this time, to separate their interests. During this same winter, 1854-55, the Stearns family moved from Cambridge to Amherst, as Dr. Stearns had been elected presi- dent of the college. The spring brought them all great sadness in the serious illness of Mrs. Stearns. Longing to help his mother. Will wrote her: "O mother, don't feel that God has forgotten you. What! He who has formed the smallest atom of sand and the dust, living objects so small that the microscope only can [ 18] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD reveal their vitality, He forget one of those whom He has called the noblest of all His works ? No, never. . . . Every one sends love to you, including your daughter Emmie (I hope sometime)." At midsummer Mrs. Stearns died. Her loss was an inconceivable blow to Will. He longed more than ever to get away from home and try his fortune. It was not, however, until Janu- ary, 1857, when he was twenty-two years old, that he decided to go at last to India. As he expected to be gone an indefinite number of years, he could not go alone. Emmie must come too. With her usual unerring judgment she refused. She knew she would cramp him. She felt that they were so young they could easily wait ten years if need be. Finally he admitted that it would be better for him to be fully established before marrying. His business arrangements were completed, various Boston merchants assuring him that they would give him sufficient consignments for beginning busi- ness when he should reach India, and the day was set for his leave-taking. Mr. Stearns shipped as super-cargo for Cal- cutta in the sailing ship Alma, leaving New [ '9] INTRODUCTION York on the fifteenth of April, 1857. He spent hisdavsstmh ing Spanish and Hindustani, read- ing, playing checkers, and "selling." Of the things he had to eat one may form an opin after this characteristic remark: "I put w< inn- wood into the water to make it palatable." Still, there were the tropical sunsets and a new night-time sky. "'I he Southern I looks down smilingly upon you," he wrote. "Orion has nearly left us, and the Great Bear will soon follow. They still look upon us, peer- ing at us with their great brilliant eyes; seem- ingly they offer to take back to the loved ones at home one last message, soon they will be gone. They will follow the North Star, which went out some days ago, and the last connect- ing link between us and home will be broken." In July the Alma reached Buenos Ayres. He sent a letter home from there, on the twenty- fifth of July, 1857. "Mr. L. and I walked to San Fernando, a distance of twenty-one miles, then walked all over the town, and, after seeing the sunset, started and walked back to Buenos Ayres, which we reached at eleven P. M., making the [20] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD whole distance, including two hours' stopping, in just twelve hours ! In other words we walked forty-two miles in ten hours ! . . . Remember this, the roads are very muddy, . . . and quite a number of times I went into the mud more than half-way up to my knees. . . . We were attacked by these fellows [dogs] more than a dozen different times. ... I had a good sword-cane which I drew on them at least twenty times. . . . But dogs are not the worst things to be encountered. There are wandering 'gouchers' whose business it is to ... keep the vast herds of horses in the country. They are always on horseback and ride like the wind. Many of them are the worst kind of robbers. We passed a great many of them on the road, and at one time we expected to have a little bit of sport. It was a dark, wild-looking spot, with the smooth, level unchanging pampa spreading out on all sides of us, just the place for their wild work. We had just been speaking to- gether about them, when we caught the sound of horses' steps, and in a moment five horses with two gouchers on each horse came rushing down upon us. Shouting and yelling, they made straight for us. I jumped up on one side [21 ] INTRODUCTION of the road and L. on the other; the gouchers rushed between us with three of the In i Just as they were close to us I saw one raise Im arms over my head. 1 thought for a monunr that I had got to feel the lassoo but away they went." This was not the only narrow escape of the voyage, by any means. Off the Cape of Good Hope the Alma nearly capsized in a heavy squall, and she came up the Bay of Bengal be- tueen two typhoons! Will's "lucky star" pre- served him safe and sound, however, and on the ninth of November, 1857, his twenty-third birthday, he landed in Calcutta. He procured at once a horse and buggy, a syct, groom, and a kitmutgar, boy, to wait upon him at meals and take care of his clothes. He was aghast at the "glorious tropical verdure," at the elephants and jackals and great "adju- tants," at the bedlam of oriental tongues, and the crowds one hundred thousand persons came to see one review of troops ! Meanwhile, having twice been reappointed at the High School, and her salary raised to four hundred dollars for the year 1856-57, at [22] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD the end of the school year, as the report of the School Committee says, "Miss Kittredge resigned, with universal regret." She returned to Mont Vernon. The pain of the separation from Will ab- sorbed her. Letters from both are so full of this all-important subject that what they did, apart, has little importance. The fear of a thou- sand possible accidents weighed upon her. Having been run away with down the long hill of Mont Vernon, she exclaimed, in a letter to him, written on the fourth of October, 1857: "The uncertainties of life strike me almost with dread. I hardly dare love anything lest it be snatched from me, yet my heart will love, and you know well the object it clings to most fondly here on earth. . . . Although little things make me unhappy, equally as little things of opposite character make me happy. I have . . . felt myself so unfitted to bear the trials of the world ! But I think its experiences are having their effect to make me stronger, and I trust that I may yet improve very much in this respect. Life is no holiday, but a stern reality, and I trust I may be fitted for all its duties." [23] INTRODUCTION Conscientious in all her occupations at home, her life was with Will in India. In Calcutta, he heard rumours of the great financial panic in Arm-ru.i. though his own letters had been sent to await his arri\al in Bombay. Somewhat disquieted, he W* only long enough to help load several ships for England and America, including the Alma, in which he had made the voyage, to sail from Calcutta, the "city of palaces," on the twenty- second of February, 1858. From Bombay, a few weeks later, he wrote, "I came mighty near arriving here on April Fool's Day, but just escaped it by twenty-four hours 1 he harbour is large, . . . studded with islands and rocks, among which ... is an old Hindu ruin. . . . There are plenty of hills that make the background. . . . You can see the Western Ghauts, a chain of mountains. ... I am liv- ing on board ship till the rains set in. ... Up-countrymen crowd the streets, Persians, Armenians, Jews, Afghans, Sikhs, men from Cashmere and Cabul, Arabs, Hindus and Musulmans, all colours, from the light Cash- merian to the black Muscatine." Later, in describing some women, hired mourners at a CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD funeral, he said, they wear "silver anklets of one pound each, gold and silver bracelets, earrings of gold and pearls and precious stones, and a great nose-ring, three or four inches in diameter. . . . They wear a long piece of silk wound around them, and up over the head." But his heart was full of his love for Emmie, and of sadness at the separation from her. One letter, filled with reminiscence, goes over each stage of their happiness. . . . "And then the first letter, whew! You could not have dreamed of such happi- ness, . . . and the letter and the walk through the Hoveys' nursery, I suppose on account of the beautiful trees and flowers, though, faith, it was the dead of winter; and then long days of happiness without a cloud, till the word came that I must go ... for many a long week and month out upon the broad ocean and into far-off lands. . . . " The future, the future, I try to look into it, to the time when we shall be old and gray, . . . but who can tell the end ? ... Be strong and remember He says : * If thou faintest in the INTRODUCTION day of adversity. tin strength is small ' I have .uloptetl this sentence lor my help, and ov I think ot it when the big black clouds b< to make. . . . Dearest Emmie, farewell. "Wai As to his business, on which depended tht ir separation or their marriage, no clearer descrip- tion of what happened could be given than that writtt-n to his father in April, 1863, by Mr. Stearns himself. " Five years ago to-day I ar- rived in Bombay. . . . Full of hope, faith, and confidence, I set foot on these shores. A hope that the future, so pregnant with blessings for those who proved themselves deserving, \\ould grant me at least a smile, ... a faith that the promises which so freely fell from the lips of men whom I had been led to believe were true men, would at least in part be fulfilled, a confidence, that in time I should be able to prove myself equal to any occasion which might arise out of my then unexplored business ca- reer. Well, I came to Bombay, and rushed on shore to open the scores of letters which had so long been awaiting my arrival. Letters teeming with credits, bills of lading, invoices [26] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD of goods on the way to Bombay and orders for the future, and I found not one ! It was cruel, and my heart sank within me. I had a few rupees left from my Calcutta earnings . . . and with these I was to exist, to open my office, and carry on its expenses." . . . He went to the Mission House to stay till something should turn up with the Rev. Mr. Harding, whose entire family became later the warm friends of Mr. and Mrs. Stearns. " Perhaps," he wrote, " I should have come direct home, if it had not been for the fact that every one prophesied I would." He spent his time learning to read, write, and speak Hindustani, and by the last of June, he mentions wanting letters in Hindustani. "I am studying hard to get hold of this jaw- breaking language. . . . The idioms are, I believe, without a parallel in any tongue. Here is one: 'He tore the collar of his patience,' for 'he became impatient.' Their names too are frightful Lowjee, Pestonjee, Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy. "The alphabet is nearly identical with the Hebrew and gives one the same insight into that, as well as the Arabic, Persian, and San- [27] INTRODUCTION skur. that Latin gives to the modern Kuro- pean languages. ... As for getting discour- aged, why sometimes the road looks long, but the idea of giving up has not once entered my head. The stairs may fail to enable me to reach the top, but the ladder is K-t'r, .mu need not say we had no furniture to move, for there were no less than ten hackeries or bullock- carts, and twenty-two coolies, women and men. 1 licse twenty-two were employed to carry the glass and crockery, to prevent breakage. 1 liink of it! Three old bachelors employing some dozen coolie women to help them move! . . . What would we say at home to see some dozen women marching down the street in solemn procession with baskets, furniture, etc., on their heads ? "Since the first, we had a succession of holi- days. On that day the proclamation which inaugurated the Queen's government in In- dia was read, and amid much seeming hilarity Queen Victoria became the acknowledged sovereign of India. In the evening all Bombay was illuminated, ... a splendid sight. The ramparts were covered with cocoanut lamps, row after row, and all placed within two or three inches of each other. The cathedrals, churches, etc., from the crown of the spire to the base were one blaze of light. . . . Streets were hung with transparencies, flags, lights, etc. Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy's palaces looked [32] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD peculiarly beautiful. You can judge of the amount of oil used when I assure you that Sir Jamsetjee alone had one hundred thousand lamps ! Besides this, all the men-of-war in the harbour were illuminated from truck to keelson. This sight was of surpassing beauty. Flights of rockets and roman candles, blazing blue lights or flashing fire-works, with thundering cannon, together, made a scene that pen can- not describe. . . . "One reason why such a great show was made was on account of the 'Dewallee' festi- val, or Hindu new year, which occurs on the seventh of November this year (to-day), and which is celebrated by illuminations of two or three nights before the close. In preparing for the Queen's Raj they also, at a little additional expense, got ready for their annual riot. Last Friday night all the native town was ablaze with lights, equalling if not exceeding the Queen's celebration. Most of the natives kept open house. I visited Ramball's house, and there was so much fire that the heat of the rooms was almost intolerable. This is the night upon which the natives close their account- books for the year, and with appropriate [33] INTRODUCTION hcatlu nisli ceremonies open tin ir new books. After leaving Ramball's we went along to an- other friend's house, where we received a dose of rose-water, a bunch of flowers, and a daub of sandal-wood oil upon the back of the hand. So strong is this oil that, though two or three days have passed and I have washed my hands in soap several times, I can still detect the smell. After leaving this place, we called upon our friend, Dr. Bhawoo Dajee, the native doctor. . . . His house and compound was a perfect fairy-land. On the top was a huge painting of the Queen, Prince Albert, and others, receiving the homage of the native princes. This was lighted from behind. . . . The house was covered with lights, and the garden walks lighted on each side with frame- works of lamps. The prettiest sight of all was, however, the cocoanut trees, which had each a Chinese lantern, globe-shaped, hung in the top, looking more like a huge illuminated cocoanut than anything else. Another fine sight was the view from the house of the thou- sands of upturned native faces, gazing upon the scene. Their many-coloured turbans made a singular background for the lights to flash [34] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD upon. Juggernath Sunkersett's house was also grandly lighted up. . . . What with the birds and flowers and noble trees, we easily scare up an imaginary paradise. It needs only one thing to complete its beauty ... to my mind at least, and what is that, do you ask ? . . . Believe me, I have almost contemplated the arms off my big easy-chair from only sitting and musing upon the time when I shall see you flitting about the rooms. . . . The sun, who is bidding us farewell, is just awaking birds with you." On the ninth of November, 1858, his twenty- fourth birthday, when he had been in India one year, he wrote to his sister Eliza: "Let's see; what has the year done for me ? First and foremost, it has made a man of me. . . . You would hardly recognize the sober, sedate Mr. Stearns, senior partner of the house of W. F. Stearns & Company, as the laughing, jovial brother of two years since. . . . The year has equalled in experience to me more than three or four at home would have done. It has taught me self-reliance; it has given me an insight into manners and customs; ... it [35] INTRODUCTION has given my thinking faculties a scope for action. . . . On the whole, your brother Will is much more able to tumble up than tumble down." Fanny, the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Dimick, died in Cambridge of tuberculosis of the lungs on the fifth of September, 1858, at the age of eighteen. Her death was an event highly significant to so religious a girl as Emmie Kittredge. " It was to me," she wrote, "a new experience, and it has made everything in life seem changed." Yet, in spite of her sadness, the winter at home in Mont Vernon was a very happy one for Emmie. "The days are too short," she said. "The snow is ten feet deep. I get up at four o'clock and read from one to two hours before breakfast." Her large music class had been given up on account of the "feelings of another music-teacher." She kept only three little pupils. Even to-day there are memories in Mont Vernon of her voice and her look as she sang in the choir, or of her playing the organ while a poor half-witted boy pumped; of her leading in the famous "sings "; of her superb, dark, almost Spanish look, of her [36] CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD striking grace, as she walked about the village draped in the splendid oriental shawl sent by her lover in India. There were seven hundred people in Mont Vernon in those days. Now there are four hundred. But the secret of her happiness was that Will was coming home! Though he drew vivid pictures of their meeting, wondering whether it would be stormy or pleasant, hot or cold, where she would be sitting, or whether he should rouse her from sleep, she on her part would never plan their programme. She wrote him on the twelfth of February, 1859: " I must tell you that when I think of you, it is most natural for me to imagine you in that big long overcoat you used to wear so much. I don't know but that I shall expect to see you with it on, even in July. I can see you now putting it on as you were about to start for home. ... I should like to see you go out of the window as you did one night long ago." And later, from Roxbury, on the twenty- second of March, 1859: "I wish your photograph would make its appearance before I go home. I long to see [37] INTRODUCTION ir, and yet dread it lest you may look changed. Isn't it funny that I should feel so? If you are changed I shall be very glad that you sent it so that I may get accustomed to your looks before we meet. Perhaps I shall be so much changed that you will not recognize me. What would you say to that ? . . . You caution me against anticipating too much. I hope I do not. I am not generally troubled in that way. . . . Oh, I do love our spring! I suppose you will say that to understand of what nature is capable I must come to India. You will talk of beautiful flowers, of splendid plumage of birds, etc. Well, if you do I shall love our spring better than anything else. I wonder if you see from your window as much beauty as I?" In order to make his homecoming a com- plete surprise, he wrote his sister that he was planning to go to Arabia. And further- more : " I have a grand opportunity to go to the coast of Africa Zanzibar but cannot spend the time. . . . I only hope that the chance will be given me of seeing all the world before I die. I should like to go up into Thibet and Inde- [38] Mary E. Stearns, 1859 CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD pendent Tartary, into countries where no one ever goes. Hang those every-day travellers that sleep in hotels and roll about in phae- tons ! . . . Perhaps my history is to be writ- ten hereafter, and I may be called upon to relate to my children's children the narrow escapes in Bombay! ... A tiger was killed the other night only a few hundred yards from our house. It measured about eight feet from tip to tip. ... I expect it's somewhat like romance in the East. . . . So, on receipt of this, don't write me till the last mail in July." And when he finally did come, about the first of August, it was a surprise not only to the rest of the world, as he had wished, but also to Emmie. For she was awakened in the mid- dle of one memorable night by a well-known whistle under her window, and he was waiting for her in the garden below. The next we know there was a large wedding in the Prospect Street Church in Cambridge, on the twenty-fourth of August, 1859, when William French Stearns and Mary Emmeline Kittredge were married by President Stearns. [39] INTRODUCTION The radiance of their happiness is recalled to-day as unique in the experience of one who was there. A month later, on the twenty- eighth of September, 1859, they sailed for India, where a new life in the "city built of rainbows" was to begin. PART I Married Life I First Year in Bombay THE mere mention of certain places surrounds one with a world of romance. One feels, all at once, the vitality of life in an imaginary sphere as the mention of certain persons lifts one into life on a different plane. Such a place was Mount Pleasant, Malabar Hill, Wilderness Road, Bombay; such a person was the lady who lived in it. Is not the very name of Mr. Stearns's bungalow suggestive of long tropical days and "nights fragrant with blooms and jewelled thick with stars " where, "lulled by the cadence of the garden-stream," the "easy, uncounted Eastern minutes slide by " ? Here began Mrs. Stearns's oriental life, luxurious, beautiful as dreams, above all, so dear to her. Mr. and Mrs. Stearns had reached Bombay on the thirteenth of November, 1859, and had stayed, for a few weeks, with their good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Harding, at the Mission House. [43] MARRIED LIFE Then they moved to Mount Pleasant, far above the dust of the crowded city, out where the sea- breeze creeps in as the heat of the tropical day grows strong. Mr. Stearns described it to his father. "We have a most beautiful house, or 'bungalow/ as it is called here, situated on Malabar Hill, about four miles from the Fort, or place of business. . . . Our house is on the side of the hill, overlooking a mass of tropical verdure, palms, tamarind and popoi trees; at the foot, and within gunshot, the sea breaks over the black rocks, shaking and scattering its white foam in beautiful contrast to the bold and naked shore. It is one of the finest places in Bombay." The compound of the house was massed with startling, red-leaved shrubs, and on each side of the wide white doorway, beside the cascades of maiden-hair fern, sat two white-turbaned tailors, attentively sewing. According to tropi- cal fashion, the house was open, through and through. The drawing-room, filled with carved teak furniture, the circular red divan in the centre, the grand piano at one side, was sepa- rated from the billiard-room at one end and from the dining-room at the other by tall, [44] Mount Pleasant, Malabar Hill, Bombay FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY carved screens. These were removed just before dinner, to reveal the beautifully deco- rated table and the servants in uniform, one behind each chair. The head butler wore a brilliant turban, white coat, red brocade trousers, and wide sash. "The rules of caste necessitated a large number of servants, and the heat of the day demanded an equipment in horses and carriages if one ventured out of the compound, which elsewhere would border on extravagance." One of Mrs. Stearns's own letters describes her household. " BOMBAY, January 25, 1860. "Let me tell you first of all that you cannot get along with few servants here as at home. . . . We have the nice little number of eighteen. Will you have their names ? First and chief among them all is Butler, whose duty con- sists in making all the purchases for the house, arranging all the meals for the day, making puddings, tarts, and various nice dishes for the table, waiting on the table, ordering the other servants, etc. This same butler is a Portu- guese, calls himself a Christian, is a well- dressed, good-looking, and very capable per- [45] MARKUP I. in son. Next is Bobajee, or the cook, who is also Portuguese; two boys, Rama and Cymon, uho wait on the table and do various things; Mussal, who takes care of the lamps, dishes, etc., Hamal, who makes the beds, rubs the furniture, and keeps clean in general ; Sweeper, whose duty consists in the care of the bath- rooms, and various things below the other servants; Panee-wallah or water-bringer ; Ra- mooshee, who watches the house at night; Coolee, who brings the things from the bazaar; Coachman and three Gora-wallahs, one for each horse; Dhobie or washerman; Durzie or tailor; Mallee or gardener; and Small Boy in the cook-room, who builds the fire. The name of each of these indicates his profession and they are known by no other. Take Hamal, for instance. He knows nothing except to make beds, sweep the floors, and polish the furni- ture; it would be an impossibility for him to do anything else. ... I like the servants very much thus far. . . . I assure you that our cook- ing is delicious. I have never tasted better any- where. Should I have a large dinner-party, I should only have to tell my butler how many people were coming, and I should feel sure that [46] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY everything would be right. . . . All I can do is to keep a watch over the butler, seeing that he does not make our living too expensive. I make him give me a strict account of all he buys each day and then pay him." He was, so to speak, the grand mogul of the household. All discipline and all complaints came through him. She continued : " It is almost impossible to have any care here, though I take all I can possibly get. We have an excellent dbobie. My dresses are done up better than I ever had them done at home, as also my collars, sleeves, etc. ... I am sure you would revel in having things done as I have had them thus far. . . . Mrs. Harding has been spending a week with us for her baby's health." The servants slept on mats under the veran- das, or, if they had families, in tents, which they could put up near by. They formed a little community, though hardly friendly, since the rules of caste kept them from eating with each other. The same rules prevented them from touching the food of Europeans. Of how Mrs. Stearns passed her days, we have an account in her own words. "We rise [47] MARRIM- I.n i quite early in the morning before the sun is up, bathe, dress as quickly as possible, partake of ' little breakfast,' chota henrtt, consisting of tea, bread and butter, and plantains, then walk two or three miles." It is the unconven- tional part of the day. "The road ... at the foot of the hill on the seashore ... is pro- tected from the morning sun by the hill. We meet many persons walking or riding. On our return we dress, have prayers, and breakfast at half-past eight or nine o'clock. Will and Mr. Healey " who now lived with them "go immediately to their business in the Fort." During the morning the butler's accounts might be examined; the daily visit made to the store-room to give out the necessary articles for the day's use; work for the durue for a man was the family seamstress arranged and inspected. "From eleven all two o'clock I am obliged to be ready for callers." Prodi- gally coloured butterflies, produced in flower- gardens, and known in India as "flying flow- ers," sun their wings, timid lizards run about over the walls or bask on the lattice, and in the thick, cool shade of the masses of mango trees, [48] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY the sun-birds flash. Beyond, the blue sea spreads wide to the tropical midday sun. * The painted streets alive with hum of noon, ' The traders cross-legged 'mid their spice and grain, ' The buyers with their money in* the cloth, . . . ' The shout to clear the ro^d, the huge stone wheels, ' The strong, slow oxen and their rustling loads, . . . 'The dyers stretching waist-cloths in the sun ' Wet from the vats orange, and rose, and green ; ' The soldiers clanking past," such is an Indian hot high-noon, the formal hour for calling. If no one should come, a thousand things of interest can be seen from the verandas. To quote Mr. Stearns: "While I write, two or three snake-charmers have come up to the door. They promise to show us a fight between a cobra and a mongoose. They are queer fel- lows, and their performance in jugglery and sleight of hand would astonish you. . . . "Within a few rods, or yards, rather, of my chair, sits a native Christian preacher, named Dajiba, * putting in ' like a good one. For an audience he has a portion of our servants only. Some will not come, they are so bigoted, a few come to please us, and one, or perhaps two, because they like to hear him. For all this [ 49 ] MARRIED LIFE instruction I pay him ten rupees per month, or sixty dollars per year!" Sometimes Mrs. Stearns herself went call- ing, for it was necessary to return a call within one week or lose the acquaintance. "At two o'clock I rfave my tiffin, or lunch, then lounge about . . . unexposed to any com- pany until four, dress again for callers, or a drive." It is interesting to know what Mis. Stearns called "lounging about." She said, "I am trying to finish Prescott's works and Alexander Dumas. . . . We have from New York by every mail the New York Times and Herald, Boston Advertiser, Transcript and Traveller. I read all these with the exception of the Herald; from England the Home News and Cornbill Magazine; two Bombay daily papers and one weekly." Everybody takes a drive before dinner "along the shore, perhaps, or over the crest of the hill by the grim Towers of Silence, where the Parsees burn their dead, through the palm- groves of Girgaum, through the native town to the open Esplanade, where, amid the mob of carriages, can be seen the rich native with his European coachman, and all the mush- [50] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY room growth of suddenly acquired wealth, sprinkling of officialdom, and smartly dressed army officers." " I often drive into the Fort and bring Will home. . . . Three nights in the week we have a band of music at the Esplanade between our house and the Fort, where we often stop for a while on our way home. It is quite a fashion- able resort, people driving, riding, and gossip- ing, a few perhaps listening to the music." This was "that marvellous hour which closes the tropical day, when light becomes an illusion and . . . Mystery casts off the shade and clothes itself in radiance! . . . When . . . all colours are rarefied, not dimmed ; all forms rendered ethereal, not distorted nor effaced." Saturated with the odour of crushed vegetation, that wonderful twilight passed like a flash, and the night shut down upon them those nights "which have the essence of five nights any- where else extracted and enriched with spices " when one sits perfectly still and listens to the blue doves' coo or the sad whistle of the little owl or night-jar. Dinner closed the day, save for a quiet hour, unless some formal function prolonged it. [51] MARRIED I.n i Different from all others was mail-day, corn- it first hut twice a month. It is dcsrrihed by Mr. Stearns. "While writing the mail signalled ! . . . First, the smoke of a steamer is spied from the outer light-ship, long before the vessel itself is visible. Up goes a flag on the liuht-ship at once, to notify the fellows at the light-house on shore that a steamer is com- ing. Should the steamer be coming from the south, a large white one with a black cross goes up on the south side of the flag-staff; if from the north, then on the north side. As soon as it is ascertained that it is the mail, a large red flag with three white crosses in it is hoisted, and then, such excitement until the news is known, you cannot imagine." When the letters had been read their replies must be returned at once it took three months to write a letter and receive an answi-r, and, to quote again, "during that time the world turns ninety times ! " The interest in home news and the love of home friends was so intense with both that they sent off "rarely less than a dozen [letters] and sometimes over twenty by each opportunity, those not short ones by any manner of means." [52] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY There was no other communication with Europe and America, for the cable was not yet laid. On Sunday they made their life as nearly as possible like that at home. They attended regularly the Scotch Free Church. Mr. Stearns's business was thriving. He was popular with all classes, both European and native, influential in business and finan- cial circles, respected by his associates and the officers of the government. With no prescribed duties, with every temp- tation to the luxury of idleness in the tropics, and every excuse for indolence, Mrs. Stearns was constantly busy. She never felt that it was allowable to waste a moment of time. Besides her household cares she studied sys- tematically to increase her command of lan- guages, learning Hindustani, which she spoke remarkably well, and reading French, with which she became so familiar that when she went to Paris she needed only the study of diction. Tradition has it that she read through twenty-two volumes of Prescott during the few minutes every day when an ayah was brushing her hair ! She practised, too, just so long every [53] MARRIED I day as if in preparation f \\ith numerous little domes and minarets, and ru lily coloured. Not permitted to enter pro- fanation. . . . They say they do not worship the idol, but only reverence the represent. r of a Divine Power or Agency. . . . From the battlements of the temple a fine view of the great plain and distant empire. . . . Returned slowly through the ancient city. ... I here, too, are some very pretty tanks, and women bearing water on their heads, and bullocks \\ith leathern panniers filled with water, and mone- tary looking Parsees, with receding hats, and Hindus with the patch of ' caste ' on the fore- head, and the grave Musulmans, and turbans of red and yellow and white and green, and dangling robes of all colours. . . . Here, too, the common women are bangled and spangled and ringed like the richest Hindu matron, the only difference being that the one wears real gold and jewels, and the others glass and brass; but, at a distance, the common woman is the counterpart, with her nose-rings and ear-rings, necklaces, bracelets, finger- rings, anklets, and rings on her toes. How proudly and daintily she steps off, barefooted, bare- headed and bare-armed, with the water vessel [72] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY on her head, and her glitter and jangle of glass and brass! "Friday, July 20. Took railroad at 9.45 A. M. for Bombay. . . . Took palkees to de- scend the Ghauts. This descent, which occu- pies about two and one half hours, is glorious ! The road, cut by the native princes, centuries ago, to connect the upper Deccan with the sea- coast, winds down the mountains, as steep as men or bullocks can safely walk, while above, below and around are the hill-tops, the deep ravines and gorges, and the opening, far- stretching plains; and now, in the midst of the rains, the mountain-sides are alive with cas- cades. Water falls from all points, and in all forms and quantities. The bearers sing all the way, a rude line with a short chorus of two or three words. . . . Reached Bombay at dark, where Stearns's faithful gora-wallah and coach were waiting for us. ... "Saturday, July 21. [After enumerating the seventeen servants.] These are men. Then there is the ayah (child's nurse). Mrs. Stearns is thought very self-denying not to have an amah, or waiting-woman for herself; and when the pair of horses is out in the carriage, one of [73] MARRIED LIFE the gora-wallahs is coachman, which is an economy. Each gora-wallah sticks to Ins horse, and either drives him or sits behind, or runs by his side. No coach goes without at least one footman, and often two. They run before, when coming to a corner, to warn and give notice, and stand by the horse's head when the coach stops. . . . "Thence to Bhawoo Dajee's. . . . Several Hindu friends of rank come in and are pre- sented. The first entertainment is a juggler. He sits on the floor of the veranda, and wt in chairs directly before him, and he has no table, or accomplice, or long sleeves, or any means of concealment, except a small coarse bag which lies by him. He is a Mohammedan and has grave and decorous manners, salaam- ing to us before and after each trick. He pro- duced a small mango tree with flowers from nothing, and brought several cooing doves from nowhere, and burned out the insides of his mouth, and performed inexplicable tricks with cups and balls. Bhawoo Dajee apologized for not getting a snake-charmer. They are not here in the ' rains.' Next came a man with two bears, who . . . salaamed, wrestled, were [74] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY thrown, etc. Then came a man with monkeys and goats, who acted little farces, taking parts of soldiers, old women, etc., he singing all the time, and shaking a little drum which was thus beaten by two balls on the ends of strings. "Now we adjourned to the parlors, and minstrels came. One played an instrument like a guitar with a bow. The other played a lute and sang. The songs were in Hindustani, Marathi, Gujerathi, and Persian. ... I liked the Persian songs best. They had more air and the words were more articulate. They were like Spanish airs. Next a boy of fifteen or six- teen sang, the most celebrated boy singer in Bombay. . . . The next and last entertain- ment was a mimic. He gave imitations of Brahmin pundits disputing on a nice point of metaphysics, of Parsees chanting their prayers, and of a Brahmin reading passages of San- skrit and expounding them. The latter caused great merriment among our grave friends, for Bhawoo Dajee says the Sanskrit was mere sound, and the interpretation mere jumbles of great words. Then he imitated Arabs singing in deep, hoarse voices, ending almost in a bray, and the sharp, high- voiced people of the Carna- [75] MARKII n Lit i tic. I called for an imitation of English. He declined, but when I insisted he gave one. . . . He rubbed his chin, rubbed his knees, worked his face, turned his lu-ad on one side and the other, talked in a thick voice, often too low M be heard, and as it were by jerks, with awk- ward attitude and motions. . . . "After this very agreeable entertainment we drove ... to a beautiful Mohammedan mosque, very large, of white stone, with nu- merous domes. Then to the chief Parsee Fire Temple. ... In the centre, where I cannot enter, is a room with a kind of altar, on which burns the perpetual fire. It is a clear, hot after- noon, and from the walk we see the broad Back Bay, and the Parsees making their even- ing worship to the sea. . . . They honour by outward reverence all great manifestations of goodness and power. In theory the sea and sun have no being, no soul, no power to will or do, and are not treated as persons, but the people declare and speak out by outward reverence their admiration of the greatness and benefits of the sun and sea. "Stopped at place where four streets met, and sat in our carriage while Bhawoo Dajee [76] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY pointed out to me the races, castes, nationalities, and occupations of the thronged passers-by. He knew them all by dress and feature - Mohammedan, Parsee, Hindu, Persian, Arab, Nubian, and the Marathis, Gujerathis, Sikhs, Bengalees, Rohillas, etc. Among them were devotees, fakhirs, one who lived under a log by the wayside, and wore his hair to the waist uncombed, and lived on charity. He was a travelling fakhir, and had seen all parts of India, going from temple to temple. "Then to the dense bazaars, where one can hardly breathe for the closeness. ... A Mo- hammedan beggar stands in the middle of the street, with a fan, and gives a single stroke of the fan toward each passerby. Bhawoo Dajee says the theory is that every benefit, however slight, calls for a return, and a whiff of a fan in the heat is a benefit, and he is to be compen- sated. . . . All houses have a vestibule to drive under, a protection against sun and rain. . . . "My friend, Bhawoo Dajee, had got me an invitation to a party at the home of a Parsee millionaire, one Byramjee Hormmusjee Carna- jee. ... In the supper-room a long table is [77] MARRIED 1 set with fruits, flowers and cakes, no meats or fish, and an abundance of wine. . . . From the dining-room we went into the large saloon, u In rt seats are ranged against the wall, on three sides, the outer doors being the fourth side. At the head of the room are the seats of honour, and from these the guests shaded d<>\\ n to those of the lower degrees near the doors. . . . The entertainment consisted of music and dancing by Nautch girls. 'I his is the usual entertainment at Parsee and Hindu parties, for their ladies are never present and they never dance themselves. . . . The guests sit round the three sides of the square, the Parsees in high receding hats, red loose trousers and white cassocks, and the Hindus in turbans of all shapes and colours, tunics and togas wrapped or draped about them, and all without stockings, and some without shoes, and conforming to the European custom of sitting in chairs, they still ease themselves occasionally by gathering up one leg or both legs. "At the other end, by a pile of shawls and cushions on the floor, sit two Nautch girls, and two grave musicians, playing on stringed instruments. [78] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY "The gravity and even sadness of the coun- tenances of these girls was most striking. It fascinated you. What can it mean ? What hidden grief? What concealed sickness ? " Presently the elder, who is perhaps eighteen or twenty, rises and begins the dance. She is dressed as a Persian, in a rich gown coming to the knees, with pantaloons below. . . . The dance is as slow and dull and meaningless as I have seen it described, more like a funeral solemnity than a social entertainment. She is a Mahratta girl, of that warlike race that so long ruled the Carnatic and the Deccan and gave so much trouble to the English. . . . She is very, very thin, very, very sallow, with damp black hair parted and drawn back from Jier ears, and deep, deep dark eyes. How fixed, sad, serious is their look ! Is this all mere colour, or is it character ? "Now the girls retire and come in again in their native Hindu dress. The graceful mantle or wrapper, gathered across the shoulders and falling as drapery to the figure. . . . Now the girls s,it and only sing. The other girl is only twelve or thirteen, does not dance at all, and only sings to accompany the elder. The songs, [79] M \KKII: i> 1. 1 1 i uhich Bhawoo Dajee translates to me, are all light, fanciful love-songs, and here . . . the woman is the lover, the adorer and the suf- ferer. . . . Before leaving we have bouquets, paun soparets (spices and betel nuts in a sopartf leaf), and were sprinkli-d \sith rose-water. "Sunday, July 22. Rode home from church over Malabar Hill, from the Back Bay, a pic- turesque scene of high rocks, deep dells, and a climbing carriage way. "All along this hill, across it and on the western slope are the bungalows of all who can afford to live out of town, that is, afford the necessary horses, carriages, and servants. "Spent the evening with my kind host and hostess, for to-morrow I leave India. . . . "Monday, July 23. Stearns goes with me to the pier, . . . over which the monsoon is pitching the waves in wild confusion. ... At 5 P. M. steam out of the Bay, which is a truly noble harbour, of vast dimensions, yet safe, and in the dim, cloudy monsoon, leave the far- outreaching reefs over which the seas are tossing, behind us." Mr. and Mrs. Stearns's first year of married [so] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY life was nearly gone. He said on the twenty- third of August, 1860: "A year ago to-morrow I surrendered my independence. It was the jolliest operation I ever went into. . . . Not- withstanding I thought I knew Emmie thor- oughly before marriage, I was hardly prepared to find her so well booked up upon almost every subject. Had the United States been searched through and through for a better girl, it would have been in vain. They say that 'love is blind '; luckily in my case it don't at all apply. . . . We are as happy as clams at high-water." "The year has been one of happiness,'* wrote Mrs. Stearns. "We have both enjoyed excellent health. Will has been prospered in his business [there were at that time twenty ships loading], and we have really had nothing . . . at which to repine. Do not understand me to mean that we do not miss our friends. Far from it. You cannot entertain such a thought for a moment. . . . We love our friends far too well to be willing to remain so far from them any longer than necessity requires. . . . Let me tell you that it is quite in fashion to complain of living here. Many of the English, especially since the mutinies, dislike India very [81 ] MARKH i) l.n i much, and sigh continually for the time when they may leave the country, never to return. There are many reasons \vhuh cause this feel- ing. Our principal otir is tin fact that child n n cannot remain here after the age of five or six without injury, so that as soon as they reach this age, they are almost invariably sent home, to be placed with friends, or, as is often the case, with entire strangers, till their parents can return to England, or till they are of age to come back to India with safety. You will see that a large majority of the families are broken in this way, and do you wonder that the mothers sigh for the time when these sad sepa- rations may be ended ? Sometimes a wife finds it impossible to bear the Indian climate, and is obliged to go home, leaving her husband here, perhaps with no hope of coming out again. A friend of mine has just now gone home, with no hope of seeing her husband for at least six years. She has tried three times to remain here, going home when her health has failed, and then returning again to her husband, till now she is obliged to give up all hope of being able to bear the climate. Her husband, being in the service, could do nothing at home, and must [to] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY - remain for six years till he can get a pension when he may hope to see his wife and children, if they are spared to him so long. . . . You will see that in our case we have something to draw us home. This little boy must be thought of, and I hope we may be able to come home as soon as his age shall demand a change. You will be glad to know that the climate is considered very favourable for children, till they reach the age I have mentioned." How could a young girl, most of whose life had been passed on a New England farm, fail to be swept off her feet by the splendour of this oriental life ? Mrs. Stearns adapted herself to it completely. Superficially speaking, she had had no preparation for it. Was it her unerring judgment, her clear-eyed perception of the value of outside things, which kept her un- spoiled ? Or did a premonition of the change which actually came "maintain her balance and carry her with dignity through great pro- sperity into the sorrow and hardship which ennobled her after days ? " However it may be, there was a reason deeper than mere adaptabil- ity for her distinction, her grace, her poise. MARRIED LIFE No accomplishment which one may have spent years in gaining makes a universal ap- peal; no specialty, bringing the homage of half the world, wins the praise or even the interest of the other half; not even the posses- sion of any single virtue confers certain dis- tinction. The only thing that starts a warm pulse of sympathy wherever in the world one goes, the thing which brings a sort of instinc- tive deference from a Hindu as well as a Pu- ritan, and which is detected at a glance, is the whole of a person, his "consolidated" char- acter, effected by a life of self-control and high ideals. Such a character had Mrs. Stearns. The outward events of her married life made it one of glittering romance. Yet for her the romance was only in the perfection of her home-happiness. It was a sort of prism through which she beheld all the glories of India. A study of Mr. Stearns only serves by con- trast to set her character in greater relief. His impulsive enthusiasm warmed through her "less ardent nature." She delighted in his happy, winning boyishness, and in his love of [84] William French Stearns FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY mischief, which was utterly irrepressible. On one occasion, in Cambridge, an old man who sat in front of the Stearns family at church, found, after a long sermon, his queue care- fully braided on to the pew, and only inno- cent little Willie sat behind ! He never did grow up. Teasing was his delight, and he would sometimes snap a nut across the table at his wife in the midst of an official dinner much to her dismay. He looked on the world through rose-coloured glasses, and found it im- possible to be cast down. He was always hope- ful, optimistic, with a famous sense of humour. There was a kind of exuberant good-fellow- ship about him. Yet the weakness of this par- ticular trait was not his. He did not lack moral courage. In spite of his impressionable tem- perament, his integrity of purpose was un- flinching. He was determined, undespairing in the pursuit of a high aim. He "always expressed the utmost indignation at vulgarity or profaneness." It was said that if a ques- tionable story was to be told, it was never begun till Mr. Stearns had left the room. The hackneyed phrase, "generous to a fault," would have found in him its definition. MARRII i> I u i He was affectionate, courteous, thoughtful, comforting. Kvery one wanted to confide in him immediately. Asoneof his contemporaries expressed it, "There was never any need of preliminaries with such a man/' Yet his bounding mainspring needed a con- trol. He relied on the advice and unfailing intuition of his wife, which he never followed in vain. He trusted her judgment entirely - a judgment never at fault. To use his < expression, " I have an unbounded, mad faith in the other side of the house." She gave him stability. An elastic sense of the joy of life he supplied to her. They perfectly comple- mented each other. As has been said, religion was their supreme concern. Indeed, if religion is not the supreme concern of strong natures, it is apt to seem the subject most negligible, although the inevitable results are so different. Had their views on this subject differed, she once said, she would never have married him, adding, " A love which must end with this life ! I confess I cannot care for anything so short-lived and unreal." A moral life was not sufficient to them. Their joy lay in finding out God's will ; then, [86] FIRST YEAR IN BOMBAY in asking for His help to carry it out. As they agreed in this, their ideals and aspirations, their tastes, even, became similar. And so, after all, their lives were unified by that great " force which produces love to God and service of men." [87] II Matheran IT was the custom for the fashionable world of Bombay to withdraw to the Hills during the rainy season. Poona, shimmering under the steady downpour of sunlight, up above the storm-clouds which weighed upon Bombay, was a favourite place. But Matheran, among its jungle thickets, a quieter and more retired spot, was Mrs. Stearns's paradise. Mr. Stearns wrote to his brother Frazar, " Matheran is a thousand-fold more beautiful than Poona, and had you seen it, you would have had a glimpse of Indian scenery quite equal to anything this side of the Himalayas. It is a place of most surpassing loveliness and grandeur, . . . the views are magnificent beyond description. We are surrounded by the tops of mountains. On many of them are the famous 4 Hill Forts.' . . . There are spots where you can look sheer down . . . steep precipices into the valley be- low, a distance of twenty-seven hundred feet, [88] MATHERAN" and see the trees like little shrubs, the rivers like little silver brooks, and the mountains in the distance like little hillocks. . . . There are deep dark ravines, chasms, rents and fissures in the rocks. I was absolutely frightened at the beauty of some of the places Emmie and I visited the other day." The air was filled with the foreign odours of flowers, "jewelled" butterflies, and birds with startling contralto voices all steeping in tropical sunlight. Mrs. Stearns first saw Matheran on the twentieth of October, 1860. Her own account can be quoted. "You may imagine that my coming here is quite an event in my Indian life, for, as Mr. Faithfull re- minded me on our way, it is the first time that I have been on the continent of India. " But to return and tell you why I am here. It was thought best that I should leave Bom- bay during the month of October, which is considered the most unhealthy in the year. So we have taken a cottage of Mr. Faithfull's for half the season, the season being three months. I came up just a week ago in company with Mr. and Mrs. Faithfull, who make me their guest for a week till I become accus- M*AKKIKD LlFE tomed to the place, and then leave me in posses- sion of the cottage. Will is obliged to remain in Bombay during the week, but comes up to spend Sundays . . . of course. The journey to tins place is an easy and pleasant one. I think we left Bombay at about half-past nine o'clocjc in the morning, travelling for fifty miles by cars to a place called Narell. . . . After taking a tiffin here, we commenced the ascent of the mountains, Mr. Faithfull upon a horse, Mr^. Faithfull and myself in palktes, and the ser- vants upon horses, at least those of them who consider themselves too grand to walk! The ascent [eight miles of break-neck precipices] occupied about two and a half hours, com- mencing in the most fearful heat, and ending by our being obliged to make use of all the warm clothing we had with us. ... We are in the most charming climate possible. The early morning and evening are very cool, so that we sleep under thick blankets with the greatest comfort. The middle of the day is a little warmer, but the heat is entirely different from that in Bombay." The "cottage" was a long, low bungalow, surrounded by a wide veranda in the midst [90] MATHERAN of carefully kept gardens. Mrs. Stearns loved to sit on one corner of this veranda, an open book in her lap lying idle as she looked down over the terraces far into the deep valley, a score of little showers at one time trailing across countless miles of jungle toward the changing lights of the distant mountains. Trees here, as well as flowers, have their characteristic tints. In the midst of a clump of dark-green mangos is a "flame of the forest," alive with darts of scarlet flowers among its delicate leaves. Close by is the "fanlike foliage of the palmyra," the favourite tree of " that luxurious bird, who lights up the cham- bers of its nest with fireflies." A stalwart cassia or silken-plantain, just beyond, wreathed with vines and sheltering families of orchids in its crotches, is making its individual autumn. On the other side of the garden, from the top of a tamarind, a giant creeper hangs, on its end a spreading bird's-nest fern, which sways slowly like a great candelabra. The mammoth things of the world grow here ! And yet, close by the path crawls the sen- sitive plant, fine-leafed, exquisite, whose whole length shrivels under a touch. And there, [9'J MARRIED Ln i fluttering over the roses, is a new butterfly, its wings a film of lace-work. How does it fly on those wide, gossamer wings ? How can weightless body resist the smallest breeze ? "All the thickets rustle with small life of li/- ard, bee, beetle and creeping things." Surely we had not been thinking of nature's mammoth growths but of her most delicate creations ! From the sky-gardens which grew in the tops of the trees below, the breeze brought faint perfume. " It seemed as if it must be the home of the Peris, those beautiful creatures of the air, who live upon perfumes." The very atmo- sphere "seemed full of utterances that you could almost hear . . . but for the something that made them all a mystery." A soft-footed Hindu servant came to present a flower to Madame Sahib. A wonderful bird, a pagoda thrush perhaps, perched close by, and after a moment the air reverberated with the fervour of its hollow, ringing song. Here Mrs. Stearns studied those countless miracles of the rainbow insect and vegetable world expressed in more vivid terms than in our demurely coloured outdoors. But the prodigal iridescence on a tropical butterfly's [92] MATHERAN wing meant more to her than the mere sight of something beautiful. Could it be hard, in looking at the butterfly, to imagine what the spirit must be ? "And as I was walking there, and looking up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God that I know not how to express. After this . . . the appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory in almost everything. God's ex- cellency, His wisdom, His purity and love seemed to appear in everything; in the sun and moon and stars, in the clouds and the blue sky, in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water and all nature." Mrs. Stearns was never alone. During the week, she and her guests would direct the catching of the gorgeous butterflies by dark- eyed boys in loose white garments and bung- ling turbans, who ran about among the flow- ers, fearless of the relentless sun. During a visit home, Mr. Agassiz saw one box from her [93] MARKII i> l.i- . collection. She told him to take those he cared for. He took the entire box, and she spent several years trying to duplicate its contents. I here were many bungalows on the hill, and on Saturday nights the men came out from Bombay. As they left the railway miles below, the ladies looked down and watched them zig- zag upward through the jungle, along a path a foot wide, with high precipices up on one side and down on the other. Sometimes as they were struggling up from the valley, a chattering army of gray apes descended upon them, menacing and terrifying the poor, minute ponies. Mr. Stearns would laugh, and tugging at the bri- dle of his little frightened steed, would de- clare: "Well, he won't come up, so I suppose I've got to take him up!" The life of this first year in India is typical of them all. It continued more or less the same throughout Mr. and Mrs. Stearns's stay in the East. [94] Ill Indian Incidents THE business interests of Mr. Stearns were constantly increasing. He was made a director of the Bombay Steam Navigation Company. He was interested in the Red Sea cable and the telegraph line through Persia. Of the cable he said, "What an astonishing achievement that is ! ... We shall be within twenty-four hours' communication in case of necessity. Think of it ! . . . On and after the first of January [1861] our house will be changed by the addi- tion of Mr. J. L. Hobart of Boston [who had come five months previously] as a partner, and the name changed to Stearns, Hobart and Company. . . . He brings a large business and by the connection enables us to become the first and best American house in Western India, with the prospect, and a very fair one it is, of the first position in the East, before six years have passed." Mr. Hobart, as well as Mr. Healey, who had returned to India from Boston, [95] MARRIFD I lived with the Stearnses. Mr. Stearns con- tinued: "I was speaking of our clerks; did I ever tell you their names ? My first is named Masquirenas; second i halt-caste), Phillips; third, Nuggindass; fourth, Maddaram; fifth, Atmaram; sixth, Cassinath; seventh, Wassoo; eighth, Kessoo; ninth, Narayen; tenth, don't know; eleventh, Mooljee; twelfth, Hurryvul- lubhdass; thirteenth, Hurry; fourteenth to twentieth, don't know. Then there is Pandoo- rang and Ruttonjee and a host of others." Of another employee he says, "His name is Was- soo. I learned it in the days of my simplicity when I thought that a name was a necessary appendage to one." In a long letter written to his father on the second of December, 1860, Mr. Stearns tells of the baptism, in the Mission Church, of little William Kittredge Stearns. The congregation consisted of about sixty native Christians. He added: "What a field for Christian effort here. ... A man cannot live here long without hav- ing his feelings strongly enlisted in the cause of missions. Suppose that no converts are ever made, that you only educate. It is a step. . . . Oh, how lifeless and dull the best of Christians [96] INDIAN INCIDENTS are ! Why don't they do more ? Why don't they pray harder and give more ? . . . The sun is setting rapidly in the west. How I should like to send a message of love by him to you all!" The winter passed as usual. Mrs. Stearns wrote: "There has been a large number of balls this season, given by members of the council, and others. . . . Last week we were invited to one at the house of Commodore Wellesley, who is, I believe, a nephew of the Duke of Wellington. . . . We have formed a choral society for practising choruses, and are learning the Messiah. Mrs. Faithfull is the chief soloist. She is attempting to cultivate my voice a little. . . . Just now we are getting up a concert for the sufferers by the famine." Music was to form a large part of Mrs. Stearns's Indian life. Her own voice was high and very sweet, though at this time untrained. She used to sing every evening, and delighted especially in Gounod. In May, 1861, Mr. Hobart, the young part- ner of Mr. Stearns, died in agony of Bombay fever at their house. On account of the horror of his hallucinations, his final illness was a [97] M \Kki i) I fearful strain for them both. Mr. Stearns de- clared that he almost broke down under it. For over four days and nights neither of them slept. Mrs. Stearns sat with the dying man a large part of the time, as Mr. Hobart's bro- ther, who was at the house also, himself went distracted after the second day of the illness. Her calmness, a form of bravery in which she was to excel, was a marvel to every one. It was never until some occasion demanded courage and resolute endurance that the resources of her nature were unfolded. After Mr. Hobart's death, deeply saddened, they went away to the Hills to find comfort in their " sweet Matheran." After spending several months in the moun- tains, where she gained peace and courage, Mrs. Stearns, with Willie, returned to Bombay in September. Mr. Stearns wrote, " Do you know what swell people humble little Kitty and lawless Will have become ? Perhaps Emmie will tell you how we dined with the Commodore. . . . His party was as follows ": and he enumerates the military secretaries to the government, the council of the gover- nor, the nephew of the Duke of Wellington, etc. Mrs. Stearns wrote to Eliza Stearns from [98] INDIAN INCIDENTS Bombay, on the twenty-fifth of September, 1861:- "Last evening Mrs. Faithfull had a musical soiree at her house, at which your poor, timid sister was 'brought out.' I mean in a musical way. As Mrs. Faithfull has been saying, 'Now, Mrs. Stearns, you have been practising with me for some time, and have improved your voice, I wish to bring you out a little.' Painful as this seemed to me, I felt obliged to submit, as I had promised in the beginning to do what- ever she told me, and to consider myself to all practical purposes as under a master. . . . The programme of the evening consisted of three parts the first, selections from a Stabat Mater by Pergolesi ... in which I had the soprano part and a duet. The second part com- prised, among other things, an instrumental trio, a sonata by Beethoven, a German song by our German friend, Mr. A . . . and a song by Madame T , a most cultivated French singer. At this point in the programme we indulged in ice creams, after which came selections from the Creation. We sang nearly all the choruses and I had, besides, the soprano parts in two trios and one solo. We had for an [99] MARRIED LIFE accompaniment the piano and violins; for an audience, I cannot tell you the number, but a very large drawing-room and verandas well filled. . . . The evening closed with a sup- per. ... " Knowing my timidity, you will easily un- derstand that the evening was an anxious one to me. It was my first trial of singing alone before so many people (I mean in Bombay), and though I did not do all I wished, on the whole I am encouraged to persevere." It is interesting to know that after this Mrs. Stearns was called the "American Nightin- gale"! A very characteristic letter describes her genuine joy in the arrival of a box of dresses for Willie, and bonnets and patterns for her- self, from which her tailor would make her gowns. 14 You have no idea how much pleasure there is in the reception of a box from home. . . . I have been trying on the 'white Chesterfield ' and the sacque and cape this morning. You should see the servants' delight at Willie's appearance in them. They are very proud of their children's appearance in the street. INDIAN INCIDENTS Cymon has just been telling me that 'plenty of sahibs say, " Kis ka baba bai?" (Whose baby is this?) and then, "What a beautiful child ! " ' He is often saying, ' No baby so pretty as mine." For Mr. Stearns's annual vacation of four weeks they went, in October, 1861, to Maha- bleshwar, which Mr. Stearns described. "By looking upon a map of India, away to the south of Bombay, some hundred and fifty to two hundred miles, you will see the above- named place. A lovely hill station, say five thousand feet above the level of the ocean, and one of the finest, if not the very finest, sani- tarium in India. . . . We have our horses, which were sent up from Bombay by sea to Mahr, on the Bankote river, then to Kola- pore, and from there to Parr Ghaut, winding up the mountains, a distance of at least twenty- five miles. Over this road we brought our phaeton. ... It could not be taken up by our horses, the roads being so steep and nar- row, but was dragged by a force of forty-five coolies ! " During all this time nothing has been said in regard to Mr. and Mrs. Stearns's attitude MARRIED LIFE toward the American Civil War, perhaps just on account of the fact that their thoughts were constantly occupied with this absorbing topic. Every letter is full of their anxieties, or their exultation over an advance made by the Union troops, the horror of the war, and comments upon what was being done in the way both of fighting and of administration. As Mr. Stearns expressed it: "We think of nothing, talk of nothing, dream of nothing else. . . . I sometimes feel that if I could go home to- morrow, and by the sacrifice of my life, gain so much for [our] dear native land, I would go with shouts and thanksgivings. . . . Did I not feel assured that I have another work to perform, and for which I am to give an account, ... it would take me a precious short time to make up my mind about coming home and going into the army. . . . Oh, how anxiously we wait for the next news from home! The curtain falls on the most exciting part of the drama and we must wait, wait, wait. How wearily the days and hours pass!" To his brother Frazar, who enlisted as first lieutenant of Company I, Twenty-first Regi- ment of Massachusetts Volunteers, Mr. Stearns [ 102] INDIAN INCIDENTS wrote: "I have learned with no surprise of your entering the army. I quite approve of your course. ... Be temperate in all things; . . . don't be extravagant in either your expressions, wishes or expenditures. I need not tell you to be kind to a fallen foe; to war neither against women nor children; to commit no excesses, and to frown down all excesses of pillage and kindred vices. . . . Don't be boastful; prove by deeds, not by words; strive to bring your men up to your own standard ; don't stoop to theirs. Be kind to them, but firm; mix with them as a commander, not as an equal; not setting yourself above them as naturally a superior being, but as one who has attained a position, which, with diligence and good con- duct, is within their reach also." And to his father he said : " I 'm glad that Frazar is in the forefront of the battle where he may strike a blow but I cannot help watching and thinking and praying intensely." In India they had, too, the further dread of war with England. "The last year has been one of extraordinary trial to us both, and this is at the end of three or four years of the severest and most unremit- [ 103] MARRIED LIFE ting labour. It has fallen to the lot of very few to work as I have worked, and mind and body both need quiet." They decided to come home for a little Mrs. Stearns said, in a Utu r . utten home on the twentieth of February, 1862: "Will is not sick, but the climate and the pressure of busi- ness are beginning to tell upon him. People cannot exert themselves here as in a colder climate, and Will will work. ... I do not know another merchant who has so much care. . . . Yet I feel much sadness at the thought of leaving. . . . There is the breaking up of our delightful home here, the dread of the long [two months] journey and the consciousness that such sad changes have taken place at home. God grant that no sadder ones may await our arrival, and that no one from the loved circles may be missing. . . . Mr. Healey will occupy our house during our absence." The last letter they wrote from Bombay, on the second of March, is followed by one from Paris dated April 23, 1862, after learn- ing of Frazar's death. Mr. Stearns said to his father : " I hardly know how to write you now. The peculiar circumstances under which I INDIAN INCIDENTS find myself have no parallel in my limited experience. . . . Anticipating eagerly a joy- ous meeting with the dear ones at home, I am appalled on my arrival here, to learn that one of the dearest of all has been so suddenly taken from us. I had made up my mind, with you, that Frazar was in the hands of God. . . . Nor does the event prove my mistake, though the blow is more crushing than I could have believed, . . . and though he has been removed in the midst of his manly prime and beauty, I cannot feel but that his is the glorious privilege to die, and ours the hard task to remain. You can best judge of the con- sternation and grief into which dear Emmie and I were thrown, when, in the absence of a solitary letter from home, I was perusing in a home paper an account of the capture of New- bern, to come suddenly upon the account of Frazar's death. . . . How can I offer sym- pathy to you when I need it so much myself ? " On the first of May he continued: "We, with our feeble intellects, attempt to lift the veil and learn the secret of God's providence. We think we can pierce the deep mystery that envelops the Almighty. The veil slowly rises [ -05] MARRIED LIFE and shows us our own impotcncy! . . . Courage, dear father, by all you hold dear in this life and in the life to come, do not be cast down; by the comfort which you have carried to many a sorrowing heart, by the strength and consolation that I know God gives you at this time, do not grieve! . . . Who would not be proud of such a brother ? Dead, yet speaking in words of living light. . . . Sad, glorious and comforting ! " Mrs. Stearns, writing on the same day, said : " I confess that whenever I thought of the visit home, it was with the strong feeling that it might be a sad visit. Our thoughts were always of Frazar, because we knew him to be exposed to constant danger. . . . The last letter which we received from Frazar added much to our anxiety regarding him. It was written in so sad a strain, so full of tender love and resigna- tion to God's will, that when I read it, it seemed to me like a farewell letter, and I wept over it." In this very letter Frazar had said of Willie: "Don't love him too well. I am troubled whenever I look at him, for I think you will not have him long. I don't know why, but he [ 106] INDIAN INCIDENTS looks more like an angel than a human being." From Paris they went to London, sailing from Liverpool in late May, their home visit desolated by this tragic death. IV Various Jogrneys WHEN Mr. and Mrs. Stearns came back from India, it was always with an avalanche of camphor-wood boxes cases of birds and butterflies for the boys, and wonderful em- broideries and dress-stuffs for the girls. There is a little list still remaining of one set of pur- chases, which sounds somewhat as if it had belonged to the Lord Treasurer of an oriental Rajah. Items: "Persian rug, cashmeres, scar- let and gold work, fur hood and cape, carved teak chairs, carved silver bracelets, Chinese embroidery on satin, talc paintings, ivory fans, sandalwood boxes and bracelets, rings, brooches, . . . Chinese rice paintings, carved ivory images and ornaments." Then they would tell stories of India, of the diamond dust between the eyelashes of the wo- men to make their eyes sparkle, of the "fairy- land cottage" in Matheran, of the neat little jungle-cock, of that curious bird which whis- [ 108] VARIOUS JOURNEYS tied like an idle school-boy, and just that was its name ! of the gallops they would have at six o'clock in the morning, the horse free- reined, his rider joyously eager. And they de- scribed the woods glittering with every rainbow shade, the clearness of the atmosphere on the horizon, their long journeys, the calm, blue weeks on the Indian Ocean, and all the dif- ferent colours of the stars at night. Idolizing younger brothers and sisters looked upon them as visitors from the Arabian Nights, and could hardly make them seem real until they had gone away again, leaving pre- cious relics behind as a promise for the future. On their way back to India, arriving in De- cember of 1862, were many amusing experi- ences, among others the following: "We have had no less than four heavy seas in at our cabin windows within the last twenty-four hours. I have had several duckings. Our clothes have been saturated. But this morning capped the climax. A huge sea came up, burst in our cabin windows, and nearly smothered us. Emmie and Willie screamed, and I laughed. It did not take long for all hands to regain their composure. Poor Willie! He looked just like a drowned [ 109 ] MARRIED l.n . . completely drenched from head to foot. I did not wonder much at his saying: ' 1 think so plenty water come in this room.' ' There were several events worth mentioning in the winter following. Mr. Stearns had dis- solved partnership with Mr. Healey on the eighth of January, 1863, and Mrs. Stearns's cousin, George A. Kittredge, came to Bombay to become Mr. Stearns's partner, and to live with them. They had as usual a house full of visitors, Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlaine, mission- aries in China, staying with them several weeks. "The Faithfulls," Mrs. Stearns wrote, "are really leaving Bombay in a few days. He has been appointed Judge of Belgaum. They are dining with us every night. The day after they leave we are going to Matheran." (Mr. Stearns bought the "lovely hill cottage" from Mr. Faithfull.) Mrs. Stearns was not only helping the missionaries, but arranged to have their pastor's wife, who was ill, after a long visit with them in Bombay, go to their house in Matheran to stay. She identified herself with the work for good in Bombay, as in every com- munity in which she lived. On the thirty-first of May, 1863, Harold [ no] VARIOUS JOURNEYS Stearns was born. They could not decide upon his name, and so he went for several months by the name of "Lot." The letters of both Mr. and Mrs. Stearns are filled with the pranks of Willie, the progress of "Lot," and household affairs. Mr. Stearns wrote to his sister Eliza, on the twenty-sixth of July, 1863 : "He is the queerest boy about some things I ever saw. You can never astonish him or make him appear surprised. Sometimes, when I have been down to Bombay from Matheran for a week, and come up on Saturday night, he will hardly notice me. After two or three hours, though, the affection leaks out. . . . 'Lot* continues to bloom and blossom, and all goes well, thank God ! . . . Willie has just gone out on his pony with Cymon and Ana you don't know the latter individual. It is a mina [a small bird] that Cymon has caught and tamed. It follows him about like a dog. Just now Ana was roosting on the back of Floe the pony. Willie was mounted on a new little saddle that I have had made for him. . . . And this is the way Willie started for his constitu- tional. . . . There comes Willie in from his [ m 1 MARRIED LIFE ride. I hear him calling 'Ana, Ana, Ana!' He is a jolly, good little boy after all, if he is mine. He has grown very fast lately. Emmie thin \ a great pity that children won't stay pur. "Cymon just now caught my groom (ghora- wallah) stealing the horses' grains. My riding horse has been particularly logy for a day or two, and I have suspected that he did not get his full allowance. You may not know that the grain which we give horses here is much like dried peas and is a most palatable article of food for both man and horse. Well, just now Cymon caught the fellow making away with about half of my horse's allowance, the beggar ! We yesterday turned off our butler for making the daily account too large, and my coachman is in gaol for debt; . . . our dhobit stole some of our clothes and we had to put a policeman on his track. Mallee tries to hook a part of the cow's milk, and the baker tries to turn us off with number two bread ! All 's not gold that glitters, particularly in India. ... I think that some day I shall write a volume of ' 1 \- periences while in Bombay." The thirtieth of August, 1863, Mr. Stearns wrote from Poona: "The bigotry and super- VARIOUS JOURNEYS stition of Poona are unequalled in this part of India. There are more idols and idol temples in the native town than in any other city or town anywhere near us. Indeed the chief seats of idolatry in India are Benares and Poona. Poona is ... the principal military station in the Presidency. The European part of the community is nearly as large as in Bombay. . . . The city is just far enough away from the Ghauts to be out of the influence of the heavy rains which fall along the entire length of the range. It is high enough (two thousand feet) above Bombay to be out of the influence of the damp, depressing climate of the plains, and to glory in the cool, comfortable mountain breezes, which, at this season of the year, make some parts of India so pleasant. It is cloudy most of the time, our rain falls in gentle showers, the nights are cold enough to make blankets comfortable. I should think the thermometer would average during the day not over 75. In April and May when the hot winds blow and everything becomes parched and dry, it is fearfully warm; but with the exception of October, which is rather uncom- fortable, I don't think a pleasanter climate MARRIED I could be found. Bombay from November to March, Matheran from April to June (or Mahableshwar), Poona from June to October, and again Matheran or Mahableshwar from that time on even to December, and you have a round of as fine weather as can be found any- where, on/y, it is n't home! More and more I begin to feel that there is nothing equal to New Kngland springs, New Kngland summers, New England autumns, New Kngland winters. . . . So if I still continue to be prospered, don't be startled some day to get a letter saying that I mean to come home before 1875 for good, if nothing happens to prevent. Faithfull is going home next spring, I think, and more than half the charm of India will be lost to us with their departure. It is very strange that Faithfull and I should so pull together, and Mrs. Faithfull and Emmie are about as loving a pair as you ever saw." From Poona, Mrs. Stearns wrote Eliza, on the seventh of September, 1863: "Did I not write you in my last letter that we were trying to get a house in Poona ? We found one at last, and thankful enough was I. ... It bears comparison with our sweet [*] VARIOUS JOURNEYS Matheran, for I almost feel there that I am in another world. . . . Poona is like home in many respects. It is a large city, and yet in that part of the town in which our bungalow is sit- uated, the houses are much scattered, so that we are quite as much in the country as we could be in any part of Amherst. From the back of our bungalow we have delicious green fields as far as the eye can reach. The drives are de- lightful and we have a band of music nearly every night. As I have my carriage and horses, Will his riding horse, and Willie his pony, we enjoy these much. . . . Will and I generally go out before breakfast on what I term a 'beetle hunt,' and it is so cool that we are able to be out oftentimes until nine o'clock without any harm. . . . During the rains the Govern- ment is removed from Bombay here, and nat- urally all the elite and fashion follow, so that there is a continual round of parties. . . . Only fancy Will leaving his business to remain here for two or three weeks at a time, and as con- tentedly as possible ! He has been here a fort- night, has now gone to Bombay for the mail, will return in two or three days, when he intends going to Ahmednagar, the seat of our [ "5] MARRIED LIFE missions, in company with Mr. Fairhank, one of our missionaries from that place, \\ho is now visiting Poona. . . . "We have purchased a nice collection of mim-rals, mostly from the ' Bhore Ghaut,' from a Major Evershard." Mr. Stearns continued the story of the beetle hunts: "We have had a rare good time the last day or two, and have added a number of specimens to our collection of rare critters. We found lots of scorpions, but these we don't collect." A little later : " I have . . . some few very fine nests and eggs . . . from the Celebes Islands, from a friend. . . . We have several very beautiful collections, one of insects, one min- erals, one birds, and one of shells"; and subse- quently "one of bird-skins, about two hundred and forty altogether." A week or two later, Mr. Stearns went to Ahmednagar. "I left the latter place [Poona] last Friday week, and after pushing through seventy-two miles of muddy roads, with the most miserable creatures that the world has ever produced in the shape of horses, in thirty hours, arrived at [ M6] VARIOUS JOURNEYS Nagar. . . . Did n't I enjoy a treat ! I was perfectly astonished by what had been done by the missionaries. I never before knew one tenth part of the good accomplished, and I say it from my heart, I am ashamed that I ever before thought I knew anything. . . . The governor lately visited our mission schools and says that they are far ahead of the Government schools. . . . My feelings have changed re- garding missions since I came to India. . . . Nowhere can you find a more ardent sup- porter than I." At this time he made large donations to that mission, for the support of thirty boys and thirty girls, gave funds for the support of new chapels and schoolhouses, as well as teachers and native preachers. It is interesting to know, too, that a little girl who, attracted by music to the mission school, ate with the Christian teachers, lost caste and was shut up for two days by her mother, getting out with the help of a sympathizing uncle, and entering the school at last, was supported from that time on by Mrs. Stearns. In parenthesis, the money col- lected by Mrs. Stearns's pupils as a memorial to her, was sent to this school. [ 117] MARRIED LIFE To Mr. Stearns "everything, the whole busi- ness of life, was an affair of trusteeship. . . . I IK- distribution of funds that God had placed in his hands, for purposes of distribution, was not regarded by him as charity, but as a pair of the business devolving upon him as the Lord's steward." At this time he wrote to President Stearns that he was "thinking seri- ously " of giving a new chapel to Amherst Col- lege. He wished it to be "a stone, Gothic chapel, . . . combining simplicity, solidity, beauty; ... an appropriate, interesting, ele- vating affair, ... a model of ... style, well proportioned, in good taste, for the stu- dents to study." His gift should "hinge en- tirely on this, the trustees accepting it on con- dition that it should never be used for secular purposes. . . . Let it be given solely for public worship," he said. "Would not this cover everything ? " About this time, also, he built the Stearns Mission Chapel on Harvard Street, in Cam- bridge, and encouraged enlistments in the Civil War in both Cambridge and Amherst, " by a lib- eral addition to the bounties of the soldiers." His financial standing at this time, he said, he t us] VARIOUS JOURNEYS "could not, even in [his] wildest dreams, have dared hope to reach." Besides his regular business, he was " Manager of the Bombay and Bengal Steamship Company, ... a director of the Royal Bank of India, ... a director in the Goa Oil Mills, ... to say nothing of the prospective agency of one of the largest New York Insurance Companies and the probable manager of another large local insur- ance company here. . . . We are likely to have a branch of our house at Bushire in Persia, and Kurrachee in Sind, with a prospect of one eventually in London." Yet, writing on the nineteenth of July, 1863, he said : "With regard to the future I can't say that I am without apprehensions. No true man or merchant can or ought to be without them, and though at present my sea is smooth and my sky clear, I know too well that there are storms which drive the staunchest ships on the rocks, and waves so large that the loftiest bark may be engulfed. I hope for the best, and the best I try to bring myself to know and be- lieve, is God's wish and will. . . . He has trusted me and largely; if He sees fit to take away from me that with which He has trusted MARRIED LIFE me, while I am too human not to be deeply disappointed, I shall hope to say that ir is I its will, and so, instead of settling dov.n with a drieil-up, narrow, mean course of life, keep stirring about till I find what He wants of me. Of one thing I am surf : that not a man has ever yet been made without some great and uise purpose; and that God does not create for nothing. So I shall strive to find out what He wants, and if I don't find it, it will be time enough for me to grow sour, weary, shiftless and miserable. . . . Perhaps this feeling is wrong. Don't you find it awfully hard some- times to tell the tares from the wheat espe- cially when they are very young, and very green, and very tender ? " [ '20 ] V The Persian Gulf AFTER Mr. Stearns's vacation in Poona was over, Mrs. Stearns went to Matheran for a short time, returning to Bombay in November. Sometime before, Mr. Stearns had written to his sister Eliza: "I am contemplating a trip to Persia, Turkey in Asia, and Arabia; would you go ? . . . The chances are about even, I believe, between returning and getting one's throat cut. It seems a great pity to have a thundering Persian kill you, when you might sacrifice your life to advantage for your coun- try." His reason for going there was to select a suitable locality for establishing a Persian branch of his house. He left Bombay on the eleventh of November, 1863. He kept a very full journal, part of which was sent to Mrs. Stearns during his absence, part of which he brought back to her. It has been hard to omit any of it, especially when I remember that these [ MI] MARRIED LIFE very leaves have been turned by Mrs. Ste;i and all the events described here have been lived over by her so many, many times; but space is lacking to quote it all. I lu journal begins . " November 22, 1863. On board the S. S. Co- ringa. We have sailed from the good to\\n Bunder Abbas. . . . This place is under the Imam of Muscat and governed for him by one of his sheiks. We were received in the hall of state by the good sheik. . . . Theoldmanhad collected all the great men of the village with all the eminent strangers there to greet us. . . . There were in all about a hundred people gathered together, . . . Arabs, Persians, Hin- dus, Moguls, and one wild man of the desert, a pucka Bedouin, a restless, wild-looking spirit, fiery, wiry, and wildly handsome. We were all treated to coffee which the sheiks drank with us. ... Then, after some little conversation, we were sent off under an escort of two men to see the town. . . . We were attracted by the sound of native music, tom-toms and the firing of guns, [and turned] toward a large inclo- sure where a grand dance was taking place . prior to a circumcision. ... At Lingah Kur- [ 122 ] THE PERSIAN GULF rachee we breakfasted at Government house with the commissioner, and then spent the day driving out to Nugger pier to look at the croco- diles. . . . I could almost have hugged Cymon when he said to-day: 'I think so not another such like woman as Madame Sahib in all the world.' He said too/ When I first saw Madame Sahib, then I know I like her. First time I heard her voice and saw her walk then I know she is very good.' . . . "December 16. Since last I sat down to write you, precious wife, you have come nearer being a widow than at any time since our mar- riage. . . . Thank God I am here to-day, alive and well and able to tell you the story of the horrors through which we passed on the night of December seventh. . . . " I write now on board the corvette of war of H. H. the Imam of Muscat, Prince of Wales, eleven guns. The ship [is] commanded by a most pleasing gentlemanly Arab. . . . "We arrived safely at Muscat from Bunder Abbas early on the morning of the seventh, went on shore . . . passed a very pleasant day . . . and went off to the ship about eleven o'clock in the evening. We were to sail at two A. M. I MARRIED l.n i I consequently turned in at once in order to get a rest before being waked by the noise of departure. . . . About half-past one or t o'clock, I was awakened by the captain's voice. He seemed to be running out of his cabin, towards the bridge, and was shouting, 'Let go the other anchor ! Let go the other anchor ! ' At the same moment ... a heavy body struck the ship. . . . My first impulse was to rush on deck, just as I stood ; my second was, no matter what may happen the ship can't sink at once; take your time; keep cool, dress yourself, so that in case you are wrecked, you won't be entirely destitute; look out for your watch and valuable papers; open your box and put whatever gold you may have in your breast-pocket, for you will need it; but don't trouble yourself about silver : it will prove too weighty. All these impulses I obeyed, and was on deck in an incredibly short space of time. . . . The sight which greeted my eyes when I got on deck surpasses belief. It was blowing hard, a heavy sea on, and we had drifted right across the bow of a large ship which I recog- nized as one of the vessels of war of the Imam. There we lay, and at each rise and fall of the THE PERSIAN GULF waves the huge man-of-war ascended and then fell with the force of a thousand trip-hammers upon us. At every blow there was a terrific crash and cracking of timbers so fearful that [I thought] both vessels would sink. With the blows was mingled the strangest confusion of noises that I ever listened to. The hoarse calls of the captain and officers, the yells of the las- cars, screams of the women and children, neighing of horses, cackling of hens, and the loud calls of our Arab friends upon Allah : 'Ob, Allah Akbar!' . . . < Allah Akbar!' We had on board a rich Nawab from Bagdad with some horses to run in the Bombay races. A more dejected, frightened man I never saw. Seizing me by the hand he cried: ' Kya hai, Stearns sahib kyabai ? Ob arra kya karegaf" "I said: ' Kooch mut bolo kooch fickunay sub uchcba karega!' "Stearns sahib,' he replied, 'Such bhat bolta ?' and wrung my hands as though I could save him. " The passengers were generally much fright- ened, and the crew seemed to hardly know what to do or whom to obey. ... I rushed forward to where the vessels were striking, [ 125] MARRIED LIFE and saw our second officer on the top-gallant forecastle of the man-of-war, the Raharnany, loudly calling for help. He was so excited he could hardly speak, I mean he hardly knew \\hat to say. He was calling for men to help him let go the chains of the Rabamany, bur one responded. As the big ship came down upon us with one of her terrible thumps, 1 sprang upon the rail of the Coringa, caught the head of the Rahamany, and scrambled up, only to tumble down the ladder of the latter upon her deck, scraping my shins and bruising my hand. It was no time to stop for shins, so I picked myself up, joined the mate, and for one hour worked hard with him attempting to slacken the Rahamany's chains. . . . All this time the two vessels were rolling, striking, grinding together, and bit by bit, perhaps I had better say by wholesale, tearing away rigging, masts, yards, rails, etc. At every roll the mizzen- mast of the Coringa, the supports of which had been carried away, threatened to fall and crush us who were working at the chains of the Rahamany. It shook and wavered backward and forward like a reed, and each roll seemed positively to be the last. . . . [ 126] THE PERSIAN GULF "As the ships separated, the second mate succeeded in getting on board the Connga. I was left on board the Rabamany with several of the lascars and people, who, by this time, began to come off from the shore. ... I had been there but a few moments when suddenly the Coringa began to move toward the rocks, which were, I should judge, a quarter of a mile away. . . . Her distress signal-guns firing and blue lights burning could not be mistaken, and I at once set myself to work to save life. . . . You must imagine my horror, my pen is not equal to the task of describing it. I succeeded in getting off" some three boats in all, one of them containing a hawser which was after- wards used in hauling the steamer off, and, at early dawn, left the Rabamany. I succeeded, though not without some difficulty, in getting on board the Coringa, and found that the pas- sengers had all been safely landed." [For saving many lives, Mr. Stearns was commended in all the Bombay papers.] "Cymon stood by the wreck and had been holding on to my black box which contained my valuables. I afterwards learned that he had resolved to swim on shore with it! . . . [ 127 ] MARRJED In > Suffice it to say that, although in the greatest peril, when almost every other soul on board thought only of self, he stuck to the black box as though it was a child! As tin steamer was then making water very rapidly, we got all our baggage out, the horses at great risk of life and limb were safely landed, and the cargo discharged. Strange to say not a horse was hurt. We had some fifteen in all, and they were close to where the big ship broke our poor bones. Among the horses were four belonging to myself. "... And now for the strangest part of this romance. After beating for over thirty hours on the rocks, after the water had in- creased so rapidly that it was supposed that in a few hours the vessel would be a total wreck, the wind suddenly moderated, she was hauled off, the pumps gained on the leak, and the vessel was freed from water. ... A survey was held inside, one or two weak spots strength- ened, and the hull was pronounced all right! The engine was untouched, and neither the screw nor rudder, though thumped for so long a time, was in any way injured ! Indeed, so strong was this vessel, that . . . she was pro- THE PERSIAN GULF nounced fit for sea and ready to sail for Bom- bay, . . . five and a half or six days after the accident! Before you see this, judging from the calms we have had since leaving Muscat, the Coringa will have proved her vital- ity by a safe arrival in Bombay." A description of Mr. Stearns's Arabian horses, written to his sister Eliza at the same time, may be quoted. "While I was at Bu- shire, the President, a sort of governor, re- ceived orders from Bombay to break up his establishment. . . . Now, Colonel P is fa- mous among horsemen. His horses are known and appreciated throughout the East. And he was obliged to sell, at once, his entire stud. I thought it an opportunity not to be lost, and made him an offer for four, which he finally accepted. . . . One of these is a great pet. His name is Pearl. . . . He is what they call a Nejd Arab, and Colonel P says is the highest caste horse he has ever seen. This horse is a perfect beauty, . . . small, plump, of magnificent proportions, with an eye as soft as a pretty girl's, and a nose that can smell a battle a hundred miles ! [This animal became Mr. Stearns's pet riding horse.] . . . Colonel [ 129 ] MARRIED 1 P left an order with the sheik, a friend of his, to buy him a fine horse, and [the next] one was selected as the best horse that was seen in Koweit (the port from which almost all Arab horses are shipped) during last year. He is a beautiful, large, and very powerful animal. . . . His name is Sheik. The next is a pure, high caste Arab, well made and very fast. . . . This horse is named Will-o'-the-Wisp. . . . My last horse is a large chestnut, with a small quantity of Persian blood in his veins. This horse I don't like. He is a fine-looking animal, but vicious. . . . His name is Teazer. . . . Besides this we have at Bombay Emmie's and my riding horses, Emmie's pair, my office horse, another horse for office named 'Abe Linkin* on account of his legs, George Kittredge's riding horse, Willie's pony, and I am expecting two ponies from Burmah." [What follows is taken partly from the letter, partly from the journal.] "Among my luggage was a new American rifle, a very neat breech-loader, silver-mounted, etc. This attracted the eye of one of the Sul- tan's officers, who was greatly astonished, and must have reported it at once to the Imam, [ 130] THE PERSIAN GULF for in the afternoon I had a respectful mes- sage from His Highness saying that he would like to see the rifle. I sent it up, but as he could not manage it, I sent it again (after its return), with Cymon. Cymon explained the secret of its workings to one of the Sultan's servants who, with a few cartridges, showed success- fully its operation. Next day it was sent for again. Cymon then began to whisper evil. 'I think so Sahib suppose you give this rifle to the king. He be very much pleased and make you some handsome present.' Struck with the force of this reasoning, I sat down and wrote a note requesting His Highness to accept the rifle as a token of my distinguished considera- tion, etc., etc. I had hardly written the note when down came another request from the Imam. His brother had come and would I greatly oblige him by sending the rifle once more. This confirmed me in my resolution, and the note went forward with the rifle. An hour or two afterwards I had a most polite note of thanks and request that I would call in the afternoon. This I did and had a very pleasant interview with the Imam and his Grand Vizier. The Vizier spoke in Hindustani, [ '3'] MARRIED I and in this language, through him, I spoke with the Imam, who speaks only Arabic. . . . 1 \\as hardly prepared, I confess, to find on my return to the British Presidency, where 1 was staying, a beautiful, highest caste, pure- blooded Arab horse, a present from His High- ness! It would do your heart good to see this animal. He is only three and a half years old and is pronounced by the Arabs to be of great value. I suppose no living prince or ruler possesses such a beautiful stud of horses as the Imam; and the value of this gift can be better appreciated when I tell you that it was reared from his own stock and has a pedigree akin to some of the English nobility. More than all this, I was soon known as 'the man whom the King delighteth to honour.' ' The journal continues : "The Imam's kind- ness did not stop here. He had determined to send to Bombay one of his war vessels, and by this he not only gave me a free passage, but urged me to send my horses ... by the same conveyance. I thought it too much, however, and declined the offer. In fact, as you have already learned, ... I had made up my mind to come on by the Coringa, and only [ '3*] THE PERSIAN GULF late on the evening of the eleventh changed my mind. I would not take my horses, but ac- cepted the invitation for myself so here I am. As I did not like to ask what preparations had been made for me, I concluded to act on Colonel Disbrowe's suggestion, which was: 'Leave nothing to chance. Though very kind, the Arabs don't know how to provide for a European.' Acting upon his suggestion, . . . what does the Colonel do but at once undertake my fitting out. . . . "The old Colonel . . . has the funniest names for his servants you can imagine. One, the controller of his household, he calls . . . 'Country Roller,' another is 'Shitan,' another 'Gudha,' another 'Jackey,' and Cymon was 'Mr. Simmons.' He addresses them half in Hindustani and half English; being a good scholar and speaking the former perfectly, he keeps you in fits of laughter from morning till night. He says: 'Country Roller, toom aisa incorrigible hai, kya karega?' ... I find that Disbrowe was wise in advising me as he did. Although I am treated with the utmost kind- ness, and although I have become sincerely attached to the Arabs, and although I begin [ 133 ] MARRIED LIFE to think that they are a much abused race, nothing \\ill make them clean and nice. . Yet, with all this, there is something exceed- ingly atu.umr about them. Their hearts are kirui, thru faces show it, and even those on board who have been born and bred in the desert, and who have done their share of loot- ing, say: 'If you break bread with us, we are your friends forever. If the 1. polish and Amer- icans would come to our country more, we would be better friends.' I have lived some rime in the East, and know the value of East- ern stories, but when an Arab speaks, there is a manliness and straightforwardness in his speech that carries conviction in spite of pre- judices. They are men, and so far as real ma- terial goes, as far removed from the Hindu as light from darkness. I speak, of course, of Hindus as a class. " Now, for a word about my commissariat. I am glad you won't know anything about it until it is all over. In the morning I have my tea, but can only depend .upon the biscuits that the Colonel put in for a five days' voyage, and which my Arab friends so delight in that they will soon go. The water is simply beastly, [ 134] THE PERSIAN GULF and as the tea is made of this and has to be drunk without milk, it might be improved ! My breakfast, which I take at ten A. M. (in order to dine at five, so that I may give up tiffin and make my beer hold out), consists of a cup of miserable coffee, a glass of beer, some native bread, and a bit of cold corned meat, or fried. This morning I had a luxury in the shape of a bit of liver, a goat having been killed yesterday, and Cymon having got the liver! For dinner I get a glass of beer and same as for breakfast. . . . How jolly to be clean once more! . . . "Next to me at night sleeps a madman. He has taken a great fancy to my room and visits it many times every day, overhauls my things and seems to be happy. I hope he is. At night he sings himself to sleep with that song that the coolie women sing when grind- ing; and when I wake, as I do every morning at half past four or five, ... I still hear the same song. O "December 19. ... I begin to doubt now whether we shall be in before Christmas! . . . We have had a succession of calms ever since leaving Muscat, and although the distance be- [ MARRIED LIFE twcen Muscat and Bombay is only eight hun- il 1 rd miles, and though it was a week this morn- ing since making the former place, we have not yet made half our distance. Yesterday's dulness was relieved by a little shark-fishing and a little honita ilitro. . . . About two P. M. a steamer's smoke was seen astern, and about six the steamer overhauled us. It was the Coringa. . . . Should we have a fair wind, the Coringa will even now hardly beat us, but . . . as I write, the flapping sails warn me that the possibilities only are ours, not the probabilities. Well, another week of short commons, . . . madmen and 'critters' will make me appre- ciate better that home which you adorn, the place where I always find my heart when it wanders, though but for a moment. " I said I would write a word regarding our passengers, but what 's the use ? 1 am sure you don't appreciate my filling my letter with such dry details. I will, however, say that we have H. H. the Imam's Consul General Mo- hammed Bowker Khan, with his nephew, the madman, and three or four servants. We have several Arab horse-dealers, and very gentle- manly, dignified fellows they are too; we have, t -36] THE PERSIAN GULF further, a Sindian Mur and Said, and a family of nine Jews, besides the numerous odds and ends from the steamer, who suc- ceeded in getting a passage from His High- ness. . . . One of our horse-dealers, an old fellow named Moosa, is a Wahabee, the largest and most warlike of the Arab tribes. They hold all the centre of Arabia and are reformers. They believe in Mohammed only as a prophet, they don't believe (such is my impression) in the divinity even of Mohammed, and follow Aabar the chief officer of Mohammed, and not AH the son of Fatima and the prophet. I forgot to say that we carry a chaplain, . . . so to speak. We have a Mohammedan priest on board, who, five times a day, shouts from the poop: 'Akbar! Oh, Allah akbar, Oh, Allah! 1'illakloolalulla! Oh, ilia Mohammed zoor Ziloola! A-a-akbar!' then all hands go to prayers. . . . Their prayers are not, however, confined to certain periods. One fellow is even now at work near me. " I tell you what it is I should like amaz- ingly to sit down with you and have something to eat. . . . Even old Mohammed Bowker says : * Ton my word, I feel so sorry for you ; [ 137] MARRIED LIFE you don't have anything for comfort you. n my word.' Of course I laugh and s.< is all right, but one can't perhaps be blamed for gently sighing for the flesh-pots of Egyj 1 ' "My books are nearly finished. I 'm on the last two hundred and fifty pages of the fourth volume of Macaulay. 1 have read all of the Marquis of Bragtlonnt and part of Bulfinch's Gods and H trots. . . . "December 22. ... It is time that I brought my long letter to a close, and I shall be su- premely happy and satisfied if I afford you as much pleasure in the perusal as 1 have experi- enced in the writing. . . . One of these days when I am under the sod, if so it should please God to arrange our little span of life here, and you are waiting to be taken, it may serve to beguile a few weary hours to let your thoughts wander back to the days of old when you and Will were young, and life stretched out in a then seemingly interminable path, every step of which was covered with flowers. . . . One of the things which I prize as above all price is to finish life's journey with you. . . . But we cannot, we must not, shirk the awful re- sponsibilities of life simply because we feel [ -38] THE PERSIAN GULF unwilling to work alone. No, the dear little souls which God has committed to our charge demand a different course, the numberless broken hearts that we can soothe . . . tears we can dry ... all demand that our sorrows should never for an instant cause us to lose sight of 'whose we are and what we are." [ 139 1 VI Home Life in India ON Mr. Stearns's arrival in Bombay, he found, besides his customary family, Mr. and Mrs. Alpheus H. Hardy of Boston, Mrs. Stearns's cousin, Miss Julia Kittredge, who was to spend three years with them, and a Mr. Reynolds. The large household always met together many times a day. To quote Mrs. Stearns: "We all go out for a little while every morning to plan and direct the gardener. . . . We play billiards after dinner, and end the evening with music." Mr. and Mrs. Hardy soon left for their own home near by. The baby, now named Harold, was called by his father a "really splendid fellow, always happy and always trying to make you laugh. Em thinks [he] not only looks like me, but will have many of my failings. He is frank, open and very demonstrative always smashing things. ... I think he will be a very jolly fel- low, one that will be a great favourite with his HOME LIFE IN INDIA school-mates, but he will have to be watched. . . . Willie will have Frazar's conscience, Harry, I fear, mine india-rubber. . . . "Willie grows like a weed. He is a good, kind, affectionate, strange, shy character, as handsome as Apollo, and as good as he is handsome, if I do say it. Everyone says 'What a picture ! ' . . . One seldom meets with such a fine, loving character as his, or so perfect a person. . . . There is very little that is ori- ginal about him save his wonderful reserve. With such a garrulous papa I can't understand how I have become possessed of such a quiet boy and yet the fire is there. "When Cymon is lazy, and I am away, and Emmie is busy, and there is no one with whom to play . . . Willie empties Emmie's bottle of cologne into the wash-basin, puts the soap to soaking, upsets my bottle of gum, and rubs it all over the top of my writing-table. As I wrote you before, I believe, like his papa, he 's a stunner for repenting. . . . "I wonder sometimes that he keeps at all good. A child can only go out for a short time about sunrise and again just before sunset. They meet other children occasionally only, [ 141 ] MARRIFD LIFE in the street. They rarely, or never, inter- change visits, and tin ir time is almost always occupied by stupid nati\rs, who are only too glad if they can offer inducement, without reference to its moral bearings, to keep the child still for a few moments. 1 t xpect Willie uill make quite a good horseman, by and by. He has a ride both morning and night, and is only contented when the poor pony is 'streak- ing it' at full gallop. You must not suppose that he rides alone. His ghora-wallah takes the reins, and Cymon runs by his side, holding on. "He talks only Hindustani. . . . He is be- ginning to learn his letters, but having in six months learned only A and O and forgotten /, I think the chances are that he will learn to read somewhere in the twentieth century." Mrs. Stearns wrote to Eliza Stearns, on the twelfth of March, 1864: "Our family is unusu- ally large, for besides my two cousins [two chil- dren and thirty servants], a Colonel and Mrs. Kirby are staying with us for seven weeks. They came out with us last year. He is the Deputy Adjutant-General of the Army. Mrs. Kirby is ill. . . . She plays better than any lady I have ever heard." [ HOME LIFE IN INDIA Mrs. Kirby was "delightful, warm-hearted, and known everywhere as the 'Queen of Sheba." In a letter recently received from Mrs. Kirby, she calls Mrs. Stearns, "one of the most highly valued friends I have ever had the most splendid character I have ever met with." At this time they began to speak of wishing to leave India on account of the health of Mrs. Stearns and the children. Everything was progressing so well that Mr. Stearns could entrust the management to other hands and himself afford to go away for good, and come home to less care and more privacy. He once exclaimed, "I don't know what it is to live alone with my wife and family. ... If I leave, it is my present intention to spend a year in Egypt, and upon the continent, though my movements will be shaped to some extent by my friend Faithfull, who has been staying in India for the last year solely on my account. . . . Cymon says ' I not get married. I want to go back America with you, bus.' I suppose we shall take him with us whenever we make up our minds to return." Mrs. Stearns goes on: "It is my nature to [143] MARRIH I find my happiness rather in tin- present than in my antic ip.itions for the future. Still, talking of leaving India makes me feel a little unsettled, and I find myself laying aside curiosities and articles of Indian manufacture which I fancy may be useful and pretty in our American home." In May, 1864, they went as usual to Math- eran; but as Mrs. Stearns invited Colonel and Mrs. Kirby to stay with them there for two months longer, the family was hardly smaller than in Bombay. Of the excitement of this season Mr. Stearns said: "Last night, when coming down the hill, George and Julia ran upon a large bear. He was only three or four rods from them, made no trouble, and trotted leisurely up the side of the mountain. We used to have a great many bears and cheetas at the Hills, but of late years have had but few. The monkeys are, however, as thick as hops. . . . Have just returned from a shooting excursion. ... By the by, did I tell you that we have killed three panthers at Matheran this season ? " They returned to Bombay when the rains set in. "The change from the quiet and rest of [ 144 ] HOME LIFE IN INDIA Matheran to the care and excitement of Bom- bay was so great that for a few days it seemed to me more than I could possibly bear/' wrote Mrs. Stearns. On the thirtieth of July, Arthur French Stearns was born. For several months he was known as " Pete." Mrs. Stearns had a new ayah for the baby, " a perfect treasure of a wo- man," who took as good care of her as of the baby. Each of the other children had its own ayah, and Cymon had an oversight of them all, for " no one was so ready to do anything and everything for them, no one was so faithful." In the autumn, Mr. Stearns wrote an exuber- ant letter: "On the ninth of November [1864] I completed my thirtieth year of life and seventh in India. Where can you find a man so well as I have been and am ? Hardly a sick hour since I came to this country, and such wonderful blessings withal; then Emmie, in the words of her yesterday's letter, ' I am very, very well, never better in my life' ; and the children, in the words of our friends, 'Stearns, what wonderfully healthy and strong children yours are ! Not at all like Indian chil- dren. One can't imagine that they need a CHS] MARRIFD I n i change of climate.' \VillieisyelIingand screaming with good health. God bless the boy! . . . Kverything Harry does, dear little fellow, is comical; he eats, sleeps talks, laughs and runs comically. Pete is a stunm r, Init not so amiable as his brothers. "We have been so wonderfully blessed as a family, that I sometimes fear that we shall one day have a tornado of reverses. God grant that we may be prepared for sorrows as well as joys." The progress of her children was now Mrs. Stearns's chief interest. So great was her de- sire for their proper bringing-up, that she used to pray that if her wealth was in any way a barrier to their highest development, it might be taken from her. She breakfasted in her room and devoted the early part of each day to them, giving so much time that it would seem as if she had none for herself. Nothing could be less true. On this point she said : " With all my care, I am try- ing to improve an opportunity which offers of studying music. We have an Italian opera here, and ... we have seized hold of Pro- fessor Usigliose, the leader of the orchestra, [ HOME LIFE IN INDIA and are learning all we can of him. He comes to us on Mondays and Thursdays for two hours, which Mrs. Faithfull, my cousin and I divide among ourselves. Mrs. Faithfull is taking lessons in Italian, my cousin on the piano, and I in singing. . . . We sing the Creation every evening, my cousin taking the piano, Mr. Faithfull the concertina, and the rest of us the parts. We have our old leader, Professor Sin- clair, two or three times a week to assist us, and mean now to invite a number of friends to join us for practice. Then there are so many people to be invited to dinner, so many visits to be paid, so many invitations to be accepted, that with the care of so large a family and the preparations for leaving India, my time will be fully occupied." . As to their plans for coming home. Writing to his sister Eliza on the twenty-first of De- cember, Mr. Stearns said : "The last idea is to leave here by the last steamer in March and go to Paris ; stop there a month and then come home, leaving the three boys behind ; take a fly over to England and spend the winter in the south of Europe. . . . Will you take the boys for a year while we go prancing about Europe ? [ 147] MARRIED LIFE The expense of living is smm thing enormous. And not only here but all over the count r v has there been, consequent upon the American war, this tremendous rise. . . . Yesterday I got up at daylight, got ready and started for office without breakfast, having arranged to eat it in the Fort, and was at work at my desk hard until ten p. M. ... As a consequence I did not get dinner until eleven P. M ." This overwork was not unusual. He had, in 1864, a summer vacation of two and one-half days. " January 22, 1865. "We are beginning to ship cotton overland, by rail from Suez to Alexandria. ... I must see the Pasha and arrange for transit duties through Egypt; if my plans are successful, I see no reason why we should not revolutionize the trade of the world! Rather a big thing to take hold of, but like all big things, much easier and simpler than the little ones. . . . Success means nothing in itself beyond the achievement of our designs, and they may be evil or good. . . . Oh, that we might all be humble in prosperity, patient in adversity and always fear the Lord ! " [ HOME LIFE IN INDIA " February 28, 1865. "We have just completed our arrangement with the town of Bombay to construct horse- railways. . . . On Monday, the seventh, tele- graphic communication with England is com- plete. There is a panic in Liverpool. Cotton is down there and here. . . . "We are rapidly coming into possession of one of the finest steam fleets in the world. It is the monument which I leave in Bombay. [He mentions thirteen steamers of their fleet, that of the Bombay and Bengal Steam Navi- gation Company.] I told Lady Frere the other night (the Governor's lady by whom I sat at dinner at Government House) . . . that the next time she came to Bombay I would give her one of my steamers, put her into my horse- car, and take her straight to my hotel. She thought it a wonderfully good joke." Mr. Stearns's projects were "very interest- ing " to Sir Bartle and Lady Frere, who were the warm friends of Mr. and Mrs. Stearns. They frequently lunched at Government House, and Mrs. Stearns sometimes sang there. Her life in India has been characterized MARRIED LIFE in various ways by persons who knew her at this time. "Mrs. Stearns bore a charmed life in India." "It was like visiting royalty." "Mrs. Stearns lived like a pritm ss." She was described as "distinctly the grande damt" with "a place among the leaders of society," "the Bhurra Mtm Sahib (great lady), surrounded by a retinue of servants, never al- lowed to make the least exertion for herself." She was admired greatly admired not for the advantages she had had, however, but for what she was. She remained serenely uncon- scious of the impression she was making, and did not take the judgments of others as just estimates of herself. "To her house came the high and the low. Her receptions brought the Governor and staff. Her invitations included the missionary and native Christian, and in her were com- bined the accomplished hostess and helpful friend." Here is an account of one of their entertain- ments, written by Mrs. Stearns herself. "We are making preparations for a grand concert which we are to give on the ninth of March. There are one hundred and fifty [ 15] HOME LIFE IN INDIA invites. . . . We are to have the assistance of a few instruments from the opera company, four violins, one viola and violoncello, and double bass, besides the piano. . . . With all this, I have to hurry on the preparations for our journey. . . . Mr. and Mrs. B are leaving for home. I must find time to do some- thing for them." And after the concert, on the thirteenth of March, 1865, she continued : "We are just recovering from the effects of our concert . . . and can only say, now that it is all over, that the success of the party was be- yond anything that we had anticipated. We had from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and forty present. . . . We had the screens, ... on each side of the drawing- room, taken down so as to make one immensely long room. . . . Thanks to Mrs. Faithfull's taste, the decorations were beautiful. In both verandas American and English flags were hung, while branches of palm and pots of plants were so arranged as to make the place appear like a beautiful conservatory. In the long veranda at the back of the drawing-room, which was arranged with couches for the audi- ence, the palm branches were arranged in the [ ISM M \KK1I I> lit I form of arches. . . . Using the three rooms as a drawing-room, we were obliged to have an immense tent for our supper. I Ins was put at the back of the bungalow . 1 he sides of the unr \\ ( re hung with flags. Flags were hung from the top of the veranda to the ground, while the little terraces . . . were filled with beautiful plants and branches of palm. . . . In one [corner] a lovely little grotto. ... At one end of the tent we had a long table tastefully laid for the supper, while all over the tent were small tables with bou- quets of flowers, with couches and chairs about them. The steps leading to the tent were cov- ered with white cloth. I think I never saw anything more beautiful . . . than the tent. It was perfectly oriental, and so fascinating that, after the guests had left,we could not bear to leave anything so lovely . . . and so sat enjoying it for a long time. . . . We had bright red cloth laid from the drawing-room door to the carriages. This was especially in honour of Lady Frere's presence. The Governor was not able to come, but Lady Frere came, bringing with her her daughters and Lord John Hay, who was a guest at Government House. [ HOME LIFE IN INDIA We had the seats directly in front of the plat- form, in the middle room, arranged for the Government House party, and they were all highly delighted with the music as well as the appearance of the house. "We hear nothing but praise of our concert, and the general opinion seems to be that it was the best ever given in Bombay. . . . I hope to- morrow to begin packing up our things, prepar- atory to breaking up housekeeping. I am ex- pecting Mrs. Harding to make me a visit." The next letter is dated from Cairo, on the twenty-eighth of April, 1865, in which Mr. Stearns wrote of his changed plans. " I have had an interview with the Egyptian authorities and feel confident that I shall gain all I ask for. ... In order to complete everything, I must return to Bombay again. I can't come to America yet, and I can't go to the Holy Land at present. . . . Poor Lincoln ! I feel as though we had lost one of the family." (President Lincoln had been assassinated on the four- teenth of April.) The result of the interview to which Mr. Stearns referred, is one of the most brilliant of all his achievements. It was always his [153] MARRIED LIFE peculiar gift to win the confidence of nat rulers, as well as Europeans. No foreigner in Bombay had been so far trusted before by natives. Ir u is true of his interviews with the Imam of Muscat, it II truer of his nego- tiations with the Pasha of Egypt. A clear idea of this undertaking is clismlu-d in a few con- cise words by Professor William S. Tyler, in a Sketch of Mr. Stearns, given to the studt of Amherst College shortly after his death. "Cotton could be transported from India by steamer through the Red Sea to Suez, then by rail to Alexandria, in one quarter of the time which was consumed by the voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived in much I ter condition from being less damaged at sea. . . . But the Pasha, who owns the railroad, as he does everything in Egypt, charged so high a price for transportation across his do- minions, that only now and then a choice lot was sent this way and the great bulk still went round by the old route. Merchants and diplo- matists had tried repeatedly to obtain more favourable terms, but all to no purpose, and the effort was given up in despair. Mr. Stearns at length decided to try his hand at negotiation. [ 154] HOME LIFE IN INDIA He went to Cairo, approached the Pasha with much patience and prudence, but great tact." He found in the Minister of Public Works a man of " intelligence and energy who had been well educated in England . . . unexpectedly ready for the development of his native land." His master, Ismail Pasha, also received Mr. Stearns with courtesy. "He won the Viceroy chiefly by his manifest fairness and upright- ness, voluntarily proposed to raise the tariff on certain articles of more value and less bulk, while he lowered it on cotton. By showing that he looked out for the Pasha's interest as well as his own, he so established himself at length in the Khedive's favour that he was given carte blanche and told to arrange the tariff to suit himself." As soon as possible, they all hurried on to Paris. Here Mr. Stearns received the news of the universal panic in Bombay. He wrote: "We have long foreseen this storm, and have endeavoured to take in every, possible rag of canvas and prepare for it. But . . . panics trip up the best men as well as the worst, and no human wisdom can guard every weak ap- proach. Life has been a romance thus far. M \ K K I M > I III 1 know the sku s have been too bright to make a thorough man of me. . . . I ln-1 level can ac- knowledge the Giver of these gifts as well as those others I have been so long accustomed Sorrow came; it came quickly, and to Mrs. Stearns with stunning force but not then in just the manner that they had feared. Mr. Stearns's own record follow "LONDON, June 16, 1865. "Our plans are changed on account of the very sudden death of dear Mrs. Faithfull. You know how much our movements were based upon theirs and how unhinged we con- sequently are. "Our dear friends left us last Thursday in Paris, to come over to England to meet their little daughter. When within a little more than an hour from home, the train ran off a viaduct, toppled into a small stream ten per- sons were killed, and thirty or forty wounded ; among the former poor, dear Mrs. Faithfull. Her death was instantaneous. . . . Poor Fred escaped as by a miracle. . . . Oh, how deso- late and crushed he is! ... I have rarely seen a more terrible picture of despair. . . . HOME LIFE IN INDIA On Saturday I got a telegram from him, and at once left Paris by the evening train, and travelled all night, arriving at Staplehurst, the scene of the disaster, at five o'clock Sunday morning. I was with him all day. We removed the body on Monday, and on Wednesday we buried her. . . . Oh, what a checkered life! Its ups and downs are so amazing that we should stand aghast with astonishment did not frequency so blunt their strangeness. I feel more and more life's uncertainty and that in its midst we are in death. Here was Faithfull, after a ten years' struggle in which he had risen to eminence and wealth, returning to enjoy the fruits of his labour with the little one from whom they had parted full six years before, with everything bright, fresh and happy before them, and in an instant called into the deepest misery and woe. How strange are God's deal- ings, and His ways are past finding out but His mercies are infinite and His love sure. Would that we could trust Him more ! " Mrs. Faithfull's death was an almost un- bearable grief to Mrs. Stearns. It had a deep religious significance in her life, showing [ 157] MARRIKD LIFE her the disappointments of earthly depend- ence. She wrote : " It seems to me that I could have lived so much better had she lived. Her influ- ence was always so elevating, whether it were in matters of taste, or my duty to my husband and children, or to society or to my God, she always led me up higher, and I felt her influ- ence ennobling. Oh, how inferior all the peo- ple I meet now seem to her ! Instead of mourn- ing too much, I know I ought rather to thank God that I was permitted so long to enjoy her friendship. But I long, long for her love, and there is a charm taken away from life which can never exist again. Was it not her friend- ship in a great degree which made me love Indian life so much ? . . . That she loved me as she did makes me proud. . . . There was no cant in her religious life. It was the over- flowing of a heart bursting with love to God and man. Oh, what would I not give to pos- sess such an influence for good upon others ! " There was in Mrs. Stearns's heart a double sorrow, for Mrs. Faithfull's death was closely followed by Mr. Stearns's return to India on the eighteenth of August, 1865. It is not hard HOME LIFE IN INDIA to understand that separation seemed to them a "great calamity." He led, during his absence from her, two lives: the exterior, in his busi- ness, which gave him constant anxiety, and the interior, in his love for her, serene, steady. But this describes her life, too for her love was no less deep than his, and his anxieties were hers as well. [159] VII Paris SHE was comfortably settled with her cousin Miss Kittredge, her three children and two Indian servants, in an apartment, the entre- sol, at 220, rue de Rivoli, opposite the palace of the Tuileries, not then demolished. From their windows they could look into the beau- tiful gardens and watch Napoleon III and the graceful Eugenie drive by. Some of us still associate Mrs. Stearns, whose "commanding presence," "elegance," and "graceful walk" are mentioned in all kinds of letters from all kinds of people, with that much-loved Empress of the French. Hardly had Mr. Stearns left, when Presi- dent Stearns reached Paris to spend the win- ter, through February, with her. On his arrival in India, Mr. Stearns found Bombay in a ter- rible state, as a consequence of the cessation of hostilities in the United States. "Over half its prominent people are ruined or cleaned out," [ 160] PARIS he wrote. "Never in the history of financial ruin did so severe a tempest occur as that which swept over Bombay in April, May, June, July and August last. But [September 27] the Rubicon is passed triumphantly! I can now say that there is no danger of our having to give up. ... I find there is sunshine as well as storm in this world, if you keep up your pluck. . . . There is too much hope in my composition, too great a sense of the ridiculous, and too much buoyancy, ever to allow me to become a blue. . . . We have put through the Overland Freight business. . . . The pioneer and opener up [of this] deserves as great a name as M. Lesseps or any other man who has not done what he set out to do." He continues that his company now has steamers twice a month to Suez, that he is introducing gas into Bombay, the horse-railway is going well, that he is in treaty with the Government for the Tudor Ice House, etc. On the eleventh of October, 1865, their first daughter, Ethel, was born. This is Mr. Stearns's letter to his wife on that occasion. "A little while before tiffin I received a tele- gram from - , dated October. 16, and read- [161] MARRIED LIFE ing, 'Mrs. Stearns presented you with a fine \\n\cJaughtfr. Both doing well.' These golden words produced, as you may imagine, a vari- ety of emotions. No pen of mine can describe them. The tears came to my eyes and 1 rushed to my room and down on my knees. . " I am almost beside myself with joy. . . . I am a new man. I want to go out and nil everyone, even to the sweeper-woman, to re- joice with me. I always felt that to have a perfect family we must have a girl. The influ- ence is so good upon the boys. And now I have got my wish. Won't this give a zest to my Thanksgiving Day ? . . . I had a jolly dream night before last. I saw you again. . . . Un- fortunately, your room was so full of doors that we could not keep people out, and the more I tried to be alone with you, the more did these people come in the way. "I am a prisoner without you. ... I am utterly dependent upon you. I want advice, a word of love and encouragement. ... By na- ture I am stronger and more cheerful; then if you can keep up as stout and plucky a heart as I, don't you think you deserve the more credit?" [162] PARIS "BOMBAY, November 16, 1865. "You will be pleased to learn that Dr. David Livingstone is staying with me just now; he arrived from Suratyesterday,and will probably stay until he sails for Africa. I suppose it will interest you and Julia to know that I am fitting him out. I have bought for him some dozen cows, bullocks, and bull, and shall further supply him with muskets, candles, matches, preserved meats, tea, coffee, sugar, salt, pepper, curry-stuff, rice, flour, etc., etc. So when you next hear of the mighty deeds of the good doctor in Africa, you will remember what I did for the cause of science. . . . " I do not think you can understand what is the height and depth, the length and breadth, of my love for you. Every day I discover that I have new reason to love you more, and praise God that He saw fit to bestow upon me the inestimable boon of a wife who, take her all in all, is as near perfection as it is possible to find in this world. . . . Who knows you as well as I ? ... If to cause perfect contentment in your husband is not the standard by which to judge whether you make a perfect wife, what is ? Give me a glass of cold water, a crust of [ 163] MARRIED I.n i bread, and an old barn with your smile, rather than all the luxuries that wealth can buy, and wf forced to live apart. When people turn up their noses at married lift-, 1 like to give them a dose. . . . "My horse came down with me and rolled over on me a bit, and 1 got a few scratches and bruises, which made me limp for a day. . . . Am dining out every evening." Of how Mrs. Stearns's days were filled we have her own account. " Fancy what there is to do ! First, a letter to you every week, two letters for America, one a week to - , other letters occasionally, a French lesson every other day. For the lessons I am expected to learn two pages of notes, with about two pages of composition, and read as much French as possible. Every day one Eng- lish and one French newspaper to read ; a sing- ing lesson every other day, with the practising in between; the three books in which I \\ritt- down what I notice of interest in the children; the care of the family, keeping the children in clothes, nursing Ethel, teaching Willie every morning; occasional calls upon friends; inter- PARIS ruptions by calls; scolded on every hand be- cause I do not go to the theatre, see more of Paris, take my children on excursions into the country, etc., obliged to take exercise occa- sionally for my health. . . . Such is my life, and no mortal with however great energy can do so much ; so there is always something neg- lected. ... I think you will find there is a great change in Willie. He has matured very much. So far I think I have been able to give him a pleasant impression of Sunday. To take away from a child all his pleasant recreations and give him nothing in place of them which is agreeable, and then tell him that the reason he does not love Sunday is because he has a wicked heart, is simply absurd ! . . . Cymon has left [December i]. In his place I have an excellent French cook, a real cordon bleu, as the French say. She is a very respectable widow, and gives us the most delicious things to eat. With Blanche, a French bonne, the cook, and the old ayah I am quite comfortable. . . . Ayah takes the three boys and Blanche the baby." . . . She studied French with Madame d'Har- menon, always keeping up her correspondence and friendship with her. I quote, in transla- [ 165] MARRIED l.n i from a letter recently received from Madame d'Harmenon. "Oh, yes, I knew very \\ iisl\. a lu.iiitihil place on the Hudson, i New York, called West Farms, \\lmh he had given to Mrs. Stearns. The estate must have been superb, including house, stables, gr< houses and all. They spoke of its beauty ami how happy their life there would be. After their " miraculous escape " from failure in 1865, the skies had been very bright. Mrs. Stearns, however, with her usual clear percep- tion, saw, early in 1866, dark clouds far ahead. " In order to have more ready money," she wrote him, "let my place be sold. [Yet] it makes me more anxious regarding our rapidly increasing little family. It takes away the feel- ing of security which for a time was a great comfort to me. . . . But perhaps, after all, I may learn to trust myself and my little ones more entirely in the hands of Him who alone can provide for their and my wants. . . . Neither I nor my children may ever live to need it, and if we do and cannot have it, I suppose the discipline of suffering and struggle will be what we require. . . . "/ cannot bear the griff of our separation. . . . Life is so short, I cannot bear to think 1 174] PARIS of how long we are apart. [I feel] submission with little hope or joy. ... I tremble lest we never meet again." Mr. Stearns wrote to her on the sixth of May, 1866: "It seems to me as though I could re- move mountains for a single smile of satisfac- tion, a kiss, and 'That's a dear, good Will' from you. [This year] has taught us how en- tirely dependent we are upon each other's love. A separation must never, never, never happen again. If ever I leave you again, it will be when you think it best, and not when I do. . . . Hurray, here 's the Krishna in, and here a letter from you, God bless you. . . . Now I have read it, and a stunning, sweet, good, kind, loving, cheering, strengthening, heart- reviving, wifelike letter it is. ... What a good cry we '11 have ! I mean to make a regular fool of myself when I see you ! "Many banks are failing. God is trying to teach me some new lesson. [I say to myself] 'What will Emmie do [if I fail] ? It will kill her. No, remember how nobly and splendidly she behaved last year. She is the same wife that sustained you then.' . . . Oh, it's very hard, though." [ 175 1 MARRIED I To President Stearns, on the tenth of May : "Another black cloud has settled over Bom- bay. Cotton has gone down. Don't see how we are to escape a fearful crash. Banks are harder up than the merchants. I never felt more the need of my darling wife's counsel." Mrs. Stearns to Mr. Stearns: "May 14, 1866. "Vague, undefined fears oppress me. There is a burden always as of some approaching calamity. Oh, I do trust that all we have suffered, and perhaps more, is not so soon to be gone through with [again]. If so, may God's will be done. ... I experience a constant [desire] to have my life in every little thing conform to God's will. . . . Has not the sun- shine which you have lately enjoyed been very sweet ? And you could never have had it had the struggle been given up. ... I can bear the dreadful separation when I think only of myself. But you, bearing it all alone, without me to help you bear the burden ! [Referring to Matheran, she said : ] Dear, sweet spot! I can never read your account of it without shedding tears, and I [ 176] PARIS feel sure that I shall never love another spot so well. . . . "Don't try too hard to make your horse jump. Don't run risks. For my sake, do, do be careful. . . . " I find myself opening the morning paper with a trembling hand. ... If you fail now, no person who understands business will think less of you. . . . You are still young and will succeed in the future if you are overcome now. ... If He sends prosperity, we must try to use it to His glory, and if adversity, we must accept it at His hand." Mr. Stearns to Mrs. Stearns: " May 27, 1866. "I don't think I should worry a bit, con- sidering that the present financial crash is the most fearful one the world ever saw, at least on this side of the Atlantic. . . . Never before in mercantile history were there two panics in a twelvemonth. . . . The ramifications of all these things are fearful and to a sensitive nature at times almost overwhelming. Did you not warn me that Bombay was on the eve of destruction even three years ago ? . . . Oh, [ 177] MARRIED LIFE if I had you for a partner in business, it would n't take me long to make a fortune! . . . The reason I did not write you more yes- terday is because I got absorbed in looking at your picture, and so lost about half an hour. . . . How little you know the incentives to action and struggle I have when I think of you. Ah ! Emmie, without you the world would in- deed be a blank. . . . God forbid that either of us should ever feel the necessity, should one of us die, of marrying again. . . . No other woman could win from me the love which you have won. ... A man can remove mountains if he only has a woman that he loves." Mr. Stearns to President Stearns: "June 9, 1866. "[It is now] a question of how long I can hold out. ... I thank God for past mercies, I praise Him that my trials are not unbearable or unendurable, though they madden me. I feel cast down but not destroyed. ... If He, as my Master, bids me fight in the ranks awhile, and cuts off my shoulder-straps, I don't care, so long as He will allow me still to be His ser- vant." PARIS "June 26. "God alone knows what I have passed through during the past six weeks, and God only knows what is now in store for me. . . . I don't care for loss to myself, it's the last thing I think of. But the thought of the ruin and desolation I must bring to others almost at times drives me mad." Mrs. Stearns wrote him on the tenth of July : " Prosperity was very delightful, and I love to feel that God meant us to serve Him with the influence which wealth gives. Perhaps it may be so yet. But if not, we must serve Him in other ways, and must show to the world that religion has power to sustain us under all cir- cumstances. ... If we wish to be happy, it must be in spite of circumstances. "Yesterday, as I was walking in the avenue, in front of me walked a man and his wife. The man was partially paralyzed, and, leaning on the arm of his wife, was making his way slowly along. I thought, 'Suppose that instead of a husband, young, noble, full of life and energy, I had a husband like that! A time of bitter disappointment has come to me, but I would [ 179 ] MARRIED LIFE not change places \\ith those people/ Last year when affairs were in a similar precarious state, 1 had to endure the parting from you, and I knew not how long it might be. I lost a friend such as I shall never find again. My heart was almost broken at the thought of her loss. I was in miserable health, and in a strange land. Terrible as is your suffering, - and I know well what agony you endure, - are there not evils far more to be dreaded from which we have thus far been spared ?" West Farms having been sold on the eighth of July, 1866, she continued: "If you suffer as you suffer at the thought of the future while you still have the hope of gaining a livelihood for your family, what must a mother suffer who feels that she may be left at any moment with only her own hands to provide for those she loves ? God grant it may seem right to lay aside a sum which shall relieve me from great anxiety regarding the future, something that shall give me assurance that my dear children shall not suffer from want. ... I feel that I do not yet know trial so long as my dear husband and children are spared to me. . . . [ 180] PARIS If I cannot be happy so long as I have them, I have little reason to anticipate happiness in this world. . . . Courage, dear Will! We married for love and we will be happy in that love, whatever may happen. "If I ever have to choose between leaving you or the children, I shall not hesitate what to do, though my heart may be breaking at the thought of separation from my loved ones. You know me well enough to know that my only happiness is in following you wherever duty may call you. And my suffering this year has been because I could not follow you. . . . I am not very well fitted for adversity, but I do not imagine that with all your energy we are always to be poor. Comfort yourself with the thought that you have secured for your family enough to keep them from want. ... In some respects I am, and always shall be, an extrava- gant wife. . . . I 'm not exactly fond of dress, but I have a love for real and good things. . . . Perhaps we shall be happier in adversity than in prosperity, who can tell ? Perhaps riches would ruin our souls and the souls of our chil- dren. . . . Life is very strange, and what we think at the time to be dreadful disappoint- MARRIED LIFE mcnts often turn out to be great blessings. . . . God knows what is best for us, and we must trust in I lim. I do hope that you will be filled with courage and hope, and that you will battle manfully and long before you give up, and that if give up you must, you will be sustained in a wonderful manner. May God bless you, my dear Will! The hardest trial of all is to feel that you must bear all alone." It was not a new thought to Mrs. Stearns that adversity acts "as a refining fire, purify- ing and elevating the nature of the sufferer." It was not an "experimental conviction" that a loss may be a gain. She had foreseen that trouble was near. Her heart had been sad- dened by what her mind knew was inevitable. But she was not surprised. No sorrow came upon her unprepared. Full of hope as Mr. Stearns had always been, now that misfortune seemed close upon them, he was amazed. He could not believe it. He had looked to his wife for sound advice in prosperous days, and had relied upon her clear judgment. Was encouragement to fail him now? [ PARIS " Disappointments are a part of our discipline here," she said, "and they must come, if not in one way, certainly in another." She was filled with confidence that "there is one broad sky over all the world, and whether it be blue or cloudy, the same heaven beyond it. ... " I feel the glow of health in every vein. . . . Hope can do no harm, so I allow myself to hope. . . . I wonder at my own hopefulness !" And so it came about that she was filled with that same bright optimism so characteristic of him. VIII Mr. Stearns' s Failure "THE firm of Stearns, Hobart and Company was one of the last to go down, but it could nr stand against the universal disaster." On the fifteenth of July, 1866, the following telegram was received by Mrs. Stearns: "George ar- rived. Have stopped. Don't be downhearted. Friends very kind. All well." Three days later Mr. Stearns sent this letter to President Stearns. " I cannot describe to you the agony through which I passed before acknowledging to myself and the world that I must suspend. . . . You know from former letters how anxious I have been, and from your experience of last year, can judge that I did not surrender the ship until there was no help for it. ... I don't see the use of being down- hearted; better men than I have met with worse troubles and have lived, and I hope to bless God for them. . . . Creditors are kind and considerate. Shareholders in Steamship [ 184] MR. STEARNS' s FAILURE Company seem determined that we shall keep this business. . . . God willing, the sun will shine again, for it is only an eclipse. . . . Not- withstanding my determination to look upon all this philosophically, . . . years must pass before I recover entirely from it. ... I think He intends, after purifying me, to try me again. I don't believe that the influence of myself and family for Christ is to be wiped out yet." To Eliza Stearns: "July 21. "It remains for me to buckle on the har- ness and fight again. It is not in the blood to give up while there is a leg to stand on, and when my last leg goes, you may sing ' Poor brother Will,' needs must I wail As some in doleful dumps, For 'when his legs were smitten off He fought upon his stumps.' "Our Heavenly Father does not always choose in this life to give us His reasons for deal- ing with us as He does, but sometimes He lets in just light enough to see the glory beyond the cloud. . . . People will all be saying, 'There is poor Will Stearns and his flock. Why is it that poor people all have such large families ? ' 3 1 185] MARRIED I To President Stearns : - "August i. "Thank God that my wife has been my sun in prosperity, and is still the same bright sun in adversity, only the rays seem brighter and warmer, more comforting and genial, because of the great darkness which would else en- velop me. . . . Of course I would like to know the reasons for all these trouhlt -s l>ut I am content not to know them if He says, 'Wait.' . . . I cannot help constantly blessing God that we both feel alike in this dark hour, that neither of us . . . is cast down. It argues well for the future." To Mrs. Stearns: "Your glorious letters . . . have done me a world of good. They are so plucky, so full of hope, you keep up such a stout heart, are so well, care so little for present failure in consideration of numberless bless- ings left. George said: 'That's just like Em- mie. You will find that in adversity she will come out wonderfully strong.' ... I know that I am but an atom, but I know also that He who does not permit a sparrow to fall with- out His notice, sends good and evil alike upon [ .86] MR. STEARNS'S FAILURE us for our good. . . . You are a splendid lot to fight for, and though in this late battle I have got rather the worst of it, it will all come right in the end. . . . Whatever happens to me, try to train them up to remember me with affection." " August 5. "To-morrow we are to have our meeting creditors and I trust they will do something satisfactory. [Nearly] everyone is very kind, and the general hope is that we shall soon be under way again. From the enclosed article you will see that after all we have some cause for gratitude." The article referred to was called " The Overland Freight Route," printed in the Englishman, "the best paper in the East," on the twenty-seventh of July, 1866. On account of the clear way in which it expresses the attitude of Bombay, and because of what it meant to Mr. and Mrs. Stearns, I insert a few extracts. "Stearns, Hobart and Company were the prime agents of opening up the Overland MARKII i> I Freight Route from I -'.npland r India, via Egypt and the Red Sea. . . . The terrible disasters of the Bombay market, particularly in cotton, have, as one mutilated telegram yesterday declared, compelled Stearns, Hobart and Company to suspend payment. Mean- time we are reaping the fruit of their successful exertions to open up a new and shorter route for that immense commerce of the Eastern world, which still mainly goes around the Cape. This fruit comes in the transmission of entire English cargoes to India by the way of Suez, aided by the new line of freight and passenger steamers, the Bbima, NaJa, Gunga, Yamuna, Krishna, and others. . . . We particularly regret to chronicle the stoppage of so enter- prising a house at this time (well-known to have been for years the leading American house in Bombay), if it were only in considera- tion of their connection with that successful and growing rival of the P. & O. monopoly, the Bombay and Bengal Steamship Company. ... If the Overland Freight Route should prove to be as practicable as it at present ap- pears, and as the five weeks' transit from Liver- pool to Bombay of the full cargo of an English [ '881 MR. STEARNS'S FAILURE merchantman declares it to be, then we have as important a change in the movement of English trade, and as great a revolution in commerce, as has occurred during the century; or, at least, since the day that brought steam navigation to India. . . . No one can doubt that the new transit through Egypt is the fruit of considerable negotiation with the Viceroy and his Minister of Public Works, Nubar Pasha. ... It is beyond controversy that the Viceroy opened negotiations with the Amer- ican house just named, and consented to give pledges and lay plans which are now being carried out. These negotiations occupied some eight months, and extended from March to October, 1865. . . . "It was at once perceived that if it were to be a success, a new and double line of railway would be needed. ... A double track is now being laid from Alexandria to Suez. ... It is to be completed within five years from No- vember, 1865. Its estimated cost is from one and a half to two millions sterling, while a much longer time and a rough estimate of one hundred millions sterling have been set forth as the final requirement (if it ever be finished), MARRIED I of the great French Ship canal of M. Lesseps and his friends. . . . Let the new arrange- ments be once finished and in full working trim, . . . and in five years more the Cape route, for all valuable merchandise, or, say for all India goods, will be a thing of the past. Only the best sailing ships can reckon on a four months' voyage from Calcutta to Liver- pool round the Cape. Let it be made in one month, via Egypt . . . and what merchant will not choose to turn over his money four times a year rather than once ? . . . "Unlike the French steamers and their dependence on the coal depots of the P. & O. Company, the B. & B. Steamship Company have coal supplies entirely their own. They have also obtained land at Mazagon, just above the Fort of Bombay, and are in full enjoy- ment of all the advantages of her noble harbour. Very extensive sheds and godowns have been, and are being, erected there, and all promises success. We hope that Stearns, Hobart and Company's suspension may soon be followed by a resumption of business. Come what may, we are certain that they have deserved well of the public for the very prominent part they MR. STEARNS'S FAILURE have taken in the opening up of the Overland Freight Route to the commerce of England, India, Europe and the world." And from the Bombay Gazette, August 14, 1866: "There never was a more legitimate enterprise developed on this side of India, and never one more faithfully and zealously worked in the best interests of shareholders. It is to Mr. Stearns, the enterprising merchant who estab- lished the company, that the public are indebted for an accomplished Overland Freight Route. Whether the Bombay and Bengal Steamship Company will expand into a great and wealthy company carrying all our overland freight, or whether it will sink into insignificance, . . . the Overland Freight Route has been established. . . "For the service done to commerce, and for the service done to the public in success- fully establishing an overland freight route, Mr. Stearns deserves the thanks of all; and we trust that his valuable services will be se- cured for the welfare of a company whose interests he has so much at heart." To resume Mr. Stearns's letter: "Is it not a kind article, and so correct too ? It will MARRIED LIFE do us immense service, for it is one of those editorials which are sure to be copied all the world. I knew that we had done a wonder- ful thing in this overland business, and I knew that we deserved great praise for it. ... Well, it's a great comfort to have such a tribute as this at such a time, and I thank God for it. It will do much to take away the sting of dis- grace attendant upon our stoppage, and in America it will act strongly in our favour. Americans, of all people in the world, are very proud of the deeds of their countrymen. . . . It is bitter to have this praise at so late a day, and yet the present occasion drew it forth, and after all it may be but the beginning of brighter and happier, because better, days. I confess to a feeling of pride and satisfaction when reading this article, that I have not felt for a long time. I trust that it does not exalt and lift me up in my own estimation; but as a woman cannot be insensible to praises of her charms when she knows she is beautiful, so a man, when success attends the dearest object of his ambition, and a world awards him his full meed of recognition of what he has done, is not human if he does not like it, and feel MR. STEARNS'S FAILURE proud of it. A Christian will try to make it redound to the glory of God and the elevation of his fellow men a worldling will be often- times crushed by it. "Now I am happy because I have done something for you to be proud of; you always told me that you had confidence in my ability, and many and many a time when I was discour- aged and broken down, almost, this thought has cheered and strengthened me. If I have felt weak, I have said, 'Emmie does not wor- ship blindly; while she sees, and none better, my faults, she tells me of them in order that I may be a better man, and approach more nearly her ideal of perfection. So when she praises, I know she is honest, and because she is so wise and clear-headed, there must be enough in what she says to encourage me to greater exertions, greater self-reliance under God and a better faith in the talents which He has given me.' I can't help saying continu- ally to myself, 'How pleased Emmie will be; how glad and gratified.' I know more than I even, because while you in your heart believed it all before, I think you love me too well not to feel satisfaction at the world's recognition of [ 193 ] MARRIED I what you yourself were so long and well aware of. I know when people praise and speak well of you, my heart always thumps a gratified response. And because we love each other so warmly, we are the more anxious to have the world endorse our judgment. " 1 said just now that human nature could not be insensible to such words as those in the article I refer to; but after all, 1 should not care a bit, did I not feel that you would be so greatly gratified. I live for you, I would die for you, and every word of approval from you is choicer than gold. . . . Did I tell you that poor Ramchunder Balcrishna died last Thurs- day ? He was ill for four or five days only with fever. Poor fellow, he has left his wife . with seven children, and not a penny for their support. ... I wish I was in a position to help them. How mysterious are the ways of Providence!" "August 20. "What with the panic in England, China and India, the famine in Bengal, and the wars and rumours of wars all over the world [we are in a fearful financial state]." [ 194] MR. STEARNS'S FAILURE "August 24. "I have just received yours of the third August. . . . You have got the bad news, and it has not killed you or made you sick or ner- vous; thank God for all that. I am really sur- prised to see you stand up so under it all; not but that I knew you would, too; but the con- firmation of my expectations is extremely sat- isfactory, and then you are indulging in hopes for the future. You develop in distress so rapidly that I, with my sorrows, can't keep pace with you and your hopes. This is as it should be. You are so good, so noble, such a true- hearted wife." How rarely comforting that appreciation of this peculiar courage of Mrs. Stearns should have come first from him! During the last week or two of August, Mrs. Stearns moved into another apartment, 92, Boulevard Malesherbes, opposite the Pare Monceau. "The worst is passed," she wrote to America. "You will see what a reputation Will has gained in the East, and will under- stand how easy it will be for him to regain his position in connection with his Eastern busi- 1 195] MARRIED LIFE If he could keep the Steamship Com- pany it would be an immense business in it- self. ... It is, humanly speaking, the work of his hands. . . . Since Will's stoppage I have become so pained at the thought that, if he gives up all now, others are to enjoy all the fruits of his labours, that, hard as it is, I think I could gladly even part from my chil- dren, and go back with Will to India, th.it he might retrieve somewhat his position before coming to America. When once I can see that it is for Will's interest to come to America, I shall be happy to come, but that he should come home disappointed and discouraged when he might easily retrieve his position elsewhere, I cannot bear. . . . Mr. Chauntrell and his daughter are still with me." This letter gives a suggestion of the new anxieties which beset Mrs. Stearns. Should they send the three boys to America, and go back to India themselves with the baby ? Should they all stay in England, managing the Bombay business from London ? Should they all come to America, as they had intended when they left Bombay nearly a year and a half before, leave all the loose threads at liberty [ 196] MR. STEARNS'S FAILURE to entangle themselves inextricably, and begin again at the bottom of the ladder in America ? One thing was settled. The boys could not return to India. European children cannot endure the climate. If their parents stayed in Europe, or went to America, the boys could stay with them. If they, on the contrary, returned to India, the boys would be sent to America. On the twelfth of October, she wrote : "Will came in upon us unexpectedly. . . . He has retained the business of the Steamship Com- pany. All the principal firms in Bombay insisted that he should, though so lucrative is it that one is really surprised at such an evidence of un- selfishness." Mr. Stearns wrote his father from London on the same day : " I intended to come by the Bhima August 20 from Bombay was nearly packed, etc. when by the advice of our trustees, I concluded to wait over another boat; the Bhima went down in the Red Sea with nearly all on board. . . . Only think, once I have gone nearly the length of the Atlantic north and south, once across the Indian Ocean, twice the Bay of Bengal, twice the Persian Gulf, once up the Indian Ocean, nine times the Arabian MARRIED I Sea, seven times the Red Sea, seven times the Mediterranean, over a dozen times the Chan- nel, seven times the Atl.mtu-, and yet here 1 am safe and sound and hearty, to praise God for my wife, three boys and girl, my fat! mother, brothers, sisters, loss of property and everything else that He sees fit to send me." I his is his impression of his little family after his long absence: "Willie is the same good, tender-hearted, truthful, cautious boy . . . who will win his way in the world not ... so much by dash as care. . . . Hal's power of distinguishing truth and poetry is as yet limited. ... He is full of dash, goes ahead without looking one inch before him, and will break both legs and arms, dislocate his shoulders . . . and have at least fifty nar- row escapes before he is twenty-one. Arthur is a trump. . . . He is as brave as a little lion, has ten times the pluck of Willie and Harold together. . . . " Ethel, they say, is the image of her papa. . . . She has Frazar's temper, and is quick as a flash. Emmie has changed wonderfully. She has grown very stout . . . and is as queenly and dignified as one could wish." MR. STEARNS'S FAILURE That does not sound much cast down ! And he concluded: "Business prospects are good. I see no reason to worry over the (future. " They both turned toward India instinctively. In Bombay Mr. Stearns was well known and had hosts of friends; but then they would be obliged to leave the boys, who would have forgotten their parents before they could see them again. After more than a month of in- decision, they all sailed for America on the twenty-third of November, 1866; and on the seventh of January, 1867, Mr. and Mrs. Stearns, with Ethel, were already on their way back to England. The three boys, with their English nurse, had been left in Amherst, with President and Mrs. Stearns, his second wife, in the imme- diate care of Miss Eliza Stearns. The rooms on the third floor were fitted up for them, even their meals being served there. Other than this restriction, Miss Eliza was "free to do with them as she thought best," Mrs. Stearns, how- ever, constantly advising that they must not go out to meals, for she did not " like the idea of children being at table with older people," and that " they must learn to go to sleep in the dark " ; [ 199 J MARRIED LIFE and indicating the number of cold baths they should receive. 1 hey had not realized how "terrible would be the partita with the dear boys." M Stearns was quite prostrated by it. Mr. Stearns wrote his sister Eliza I Liverpool, on tin- rwrnty-sixth of January, 1867: "Would n't I like to see those boys to- day : 1 wonder if they are happy? Did they feel sorry when we left ? I suppose not. Will they forget us? Doubtless. . . . It is part of the discipline of life that we should contend. Were all our fondest . . . wishes realized in this world, we should make but a sorry ap- pearance in the next." " February 8. "Emmie eagerly seized your letter and opened it. When her eye fell upon the little note from Willie sent to MAMA, it was too much. She burst into tears, and cried like a child for a long rime. It is not often that Emmie gives way to her feelings, but a mother's heart is tender, and, I may add, sometimes a father's too. . . . Teach all the boys to be honest, no matter how difficult it may seem. Abhor lying, deception, prevarication, and slipperiness. . . . 20 MR. STEARNS'S FAILURE God bless the lads ! How our hearts beat tu- multuous marches whenever we think of them." " February 27. " Business progresses slowly but favourably. The steamers of our company are too small. The overland business is growing so fast, be- coming so gigantic, that there is no such word as fail about it. ... Here is my programme - first to pay off all my debts ; then to put by enough to live comfortably upon, and keep my family from want, should I be taken suddenly away." Mr. and Mrs. Stearns spent two months in England, sometimes in London, sometimes in Liverpool, sometimes visiting friends in Har- row and Hedley. Both the Kirbys and Mr. Chauntrell were in London. Mrs. Stearns described a visit she paid with Mrs. Kirby to the House of Commons, when they looked through the grating and heard Disraeli speak. Mr. Stearns was taking singing lessons, and in quiet interims recited French to his wife, which he continued to do on the steamer till they reached India. He wrote: "Emmie has been hard at work [ 201 ] MARRIED LIFE \\irh lur Bible of late, and nfti-nrimcs spends hours over it; she says she never before began to dream even of the riches it contains. I can see that she is growing and ripening so percep- tibly that I sometimes find myself wonder it" it is for the reaping. God grant that if" it please Him, we may all have many happy years together, . . . but if He says it is bett< r not so, then may we all meet in that other coun- try where there are no more separations. . . . The fruit of long years of toil has been taken from us, and we have been called to endure painful separations, but the loved circle is un- broken." The middle of April Mrs. Stearns, with Ethel, left for Paris, where she went " shopping from morning till night," as well as visiting all the galleries and the great Exposition. She was distressed by the preparations already making in Paris for war. [ 202 ] IX Last Year in India ON the third of May, 1867, they sailed for India, reaching Bombay on the twenty-fifth, after a pleasant passage. They stayed at first with Mr. Christian, a very cultivated man "possessed of most amiable qualities," who "has the merit of being very fond of Will." Mrs. Stearns continued: "I need not tell you that these first weeks in Bombay are in many respects very trying, there is so much to re- mind me of the dear children and of Mrs. Faithfull, whose friendship was perhaps the secret of my love for India. At present I am very much troubled with weak eyes, so that I am sometimes unable to read or write at all, and sit looking at the blank walls. ... I trust the darlings are well, and may God in His in- finite mercy spare them and us to meet again." This "trouble with her eyes" was Mrs. Stearns's new affliction. It became more and more serious, until it was at last the cause of [ 203 ] MARRIKD l.n i their leaving India. As no calamity could come upon her \N hu li she was unfitted to meet, she found her compensation now in her mi. and could not express her gratitude for the recent, thorough training she had received. Though outwardly their life was just as bril- liant as ever, the real glamour of the Orient was gone. Mr. Stearns wrote : " Business is progress- ing most stunningly. Our overland trade par- ticularly is growing at a tremendous rate. . . . The office does not wear the appearance of in- solvency, with its fifteen or twenty clerks, half a dozen messengers, and so forth. ... I am working at high pressure as usual. ... I am in perfect condition for anything. I do not think that India has affected my general health in any way." Less than a month after their arrival, Mrs. Stearns and Ethel went to Poona, hoping that the cooler climate might benefit Mrs. Stearns's eyes. She spent the summer, and until the middle of October, there. Writing to Miss Eliza Stearns on the fifth of September, she said : " For nearly three months I have been unable to read or write. I allow myself to read [ 204 ] LAST YEAR IN INDIA a chapter in the Bible, and am able to keep up my singing, as this latter requires but little use of my eyes. I need not tell you what a se- rious trial this inability to use my eyes has been in this country. I had no other resources but those which demanded my sight, no cares and employments such as I could easily have found at home, which should employ my time and thoughts without fatiguing the weak member. I could not go out during the day on account of the great glare, and so I have been for days shut up in a dark room with no one to speak to. ... I have great reason to be thankful that I took singing lessons in Paris, as without the interest I took in my practising I should have been almost wholly without resource. Latterly I have hit upon another useful way of spending my time. I am committing to memory hymns and La Fontaine's fables, so if I become blind, I shall be able to repeat them to you from morning till night. . . . Congestion at the back of the eyes was caused by the journey down the Red Sea. . . . Nothing is the matter with my sight." Such loneliness was broken in upon during September by Mr. Stearns's vacation. He [ 205 ] MARRIED LIFE wrote from Poona, on the fifth of September, 1867: "Everybody is here who can possibly get away from Bombay. It is the headquar- ters of the army, and Sir Robert Napier, the Commander-in-Chief, lives next door to us. Tin military world is greatly excited prepar- ing for an expedition to Abyssinia. We have just been looking at some sketches of the coun- try which the Governor has sent us. ... Colonel Kirby will go as Adjutant-General; Mrs. Kirby will stay with us." " BOMBAY, September 29. " Ethel is strong, hearty, comely and fat. . . . I 'm afraid papa is a little too indulgent. . . . Parents can never appreciate the thorough and complete misery of Indian life rill they have been separated from their children. Kmmie mourns over it and refuses to be comforted. She is passionately fond of her boys." "October 12. "Many thanks for the pictures. . . . I must say you all look grave enough to be in your last resting-place. Mrs. Dimick looks as though she were arranging for the biggest funeral of [206] LAST YEAR IN INDIA the year, and - looks as though he was going to drive the hearse. Sarah looks like head corpse, and the rest of you like hired mourners. . . . [As to Willie,] I never saw such a child he always looks so clean and neat, and in the eternal fitness of things, ever seems to be the right boy in the right place. . . . What a little gentleman he is ! " " October 29. " Another of our steamers has been lost. The Yamuna in the Red Sea. [He mentions nine vessels in which he was interested having been wrecked since he began business, and alludes to "some others."] Business still won- derfully prospers, . . . and we have more cotton offering than we can carry home, and more cargo outward than we can possibly manage to bring." Mrs. Stearns, meanwhile, had gone with Ethel to Matheran, for October and Novem- ber. She wrote to Eliza from there on Novem- ber 12: "The doctors feared the effect on my eyes, and so I had to come here. ... I am trying a little plain knitting, but this occupa- tion is so wholly unknown in this country, that [ 207 ] M \KKI1 I) I annot get the wool except in skeins. . . . Mr. Chauntrell is reading aloud ' Lectures on the Science of Language' by Max Miiller. . . . Mr. Chaumrtll ami Mrs. Kirby an be with us in Bombay, [and we] are going to take a house." " BOMBAY, December 28. " I can't tell you how delightful it is to me to have constant occupation after weary months of enforced idleness. I trust I may never again be condemned to do nothing. I garden a great deal, look after my house myself, give out my own stores and keep all the accounts of our numerous household, which is no small task in India. . . . Colonel Kirby is Adjutant-Gen- eral here instead of in Abyssinia, [so we are] a united and happy household. . . . 1 sing more than ever." Mr. Stearns wrote to his father from Bom- bay, on the twenty-third of February, 1868, "Emmie's eyes are bad, and cause us much anxiety and worry. Don't be surprised if you hear that we are leaving India on this account. . . . You know when I came out here, I came to re-establish my business, and that when that was under way it was my intention to return [208] LAST YEAR IN INDIA home. I have been blessed beyond my most sanguine expectations, and were it not that I had made up my mind to wipe out that part of the old score, which as an honest man I think I ought, I could come home to-day a rich man. . . . We have now the reputation of being a 'very strong firm/ . . . It is considered here in Bombay that my good fortune is follow- ing me as never before. . . . Emmie's health, a united family, a settled home and a dear old father, with Emmie's mother and father, in the one scale, and you can imagine how great a weight must go into the other to outbalance this. . . . Were it not for this one drawback, and that everywhere present one, of a divided family, we should enjoy ourselves very much. We have just got settled in a new house, just furnished it, just got our servants into shape, and are just not ready to leave. So with my business; humanly speaking it's not the time to go-" On the seventeenth of March Mrs. Stearns wrote, "I can never hope to be cured here. . . . What I am suffering from is an effect of this climate, and . . . remaining longer here may hinder my ever being cured. Under these [ 209 ] MARRIED LIFE circumstances there seems but one course for The decision to leave was made at once. He wrote on the twenty-eighth of March, "It is my intention to go ... from Port Said to Alexandria . . . thence either to Brindisi, Naples and Rome, or to Trieste, Vienna 'and Berlin, and thence to Paris. . . . I want to go to Jerusalem, but it is desirable that [Emmie] should get out of the glare of the East, and under softer skies as soon as possible. . . . Business prospers. Wonderful, wonderful the success with which our labours have been crowned." After a week at Matheran they sailed on the Krishna, on the twentieth of April, for Suez. The letters on their home journey are aggra- vatingly few. After a short stay in Egypt, they went to Brindisi, thence to Bologna and Florence, from which place Mr. Stearns wrote on the twenty-second of May, 1868, "We have done nothing for the last forty-eight hours but gaze at and exclaim over the gorgeous . . . scenery. ... I have jumped up about a dozen times while writing this, to have a romp [ 210 ] LAST YEAR IN INDIA with Ethel, who is an awfully funny little mon- key, and the property of yours affectionately, Will." After several days in Venice, he wrote from Milan, on the first of June, 1868, "We are going over the Simplon, and have engaged a vetterino, rather than a diligence, to Geneva." Mrs. Stearns continued from the Hotel de 1'Alma, at Paris on the eighteenth of June, "I began to gain strength in crossing the Alps, and have been constantly improving, until now my general health is better than at any time since I left England for Bombay, more than a year ago." They sailed from Liverpool for America on the twenty-eighth of July, 1868. X Orange WHEN the old stage-coach from Northampton to Amherst was nearing College Hall, Mrs. Stearns, glancing out of the window, saw, under the great sycamore tree, three little boys dressed in foreign style, waving their hands and dancing up and down. She turned to her husband in such a way, that he exclaimed, "Oh, Emmie! what is the matter ? Can't I do something ? " And then the tears poured down her face and she sobbed aloud, "Oh, 1 think joy can kill as well as sorrow ! " Late in August they took all the children, and went to Mont Vernon, to visit Mrs. Stearns's parents for the rest of the summer. Some one asked whether the simplicity of that little vil- lage was not too great a contrast to her In- dian life if Mrs. Stearns did not feel utterly sad to have left forever the beautiful country where she had had the broadest cosmopolitan experience, and known such distinguished men [212] ORANGE and women ? Because we know Mrs. Stearns, because we know what it meant to her to be with her family, reunited, what the hills and sky and the whole beauty of nature meant to her, we are assured that no regret tainted her joy, that if ever in her life she was happy, she was happy now. Their plans were much unsettled. Mr. Stearns, on account of business, must be in New York. In October they took a house in Orange, New Jersey, as little like the city as any place they could find, on account of the children. Although they moved once or twice, it was always within the township. The house they liked best, and in which most of their life in Orange was spent, was situated on the corner of Centre Street and Harrison Avenue. It has since been torn down, but was described as "a beautiful home, with servants and horses and carriages in abundance." Shortly after they were settled, on the sixth of November, 1868, Annie Kirby Stearns was born, named after Mrs. Kirby, their dear friend. On account of Mrs. Stearns's very poor health (for her eyes did not seem to im- prove much and gave her constant anxiety MARRIED LIFE and pain), their life in Orange was a quiet one. It was her great cause for thankfulness that she could devote her entire time to the children. Mr. Stearns often came home early from New York to play with them. If he had promised, he never failed. The boys were put in school, where Willie, in particular, distinguished himself by his fine scholarship. Mr. Stearns once said to his father in regard to him, "I hope you will live long enough to see Willie safely through college, for I imagine if he lives and you live, you will have more comfort in his scholarly abilities than you have had in your own immediate flock." The younger children were taught by Mrs. Stearns herself. She gave them lessons in botany, reading, writing, drawing, and par- ticularly reading music. She cut out their little clothes too, which were made by the seamstress always at hand. The children ate upstairs. The only meal which they were al- lowed to have with their father and mother was Sunday night supper. It had been the same when the boys were left at President Stearns's. They came to prayers in the morning, as well as all the servants. ORANGE In January, 1869, Mr. Stearns left Mrs. Stearns with the children and went back, for the last time, to India, for business pur- poses. He remained only three months away. A letter written to Mrs. Stearns on the return voyage, from Suez, says among other things, "My coming on has been of great service, . . . and though our separation has been necessarily prolonged, I trust and believe that its results will be beneficial. I can only say don't get used to my absence, dont, I pray you with all my heart, . . . don't get used to my being away. God knows how deeply I feel this new separation. God knows how willingly I have sacrificed (if I may use the word) a present certainty, . . . for an unknown future, because I love you and the dear ones God has given us, better than all worldly prospects, or realities of fame and fortune. . . . On Monday morning I left Cairo for Ismai'lia with an American gentleman of whom I have before written you. . . . We arrived at Ismai'lia at 3 : 30 P. M., stayed there over night, and in the morning left for Port Sai'd by a special steamer which the Isthmus people placed at my disposal ; stayed at Port Sai'd over night, was up at 5:30 A. M., visited MARRIH> I.n i the works, and left again at 8 A. M. for Ismaflia, arriving in season to catch the train for Suez where we arrived at 7 130 P. M. night before last. " Yesterday I went to Chaloof, and returned by donkey about 5 P. M., visiting the Suez docks after my return. The trip was in every respect a most enjoyable one. . . . "Well, on arrival here, we found the Neera not yet in, and have, as a consequence, been hanging about here for two days. . . . Mean- while the Calcutta boat has come in with two hundred and fifty passengers, the usual Indian crowd, Europeans, ayahs, native servants, washed-out babies, etc. They are all going on to-night to Alexandria. . . . The hotel swarms with them. When the Bombay mail and the Nffra both get in, if before these people leave, you can imagine the confusion." "It is hard," he said, "very hard to be obliged to abandon so valuable and interesting a business, just as I am in a position to reap the fruits of twelve years of hard work, em- bracing no less than thirty-eight voyages by sea!" He reached New York in April, 1869. Early in 1870, Mrs. Stearns's father died. In mid-summer, 1870, Mr. Stearns got news [216] ORANGE of the depression in Bombay, caused by the Franco-Prussian war. Of what happened in the firm of Stearns, Hobart and Company, his own description, written to his father, gives the clearest idea. "LIVERPOOL, July 29, 1870. "Maneckjee Kaka, a very old friend and constituent of ours, and my old Hindu friend Karsandass Madavadass, the one I was so fond of, got advances from the firm against consignments of cotton to Liverpool. Against these consignments they handed us the bills of lading, duly signed by the captain of the ship. It now appears that the goods were never shipped; that they had induced the captain in some way to sign for what he never had, and we are swindled. "When the affair was found out, Maneckjee swallowed a quarter of a pound of laudanum, and died in two hours, and Karsandass tried to hang himself, but was prevented. He was arrested and will probably pass the remainder of his days in the Andaman Islands. The cap- tain was also arrested. One of our Parsee clerks has been mixed up with the affair to MARRIED LIFE this i-xtrnt that he appears to have been cither a tool in their hands, or wilfully negligent of our interests. We must lose very li< .md I don't see that there will be much K ft when all is finished. No one is to blame. ... I shall have to buckle to it again. However, that's fun. ... 1 am going to see what sort of an American merchant I cun make now. ... I don't see how those people get on when adversity comes, who can't trust God. Oh, yes I can, they take laudanum like poor Ma- neckjee, ashamed to face their fellow men, but not their God!" This is what Mrs. Stearns called the "sec- ond failure," - though it did not ultimately lead to a failure. Mr. Stearns never quite ral- lied, however. He wrote her, " Sometimes I find myself wondering how I could by any chance be able to exist without your wise care and counsel, and the thought of such a contin- gency makes me tremble. ... If human wis- dom could guide in these matters, it would seem to be a thousandfold better that I should go first. Though obliged sometimes to differ, our differences have never assumed the pro- ORANGE portions of serious misunderstandings, or have approached the shadow of a quarrel. I am less and less able to stand alone. In you only I find the true care, consolation and wisdom necessary for me to play the man. "I might perhaps have married a beauty, though to me you are as beautiful as the best, and have had a thorn in my side all my life, and a thorn in my soul for the next. I might have married for money, and ruined myself and my children. I might even have had a sickly, sentimental, namby-pamby girl, who could only kiss and hang like a dead weight upon me forever. All this and much more! But God in His great love guided me to a better choice, and my heart warms with gratitude when I think of what He did. ... I don't know what the good Lord means, or what He has in store for me ; He does see fit to tumble me over now and then in the most unexpected manner. At the same time, I find it quite impossible to be down-hearted, and feel perfectly certain that the future is full of blessings for me. . . . Mrs. - allows all her children to breakfast with them, and talk at the table ! " He arrived from Liverpool in August, just I 219 ] MARRIED In i in time to go with Mrs. Stearns to her mother's funeral. Mrs. Kittredge died in Mont Vernon on the twenty-eighth of August, 1870. On the twenty-second of September, 1870, the corner stone of the Amherst College chu was laid, a gift which Mr. Stearns had made to the college in 1864. [At the time of his failure, the Trustees of Amherst College had offered to return the money. He refused it.] He wrote to President Stearns from New York on the nineteenth of September. "You may say that it was, or is, the donor's wish that it should be a memorial church, if you like. No prouder monument can be, or has been, reared to the memory of our brave fallen ones. It would be well, too, to say that the gift was made over six years ago, and that the idea in all our minds was to allow the sum to remain at interest until the changes consequent upon the close of the war in the cost of building, etc., should enable you to build to better advantage, etc. And you may say further that the leading idea when a church is built in memory of ... the dear ones fallen by our side, is that such a building should never be desecrated by the hurrahs of the students at commencement." [ 220 ] ORANGE And again, "How can we use money to better advantage than by purifying, ennobling, en- lightening and strengthening the higher Chris- tian sentiments and feelings of those who will assist so materially in shaping and fixing the Christian life of the coming generations ? In this land of the practical, there is danger of death to the sentiment of religion. With the death of sentiment goes veneration, sacred as- sociation and feeling, respect and those kindred virtues, the tenor of whose existence is even now so weak. . . . "If the good Lord chooses to increase the responsibilities of my stewardship, I shall hope to do more and better than I have thus far done." Later. "While I shall lose heavily in Bombay, the horse railway is fast taking a sat- isfactory and profitable shape. I have full faith that all that is necessary for me will be given." "NEW YORK, January 10, 1871. " Both Emmie and Ethel are unwell, suffer- ing with bronchitis; the former so much that I think of taking a trip south. I don't see how I can spare the time, but it must be done if she does not soon recover. ... I was yesterday [ 221 ] MARRIED LIFE elected Treasurer of the American and Kast Iiulia Telegraph Company, a position of some honour and perhaps value, if a bill now before Congress, asking for the exclusive privilege of laying cables between China and our western coast, is passed." 44 BRUNSWICK, GEORGIA, March 4, 1871. "Since writing you we have been to Fernan- dina, Jacksonville, St. Augustine and back." They visited Atlanta, went to Lookout Moun- tain to see the Bancrofts (Mrs. Bancroft was Mrs. Stearns's sister, Fannie), and in April had returned to Orange. On the sixth of June, 1871, Alfred Ernest Stearns was born in Orange. In September they were already in England, a trip they had taken for the benefit of Mrs. Stearns's health. It is interesting to know that one of the passen- gers on the voyage, who was especially con- vulsed by Mr. Stearns's funny stories, "none of which," he said, could he "afford to forget," was Andrew Carnegie. In regard to Mrs. Stearns, her husband wrote his father from London, on the eighth of [ 222 ] ORANGE September, 1871. "You will note that she writes in good health and spirits. She has been greatly benefited by the trip to France. . . . Emmie was a very sick woman during the winter, and I at one time feared she would never recover. Thanks be to God, she is all right now! All my business plans have succeeded, and we are going to take hold of the new steamship enter- prise with vigour [that of establishing direct steam communication between the south and England]. I expect to have a year of very hard work, this coming year, but if I can, by the blessing of God, end it as successfully as itopens promisingly, I shall be more than satisfied." In October they returned again to New York. He wrote on the twenty-third of March, 1872, "All the children are well and thriving in spite of the cold, wet and gloom. Emmie has not been very well for a day or two, though she is better to-day. ... So far as family matters are concerned, I have less cause for worry than my father had." Among a score of different business inter- ests, his pet enterprise at this time seemed to be a super-heated air engine, which was pro- nounced excellent by experts. He put a great [ 223 ] MARRIED LIFE deal of money inm it He was as enthusiastic in its praise as its inventor, perhaps as confi- dent of its worth and future success, one occasion when his optimism played false. Yet his mind had been taxed to its utmost, and he had, from time to time, fearful and blind- ing headaches. Though they inconvenienced him very much at the time, he did not give them a second thought. He had not been in the habit of considering his body. On the twenty-fourth of December, 1872, Mabel Kittredge Stearns was born in Orange. The year of 1873 passed without incident, till Mr. Stearns again visited England during November and December, returning to New York in January, 1874. It was during this absence that Mrs. Stearns, in spite of exceed- ingly poor health, raised a large sum of money in Orange for a needy hospital. Mr. Stearns wrote to his father from New York on the seventh of February, 1874, "I have had about as much on my shoul- ders for the past six months as they could bear, and my bones have creaked and groaned under the burden till I thought I could go no further. ... I felt quite seedy last summer. [ 224 ] ORANGE ... I lost twenty pounds. . . . But I'm all right now. . . . The engine will be a success." " April 28, 1874. "My engine is perfected. ... It will all come out right by and by. I am asking Him if He sees fit to send me relief. Love to all. Ever affectionately, your eldest son. May he never disgrace you ! " "NEW YORK, May 6, 1874. "Emmie's eyes are very bad. . . . The first horse railway in Bombay opens to-morrow. . . . My engine is for marine purposes." His projects were nearing a successful real- ization. He saw only the silver lining of the clouds, as usual. But his overworked brain was giving way under the fearful strain he had persisted in putting upon it. The headaches were more frequent and less endurable. He was losing hold. XI Death of Mr. Stearns ON the night of the twentieth of May, 1874, Mrs. Stearns had a curious dream. She saw IK rself standing, with bridal veil and orange blossoms, beside her husband. Then that vis- ion vanished, and she saw herself standing, the bridal veil and orange blossoms torn off, - alone. She spoke of it to her husband ; he only laughed and said he had never felt better. " In fact," he added, "you need n't worry about my head any more. It's all right." In the morning, however, his head was pain- ing him so badly, that Mrs. Stearns went into New York with him, taking Andy, their col- oured butler. The details of the visit to their physician are peculiarly distressing how alarmed he was over Mr. Stearns's condition, how he administered a dose of morphine to relieve the agony, and then how he could not accompany them to a hotel, because his own wife was at the moment fatally ill, and he him- [226] DEATH OF MR. STEARNS self almost distracted ; how Mrs. Stearns went from one hotel to another, none of them willing to take in a dying man, as they supposed Mr. Stearns to be. There were no telephones then, so she tele- graphed down town for Mr. William Kittredge, her cousin and Mr. Stearns's business asso- ciate at that time. He came at once and took them to the old Sturtevant House on the corner of Twenty-ninth Street and Broadway. When they had been given a room, and an- other physician summoned, Mr. Stearns was already unconscious. His wife sat by the bed- side gazing at him and repeating over and over again - " It is not possible ! He cannot be dead ! ... It is not possible ! " The physi- cian came, and saw at once that life was ex- tinct. It was high noon. Owing to the peculiar circumstances of his death, Mr. Kittredge feared a post mortem examination would be necessary. He dreaded the effect upon Mrs. Stearns. While he was considering how best to tell her, she said calmly, "William, there should be a post mortem" They took Mr. Stearns's body to a hospital, [ 227 ] MARRIED LIFE where the examination was made. The cause of his death was pronounced the bursting of a blood-vessel in the brain. The physician added that he had never seen so perfect a human body in all his experience, lungs, heart and every other organ in ideal health. That night Bella, one of the maids, came into the nursery and said to the children, in an awe-struck whisper, "Mrs. Stearns has come back alone ! He must be dead ! " They all went to bed as usual, and though they had heard nothing, something singular seemed to oppress them. In the morning Mrs. Stearns called the chil- dren and servants together, and told them that Mr. Stearns was gone. The funeral was held in Orange. The pas- tor gave a eulogy of Mr. Stearns's character, and expatiated on how much he would be missed in the church. A commemorative address was delivered to the students of Amherst College by Professor William S. Tyler, shortly after Mr. Stearns's death, " because," to quote Professor Tyler, " a life so pure and noble, not to say so romantic and heroic as his, has a lesson which it is at [228] DEATH OF MR. STEARNS once our duty and our privilege to learn. . . . An erect, manly, noble form, a command- ing brow and expressive features; perfect health of body, mind and heart ... in short, the mens sana in corpore sano. Irrepressible activity which could not be confined to study, but must work; indomitable pluck which no dangers could daunt and no difficulties could discourage; constitutional courage, that shrank from no perils, tempered and intensified by moral courage that feared nothing but sin; cheerfulness, hopefulness, joyfulness even un- der disappointment and disaster, and almost independent of outward circumstances; honour and integrity in all his dealings, and especially in business transactions; patriotism and public spirit, with a cheerful devotion not only of per- sonal property, but of time and service to the general good; faith in God, . . . Christian principles and a Christian spirit, lifting him above the fear or the power of men, and lead- ing him to do to others as he would have others do to him . . . controlled him." He was "the strenuous advocate of Chris- tianity among the Parsees and Brahmins, the wealthy and cultivated classes." [ 229 ] MARRIED LIFE "The wide knowledge of the world, the various stores of experience and observation ulmh he had acquired by ex' ign travel and by diligent reading and study, gave breadth and versatility to a life of \\liuh the greatest charm was its pure and lofty morality. It is not often that we find such graceful sym- metry of character. . . . An overworked and diseased brain was the cause of his death. . . . Moral and Christian character was Mr. Stearns's . . . stock in trade, the element of his power, the secret of his success, his chief means of usefulness, his unfailing source of happiness." In reference to him the Springfield Rt publi- can said, "The following extracts from a private let- ter from Mr. Richard H. Dana, Jr., of Boston, to the editor of the Republican, give interesting reminiscences of, and bear distinguished but just honour to, the late William F. Stearns, . . . whose character and life deserve to be much better known to the young men of America than, from the distant arena of his action, and his now early death, they are likely to be:- . . . " * I can scarcely credit that he was only [230) DEATH OF MR. STEARNS thirty-nine at the time of his death. Fourteen years ago I visited him in Bombay, and he was then the head of the principal American house there, with large business and the best of credit among the Parsee bankers and English mer- chants. And he had founded the house himself, not gone into business established by others, yet he was then only twenty-five. ... I had met with an accident in a gale in the Indian Ocean, . . . and went ashore to a native hotel, where I had a dull time of it for one day, when a handsome young man was announced, who claimed, as he politely said, a right to take me to his house as a guest, as his father and mine had been friends, and he was a Cam- bridge boy by birth, though personally we were strangers. About three weeks I was his guest, at his delightful residence on Malabar Hill, and he and his charming and cultivated wife made it as happy and interesting a visit as it is possible to imagine. . . . I left him and his wife with a rare feeling of respect, affection and gratitude. " * Before thirty, he had been a large bene- factor of his father's college, as to other great objects of public interest. During our Civil [ 231 ] MARRIED LIFE War, he was the truest of the true. I had the t'.u tion of offering his gratuitous services to Mr. Fessenden, then Secretary of the Trea- sury, to place our bonds and loans among the money lenders of the East; and, dearly as he loved his gallant brother, he felt that his life was a sacrifice they almost cheerfully made for such a cause. He was truly a noble-minded man, full of enthusiasm, generous impulse, energy, enterprise and loving-kindness. Per- sonally, I am under great obligations to him, and wish there may be something in which I may join, which shall publicly testify to his worth/" After settling Mr. Stearns's estate, it was found that there was practically nothing left. A 10,000 life insurance policy had lapsed during the year before his death, because, his brain being already overstrained, he had forgotten to pay the last instalment. Mrs. Stearns had $5000 from another policy, how- ever and that was all. She wrote to President Stearns on the third of June, 1874, "Two plans are open to me one, to sell at once horses and carriages, which belong to me, and what furniture I do not require, re- [ 232 1 DEATH OF MR. STEARNS moving the remainder to Amherst. [Her jewels she afterward sold to a well-known Boston man of wealth.] The other, to let the house for the summer. The latter plan would give me more time to consider what was really best for the future. My heart prompts me to decide at once that Amherst shall be my home, but everything is so indefinite now it might be bet- ter for me to make no definite plan for the present ... I will ask Eliza to make some inquiries for me regarding houses in Amherst, as I know you must be overwhelmed with care, and I do not like to add unnecessarily to your burdens, already so great. "I cannot write you of that with which my heart is so full. I am so stunned and so be- wildered that I cannot analyze my own feel- ings. I am much comforted in the knowledge that you are so wonderfully sustained, and am encouraged to trust that the same kind Father will give me strength to bear a burden which at times seems insupportable." The children, at any rate, ought to go to President Stearns and his wife, known in Am- herst still as "dear Madame Stearns." Miss Minnie Kittredge, Mrs. Stearns's younger [ 233 ] MARRIED LIFE sister, came to Orange, and took the five oldest children and Andy, the coloured butler, to Amherst, a sad little train, all dressed in deep- est mourning. As soon as she could settle her affairs, Mrs. Stearns followed, bringing the two babies with her. The worst, indeed, had come to pass. Her seven fatherless children Willie, the eldest, was fourteen, three days before his father's death were dependent on her alone. Her own parents were dead ; her money was gone. She was so calm that it was feared she would lose her mind. Was not this superhuman hero- ism the pause before a complete break ? She had had no interests apart from his. She had rested with such peace on his buoyant nature! She had relied so entirely on his joyousnessi Surely she could not live without him! Suddenly those traits for which she had relied upon him became characteristic of her. No one was saddened by her grief. Instead, she radi- ated strength and peace. Her friends looked upon her with awe. [234] INTERLUDE Interlude To a casual observer, Mrs. Stearns's life would seem to consist of two parts, utterly distinct. The first was a life of events, of promise. The second, one in which the few happenings were grim finalities. To such an observer it would seem that her eyes had been opened to the out- side world, and when she had seen the won- ders it contains, then to the world within, to its utmost possibilities. Had not her circum- stances shown her the glories of the earth, so that she might appreciate fully all she had lost ? Could experiences so different be contained within a single life ? Mrs. Stearns, the grande dame of Indian society, could she have been recognized now ? Her children only would seem to connect these two lives, and to them the demands of the second became far more engrossing than memories of the first. How little an onlooker understands! How little outward circumstances modified the real woman ! There was no need of a transformation in [ 237 ] INTERLUDE Mrs. Stearns to suit her for a different environ- ment. Those essential, noble traits which had characterized her in wealth, remained, strength- ened, during the lack of it. Her conditions changed ; they were found, after all, to be ex- ternal. Her self remained the same. As it had not been exalted before, it was not over- whelmed now. A person does not grow strong all at once. He cannot tell beforehand what he may have to do. He cannot prepare for anything in par- ticular except by being ready for everything in general. Self-discipline, during long years of luxury, had given Mrs. Stearns resources equal to any demand that might be made upon them. She had been schooling herself not only in- tellectually. Acquaintance with sickness, death and failure had already revealed her power to such an extent that Mr. Stearns himself had exclaimed, " Emmie, I did n't know you cap- able of it!" The same confidence which she had felt be- fore was not to falter now. Instead, further ca- lamities would nerve her on to be even stronger still. [2 3 8] INTERLUDE People questioned what the inner resources could be which so sustained her. To be sure, she had still a few Indian treasures, carvings, paintings and rugs. Did she not, perhaps, bring with them memories of things so beauti- ful that it would be desecration to regret them ? Her Indian life had given her a mind full of images of which the most ordinary things in every-day life were constantly suggestive. She did not sigh, because an Amherst sunset recalled Matheran, "How different my sur- roundings are now!" She thought instead, "What a picture this brings to my mind! How great my happiness to contemplate so beautiful a scene! And this is just an every- day experience, so common to us all that hardly any one turns to look at it ! " As with the sunset, every event must have had its Indian parallel, and with that asso- ciation, must have gained deeper significance. Her memory was as dear as the event itself in passing. It could never become bitter. It made all the sweeter a like experience which recalled the first. Sorrow brought her closer to all that was vital in her past life. Breadth of vision she had gained from her 0239] INTERLUDE wide experience. For her there was no struggle between a world-outlook and a village point of view. High motives and sincere conduct are understood everywhere; so are devotion to duty and joyous sacrifice. Such things had absorbed her life in the great world, and were equally to absorb it in a small town. She dealt with the circumscribed, while seeing always the unlimited. External resources, too, she had at her com- mand. She found the value of a single, com- pelling purpose in eliminating non-essentials. There is something stimulating about seeing what you can do with the inevitable! The inevitable was a joyous privilege to her. Pri- vations were her opportunities. She found that one need not be confronted by obstacles if one steps from crest to crest. In her own little diary she copied the follow- ing quotation. "The longer I live, the more certain I am that the great difference between men, the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy and invincible determination a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory. That quality will do anything that can be done in this world; and [ 240 ] INTERLUDE no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged creature a man without it." Sorrow in Mrs. Stearns could not be weak- ness. It must be strength. She must turn affliction to good. For her children's sakes she would make her life a success. Yet after all, this dissection does not reveal her real sources of power. I have not explained why trial exalted her. Her strength seemed superhuman. Was it not indeed so ? For her religion interpreted everything human suf- fering as well as the beauty of the universe. The life of Mrs. Stearns was not finished. How much was reserved for her to do! In- stead of being crushed so that two lives instead of one had ceased at her husband's death, the life of the Mrs. Stearns we knew was only just beginning, what might be called her life- work not even yet begun. PART II Life Alone I Beginning of Life in Amherst THERE is a little diary in which Mrs. Stearns made a few entries during these first lonely years. Some quotations follow. "Sunday, May 23, 1875. "Two days since I entered upon my second year of widowhood, two days since we car- ried our first spring offering of flowers to dear Will's grave, and kept the first anniversary of his entrance into rest. Sometimes when I think of the crushing disappointments which one after another overtook him, . . . the thought of this rest for him is very sweet. . . . The ends he sought were noble. . . . Through all the disappointments, . . .his faith in God's goodness never grew dim; his willingness to do and be just what his Father in Heaven willed, abode with him ; his desire to grow into a per- fect likeness to the dear Lord, was the deepest desire of his heart, and so I know that to-day he is at rest and with the Lord. [345] LIFE ALONE "Sometimes during these last days I have been oppressed with the thought that the pain of separation from Will increases rather than diminishes; the way before me looks darker, I have less courage for the struggle which seems inevitable. Still, in looking back over the past, I must acknowledge that but for Divine strength, I should have found life impossible. I am grateful to that kind Providence which so ordered the events of my daily life as to leave me little time for thought and reflection; I feel that this great burden of care, which has pur- sued me during the whole year, has been what was best for me." "August 24, 1875. "Amid the rush of the day's duties, which I cannot lay aside, even for an anniversary like that of to-day, my thoughts will rush back to my marriage day. "Two thoughts fill my mind as I look back over the sixteen years. I am filled with an over- whelming sense of gratitude for all the happi- ness which my union with Will has brought me. The picture is only darkened by my own shortcomings. . . . Another thought fills me to-day, and that is a consciousness that this [246] BEGINNING OF LIFE IN AMHERST union with dear Will was never stronger than now. The bodily presence is removed, and a terrible and impenetrable darkness shuts it from my longing sight. Still he is spiritually present in my every thought. The work which is left me to do, alone, the training of these dear children for a higher existence, is the same work which for long years we tried in God's strength to do together. It cannot have less interest to him, now that he has entered into that higher existence himself. No! a thousand times, no! It must assume an im- portance to him which is far beyond anything I can conceive in my present imperfect state. To have entered into the very presence of the dear Lord, and then to have ceased to care whether his children are learning to love the same dear Lord, this is an impossibility ! Rather will I believe that he yearns for our highest good with an intensity unknown to him here, and that he may be permitted in some mys- terious way to minister to us." "Sunday, November 28, 1875. "In my dreams last night my mind wan- dered back to a time before my marriage, and [ 247 1 LIFE ALONE there seemed to be a fear in my mind that a misunderstanding and perhaps alienation was likely to grow up between myself and Will. As I awoke to a state of consciousness and membered how very different the reality had been ; how for fifteen years we had been spared to each other, in a happiness so deep and i how our union had been enriched with the lives of the dear children, how even death itself seemed powerless to really separate us from each other, I felt myself overwhelmed with gratitude to the dear Lord who had made my life so rich in blessing. . . . Dear Lord I thank Thee that Thou hast made my poor life so rich, and I especially thank Thee that now, in my sorrow, I am kept from mur- muring, and that I can repose with such sure confidence in Thy tender love and care." She has written in the same little diary this quotation from Charles Kingsley's Life: "The expression of love produces happiness; therefore, the more perfect the expression, the greater the happiness! And, therefore, bliss greater than any we can know here, awaits us in heaven. And does not the course of nature [248] BEGINNING OF LIFE IN AMHERST point to this ? What else is the meaning of the gradual increase of love on earth ? What else is the meaning of old age ? When the bodily powers die, while the love increases ? What does that point to but to a restoration of the body when mortality is swallowed up of life ? Is not the mortality of the body sent us mer- cifully by God to teach us that our love is spiritual and therefore will be able to express itself in any state of existence ? . . . And the less perfect union on earth shall be replaced in heaven by perfect spiritual bliss and union, inconceivable because perfect!" She had rented a house in Amherst on Amity Street. She sometimes said that she never fully realized the load of her responsi- bility till she saw those seven children, Willie leading, issue from a closet, one after another, playing they were a train of cars ! It seemed impossible that they could all belong to her. Her sister, Miss Minnie Kittredge, had come to stay with her. The older children were doing well in school. No one could ever have guessed that with her husband's death, the buoyancy of her life [ 249 ] LIFE Atcr had been taken away. Her heart broken, resig- nation was never her ideal, but a life of joyful service. Hers was the happy ability to identify herself with the place where she chanced to be, "not moaning over lost splendour or trying to keep up the dignitaries who might, in her misfornmr, have forgotten her." "She kn< as President Stearns said, " both how to abase and to abound." She had brought into play those qualities which would be of use in her new life. It is not strange that she always found at her disposal the trait that would have been of most value to her at each period of her lite , - humility in youth; poise in India; courage and wisdom in Amherst. She had possessed them all from the beginning! In the midst of quiet, on the eighth of June, 1876, occurred the totally unexpected death of President Stearns. She had come to Amherst because he was there. She had come to rely on his help in bringing up her boys, to ask his advice at each step of her way. Yet it was not his advice alone on which she depended. Her affection for him, could it bear his loss ? Without his help and without him, could she go on ? BEGINNING OF LIFE IN AMHERST Dr. Stearns had never become fully recon- ciled to his son Will's death. Frazar he had sacrificed to his country. On Will he was to lean in his old age. He never recovered from the shock of his death. In her diary there is an entry on the eleventh of June, 1876. "Three days since . . . my husband's father passed into his rest. He had not felt quite well for a day or two, but at- tended to all his college duties. On the morn- ing of the eighth he attended prayers at college, and at the end of the service, was seized with an attack of fainting. Returning home, the physician was summoned, but expressed no alarm. About six o'clock in the afternoon, while resting upon the couch in his room, he passed away without a moment's struggle or suffering. . . . "Oh, how I dreaded to tell the dear children that they were again so bereft, that that dear presence, which had so supported and helped us in our loneliness had gone out from us. ... I tried to picture to them the happi- ness of their own papa in this reunion, and to make them feel that while we must give him up, their papa would enjoy the blessed society I IFE ALONE which we had lost. This helped them greatly, and seemed to take away much of their gt "For myself, I hardly dare face the increased loneliness which has come upon me. I realize now, as I have not before, how I have been helped by the consciousness of my dear fa- ther's deep sympathy for me and the children. His sweet and tender interest, ... his long- ing for their highest good, what an inspira- tion have they been to me in my work! God grant I may feel the inspiration still, though I can no longer look into that face so full of love and tenderness. . . . And now to-day, while we are mourning, he is at rest, and in the very presence of the dear Lord whom he has served so earnestly." " Sunday, June 25, 1876. "While I am sitting here the children are listening to father's Baccalaureate sermon de- livered by Pres. Clark Seelye. I had not the courage to attend the service. . . . Oh, if to-day we could penetrate the veil which hides the loved ones from our view! With what are their thoughts occupied on this Lord's day ? Are we as completely shut out from their knowledge as they from ours ? To questions like these there BEGINNING OF LIFE IN AMHERST comes no response, and the mysteries of the un- seen world must remain hidden from us till we, too, enter within the veil. We have no experi- ence of a life such as they now enjoy, but this mortal life of ours is a part of their past, and must, it seems to me, be still present to their thoughts. ... If I know my own heart I long for nothing so much as for perfection, to be transformed into the image of the Saviour ! And is it possible that we may look forward to such blessedness? 'We shall be like Him' what wonderful words, and with what joy can we lay aside this mortal body when such hope is ours ! But Oh, for the strength to honour Him now, to reflect more of His image in our lives, so that all near us should feel the reality of our Chris- tian life!" Less than six months after the death of President Stearns, Mrs. Stearns learned of the fatal illness of her brother George. He died, four days after the following letter to her sister was written by Mrs. Stearns. "AMHERST, MASS., March 2, 1877. "How can we give him up! ... He has been so especially dear and helpful to me since [ 253 ] LIFE ALONE Will went. What happiness to have such a brother, and to feel that death, even, cannot take him really from us, only separate us, for a short time. . . . Oh, in these dark hours, how real do all the hopes, which reach forward to a better life than this, seem the very darkness about us makes them luminous. " Do not call me strong to-day. I feel . . . weakness itself; but He who calls us to walk through this darkness can give us all needed strength. The poor children are greatly sad- dened. . . . They are learning sorrow's lesson early." [254] II Opening of the School SHE was being left more and more alone. The realization that she could not bring up her children in the present state of her finances was slowly forcing itself upon Mrs. Stearns. Could she, perhaps, take some other children into her family to educate with her own ? The President's house was not to be needed by the incoming president. The trustees of the college, out of apprecia- tion for Mrs. Stearns's heroism, and her hus- band's generosity, offered her the use of the President's house. She refused to occupy it unless she were allowed to pay rent for it. The agreement was made, and in August, 1877, she moved in. In order to secure pupils, she sent out a small circular, notifying her friends that she was about to start a Home School for Little Girls. She stated her name, gave the advan- tages of being in such a place as Amherst [ 255 1 1 IFE ALONE -both for the intellectual atmosphere and beauty of the location adding that the little girls should be brought up with her own chil- dren, and have exactly the same treatment. In point of fact, they received more care, for, h. ing undertaken the school, it should have her first attention. As for teachers, she and M Kittredge would certainly suffice at first. No one could question her equipment for carrying on such a school. It was to be a home for these little girls. She could surely make it so. As for their instruction, her early successful experience in teaching had proved her ability. The school opened about the middle of September, 1877, with one pupil, who arrived the day before. Mrs. Stearns wrote with de- light, "My first pupil is to remain the entire year." Still early in the fall, another scholar came, and her name was Emma Moody, the daughter of the famous evangelist, Dwight L. Moody. She had been told by her mother that she was to be sent away to a boarding- school ! The mere thought of being separated from her mother and left to the care of some person she had never seen filled her with dis- may. The hated day arrived in late September. [256] OPENING OF THE SCHOOL She left her home in North field and came down the beautiful Connecticut. From North- ampton she branched off across the meadows in the old, lumbering stage-coach, which trav- elled the highroad between Northampton and Amherst, and dismounted in front of a very dignified, great house. She noticed the terraced steps, the cold, white trimmings on the brick walls, the great pine and horse-chestnut trees overarching. Her heart thumped very hard indeed as she went up those steps and stood, waiting for a maid to open the very big, white door! What was her joy to be taken into a large drawing-room : a wonderful Eastern rug quite covered the floor, and a great round table, such as she had never seen, stood at one side. It was like a circular piece of lace-work in black silk, heavy enough to stand on top of the single pedestal, self-supported, just drooping over at the edges. Yes, and on it there stood a carved ivory elephant, which, having seen at a glance, she could never forget. And she saw a blur of a great painting of waterfalls and wading horses, and many rich gold frames, and a smaller, much-carved table like the [ 257 1 LIFE ALONE larger one, and tall, curled pedestals like ir. and chairs liL- it! And there, on the grand piano which stood opposite, a bunch <>! "brilliant autumn flowers caught just a ray of slanting sunlight! "Is this school, mama ?" was all she said. Pretty soon she heard a faint littK rustic and a lady all in black came into the room. She was so superbly stately! Yet so kindly, so sympathetic that the one longing of the little- girl was to run and throw her arms about Mis. Stearns's neck, and tell her all that was deepest in her child-heart farthest from the world, even the friendly world before now. From that moment Mrs. Stearns held the child's heart in her grasp. Then Emma was shown a beautiful room, all partitioned off with light-blue curtains. In it there were three little beds, side by side, and one was to be hers, and one the other pupil's, and one Ethel's. The thought flashed across Emma's mind, " She lets her own lovely daughter sleep in our room with us ! " Her little guests were as Mrs. Stearns's own. This spirit ruled the household. What the Stearns children had, the two little pupils had. [258] OPENING OF THE SCHOOL There was not any saving of the best for her own children. Emma Moody never once thought that she was in a "boarding-school." It just seemed as though she had come to live in the most beautiful of homes ! The breakfasts were so bright and cheery! Everybody came down happy. There must not be a cloudy face to start somebody else out gloomily on a brand-new day. Harold was the fun of the house as much of a tease as his father before him. Yes, he was decidedly Emma's favourite among the boys. But Ethel ! She was as beautiful as the rarest exotic blos- som, and as near a saint as any mortal could be. She was her mother's greatest help. She never needed a word of correctipn. This reminiscence is interesting in the light of what Ethel was by nature. She had, as a little child, a temper which terrified them all, unlike Annie, who seemed to have been born a saint. Mr. Stearns said of Ethel, when she was not quite eight years old, "You can see the fire of the child in her face, while the very attitude of ' Do it if you dare ! ' is to my mind singularly good. She is our storm-cloud, but has elements of great strength of character in her compo- [ 259 ] I in ALONE n." These "elements "seemed already, she was just twelve, to have developed into something more. She organized Sunday meetings in the sunny school-room, to \slmh slu- inviti-d the other children. Emma did n't dislike them exac but she felt she was not a great addition to tlu assembly. One Sunday she was seized with an uncontrollable tit of laughter, at precisely the most serious climax. Ethel, a year younger than she, turned upon her. "Emma, you forget where you are. I think you had better leave the room." And Emma did. Moreover she waited outside the door, with tears stream- ing down her face, to apologize to Ethel when the meeting was over. The children were never left alone on Sun- day afternoons. It is a time peculiarly distaste- ful to most high-spirited children. Never so to Mrs. Stearns's ! They all went into the bright school-room, and after they had learned their verses from the Bible, she told them stories. "Once there was a little girl, no bigger than Emma or Ethel. She was a dark-haired, dark- eyed, dark-skinned little girl, with beautiful coral earrings and a long, white veil covering [ 260 ] OPENING OF THE SCHOOL her all up. She was not a happy, care-free lit- tle girl. She was married to an old, old man, and one day the old man died. A big pile of logs and sticks was made, and the body of the old man was laid upon it to be burned ! The little widow, if she is not to be despised by all her relatives, and all his relatives, and cast out of society, must lie down beside her husband on the funeral pyre, and be burned with him ! Well, this little widow of mine was saved from such a horrible death, three separate times, by the British soldiers. They took her at last to the Mission House, where she was educated and kept in safety. After she grew up she taught the other poor little heathen widows what a glorious thing it is to live in Christ ! " What splendid nutting trips they had with Miss Minnie ! And yet, they could hardly wait to get back and tell Mrs. Stearns each least incident of the day, how many basketfuls each child had gathered, how far they had walked, how many trees Harold and Arthur had climbed. . Nothing was enjoyed until dear Mrs. Stearns had heard about it. How often have we all used that expression, "Dear Mrs. Stearns!" "Our Mrs. Stearns!" "My Mrs. Stearns!" [261] LIFE ALONE And the keenest joy of all was when Mrs. Stearns would get out her treasure-trunk from India, once in a great while, for she rarely spoke of her Indian life, and the splendour to which she was accustomed there. Then the children's round eyes would glisten, as she showed them silks and jewels of the unreal Orient, and told them stories of bungalows and palm-trees, and little black-eyed native chil- dren. When the time came to go home for the Christmas holidays, Emma was asked for the first time in her life to pack her own trunk. She feared the worst, but accomplished it alone. Perhaps the underpinning was not altogether what it should have been. Be that as it may, a pair of rubbers first caught the eye on the top tray. Mrs. Stearns came in and suggested, laughingly, that that was not the wisest way to pack a trunk. Without hurting Emma's pride in the least, she made her want to take every- thing out and begin again. This is entirely like Mrs. Stearns, as is also the fact that she brought in a chair and watched the little girl as she did it for the second time, suggesting many ways in which to make it easier. Emma [262] OPENING OF THE SCHOOL instantly realized, somehow or other, that on the many journeys which the Moody family would be obliged to take, this would be a fine way in which to help, provided she could do it nicely. "And," Mrs. Fitt Emma Moody's pre- sent name added, "through all these years, whenever I have packed a trunk badly I have been glad Mrs. Stearns was not there to see it. Or if I have packed one well, I have longed to show it to her. "No, I never felt as if I were in school. If there were rules I never knew them. As I grew older and went to other schools, Mrs. Stearns's was my ideal still; to grow more like her, the central thought which I carried through my girlhood. When one has loved Mrs. Stearns, one must always love her, and her example is more to me now, after thirty years, than it was then. With one child of my own and all the care that it entails, I realize what must have been her power, that with seven of her own, be- sides a growing school, Mrs. Stearns could lead each one in the way it should go and never against its will. Even child that I was, I often wondered how she managed to make her two [263] I IFE ALONE pupils always feel so happy, and never as though they were outsiders. As a child I loved her, as a mother I revere her. " Judgment was her most noticeable mind, as her power for loving was her trait of soul. And when one thinks of the cross she was carrying at the time, and how heavy- hearted and uncertain for the future it is almost incredible. If anything could be a greater tribute than the implit it trust of all the parents of her pupils, it would be the faith of the children themselves. For as a child knows something is wrong and cannot tell what, so a child, also, is the quickest to know that all is well though it cannot tell why. "In these days a person establishes a pri- vate school because she thinks she can make more money than by ordinary teaching. Oh, if I could find such a school no, such a wo- man as Mrs. Stearns to whom to entrust my daughter! I could wish nothing better in life for her." Such is the memory of a girl of thirteen after thirty years! Such was Mrs. Stearns to us all. Chance, they say, compels a person to change [264] OPENING OF THE SCHOOL his vocation, and he often finds he excels in the one a mere accident forced him to choose. Mrs. Stearns believed that not chance, but a loving Providence had ordained for her the circumstances best suited to her own develop- ment. Whichever way we look at it, the con- clusion is the same. She found herself more than able to succeed with the life she had un- dertaken with such hesitancy, and was filled with joy at that realization. A third scholar came later in the year, and one of the three remained with Mrs. Stearns during the next summer. She had, as well, a friend or two. One of them, Mrs. Charlotte E. L. Slocum, who came to Amherst to attend Dr. Sauveur's Summer School of Languages, recalls that summer of 1878. "I had heard a great deal from my relatives about 'Cousin Emmie,' and came prepared to admire and love her. She, on the other hand, knew little of me beyond the letters I had writ- ten her. So, on arriving, I was rather awed by her kindly, but distant and dignified reception. I well remember how queenly I thought her, and how I wondered if she would let me know her as I wished. [265] I IKE ALONE "The school opened immediately and ab- sorbed my time. She, too, was very busy, and we might not have drawn much nearer but for a severe headache that attacked me. When she found how ill I was, she took the case in hand to such purpose that the headache yielded, to her great pleasure, and my ardent gratitude. "Her mind was constantly busy with plans for her school. She discussed plans of study, - finding that I, too, was a teacher, and plans of Bible study. 'That I shall always conduct myself,' she said. "Three traits deeply impressed me: her wise and cultivated ability to judge and plan : her motherliness, constantly watchful, yet tact- ful in avoiding irksome regulations: and her happy and genuine religiousness. "Coming up behind us one day she over- heard Ethel lamenting to me the size of her hands. 'Yes,' she said as she passed us, with an intonation that expressed a world of ten- der comprehension and good cheer; 'yes, but they are going to do great work for mamma.' "The boys had their outdoor duties, and their collections and other treasures to their hearts' content; the girls their work and [266] OPENING OF THE SCHOOL recreations. It was easy to see that they all were loyal and devoted to her. The relation between her and her eldest son, then only eighteen, seemed to me ideal, in admitting him to her confidence as a man, while she mothered him as a boy. "It was interesting, too, to watch her plea- sure in the Summer School and in intercourse with the French professors, clearly a great pleasure to them also. No doubt it brought back memories of her Paris days. "When I went away, regretfully, she added to her leave-taking a quiet, 'I know you, now,' and I smiled to think how my first awe had vanished. . . . That summer is to me a unique treasure of memory." The second year the school opened with four scholars, a fifth coming in before the year was over. There was added, too, another teacher, Miss Lyman, like all her teachers a genuine support and comfort to Mrs. Stearns. [267] Ill Early Years of the School 1 HE school of the first years is hardly the school as it was when under way. It was modified from year to year. As her own girls grew older, the boarders becoming correspond- ingly older, the regulations were suitably changed. New teachers were added, also, as the need for them grew. In the early days, Mrs. Stearns had had time to kiss each child good-night. Later, when the number had grown to fifteen, the average, perhaps, through the years, it became of course impossible. During the third year we find two more en- tries in her little diary. These are, unfortu- nately, the last. "Februaiy 10, 1880. "As I look at the last date in this journal I am amazed at the flight of time. Oh, how full of care have these years been since my school opened ! . . . I might fill a journal with in- teresting experiences, but 1 have neither the [a68] EARLY YEARS OF THE SCHOOL time, nor will the condition of my eyes per- mit." " February 19, 1880. " Oh, if I could have the means to help others with, which was once mine, how well I should know how to use it! How I should know just how to lighten the burden of many a poor widow, struggling with difficulties of which the world is ignorant! How much of our experi- ence seems to come too late! and yet not too late, if we make that use of it which the dear Lord intends. "As we get on in life and begin to see even here how terrible are the results of disobedi- ence to God's laws, do we not shudder at the thoughtlessness of our earlier years! Oh, if only then we could have seen how our neglect to overcome evil thoughts and habits was to be visited upon our dear children, making the struggle with evil so much harder for them, should we not have cried out for that Divine help which alone makes victory possible ? The 'Thou shalt not' of our Heavenly Father should have been enough, so that we are with- out excuse." In 1880 Miss Snell came to teach in the school, IJ269] I IKK ALONE living, however, at n home. She re- mained through all the years till the school I given up. In the fall of 1880 one of the pupils was Sara Eddy, now Mrs. Lyles, who has written a few memories of her "happy school days with dear Mrs. Steam "From her first cordial welcome, with her own individual and hearty handshake, on through the years while a pupil, and later only as an 'old Convent girl/ it was always like going home to go back to Mrs. Stearns. The mother-welcome never failed. "My arrival at the school was in the old Northampton stage, and Mrs. Stearns was then living in the President's house. We also, in those days, attended church in the beautiful chapel presented by Mrs. Stearns's husband to the college. "The day began with prayers in the library, after which came breakfast, and then a short walk before school duties began. The older girls studied in their rooms, between recitations and practising, and the younger girls were in the school-room where most of the recitations were held." "At 10:30 we had a short recess. During [ 270] EARLY YEARS OF THE SCHOOL the recess we gathered in the large music-room, where we sang and ate cookies. I am sure that the songs which were then in vogue, were never sung with more zeal than we sang them. Our favourites were, 'Won't You Tell Me Why, Robin,' and 'Some Day.' After this recess, Mrs. Stearns had our French class, and then a class in harmony. We had dinner in the middle of the day, and usually discussed current topics. We had mathematics with Miss Snell at one o'clock. Then came philosophy and astronomy till 3: 30." "After school hours, we took long walks all about the beautiful country. After tea, and be- fore study-hour (which was in our rooms), there was sometimes dancing, and often music. Par- ticularly I associate Mrs. Stearns's own won- derfully sweet voice with that hour, and some of the words of those songs bring the whole picture, with the sweet voice, back to me as I write." To quote Mrs. Stearns's daughter, Mabel: "Every night after supper the girls begged mother to sing and they gathered in the front parlour, while she sang to them song after song. I used to hide under the sofa in the hall, hop- J,m ALONE no older brother or sister would find me 1 take me off to bed, but instead, that 1 might listen and cry to my heart's content, it was so beautiful. The two songs I remember the most ilistiru-tly \M-M- ' I he Lark,' u Inch had a beautiful running accompaniment, and 'Gen- tle Dove Within My Chamber.' She played her own accompaniments. 1 have only to shut my eyes and the true, sweet voice comes back to me." Mrs. Lyles continues, "We enjoyed greatly a little French play in which Mrs. Stearns drilled us, and then invited a number of guests for an audience. She was most enthusi- astic in her efforts to train her pupils, and so delighted when she succeeded in imparting to them her enthusiasm, and a little of her fine accent ! "It was during those first years that Mrs. Stearns had so much illness and sorrow in her family. The quiet example which she set be- fore her girls of courage, and a wonderful faith, was a remarkable illustration of her own teach- ings." One or two things in this letter need a word of explanation. The name "Convent" was [ 272 ] EARLY YEARS OF THE SCHOOL given to Mrs. Stearns's school by the Amherst students, because the girls or "young ladies " they might now be better called were so strictly chaperoned. Her girls have very dear associations with the name. Mrs. Lyles speaks of the illness in Mrs. Stearns's family. For some time she had been noticing a growing weakness in her oldest son. He had always been rather delicate, but though the doctors feared tuberculosis, they could discover no disease of any kind. He was simply pining away. He had entered Amherst College with the class of 1882, and remained through part of his sophomore year, when he was obliged to leave. During the year 1880, a girl had entered the school who was ill, and her trouble proved to be tuberculosis of the lungs. She was so ill that she did not attend any classes, but remained in her room. Ethel used to sit with her, and read to her, and tell her stories. The girl left, after a stay of less than three months, Mrs. Stearns thought it wiser, although they did not consider tuber- culosis contagious in those days. Willie grew steadily worse. The school con- tinued as usual. The girls were not permitted [ 273 J I IKE ALONE to feel the slightest sadness on account of his illness. It became necessary to send him away. In the spring of 1881 Miss Kittrcdge took him to Colorado Springs, where, just a week after his arrival, he died, on the twelfth of V Mi. Willie was the only child, at the time of his father's death, who could understand what his loss meant, even in the smallest degree. Some- times in the night, at the end of a long, brave day, Mrs. Stearns would give way to the grief of her heart, and as she lay sobbing, there would come a tap at the door and Willie would softly ask, "Is there anything I can do, mother : " "No, dear," she would reply, "you must go back to bed again." She always felt that he died of grief. His body was brought back to Amherst, where it was buried on his twenty- first birthday. The girls, during this brief period, were scat- tered in the houses of various friends, until after the funeral, when the school dudes were resumed. Harold, meanwhile, who had been a year at Andover, where his uncle, Dr. Bancroft [274] EARLY YEARS OF THE SCHOOL the husband of Mrs. Stearns's sister was principal of the academy, entered Amherst College in the fall of 1881. He remained during his freshman year only, for in 1882 he devel- oped alarming symptoms, which foreshadowed tuberculosis. Harold, the handsome boy with such superb colour! Mrs. Stearns sent him on a sailing voyage to the Orient. He visited Japan and Java, and remained away a year. People have questioned how it was possible for Mrs. Stearns to do for her children what she did. Where did the money come from ? The only answer Mrs. Stearns would make is that what they needed, they must have. And they did. Moreover, she discovered that some trades- men who had been her husband's creditors at the time of his death, had received only a per- centage on what was owing them. In a few years after the school was started, she paid them all in full, and she never borrowed a cent of money in her life ! Ethel was not only beautiful, but talented. She wrote well, had a remarkable voice, and was the noblest and strongest character of the family. She had been failing gradually during [275] I IFE ALONE the entire school year of 1 88 1 -82. What could be done ? She had no pain. There was no strug- gle. She only faded, slowly. She was not an imalul, ruver being confined to her bed. Y Stearns tried to keep Annie away from her. Yet she did not \\ish Annie to suspect that her exquisite sister could do her harm. Annie's chief di-li^ht was to spend long, sunny hours with I tlul in her large southern nx>m. When they urged Annie to go outof doors, Ethel would say pathetically, " But she wants to stay with me ! " And so she stayed. Shortly after the be- ginning of the school year 1882-83, four days after her seventeenth birthday, Ethel died of tuberculosis of the lungs, on the fifteenth of October, 1882. The main dependence of her mother was gone ! Some of the girls went to Miss Snell's house, others remained with Mrs. Stearns. The day after Ethel's funeral, the lessons were resumed as usual. Could Mrs. Stearns afford to look back, to wonder whether she had done all for Ethel that could have been done, or to allow herself t<> realize the full extent of her grief? Through it, she seemed to have gained, in every pur- EARLY YEARS OF THE SCHOOL pose, a still higher tendency. All her energy should be bent toward making life gladder for those who remained. The school could not pause to look back. The words she wrote to another who was in agony of spirit, explain, in part, her own courage. " If only my tears would make your sorrow less! . . . But Oh, how hard, how dreadfully hard ! I feel sometimes as though I could not bear the thought of this suffering from separations of loved ones by death. What horrible darkness it would be but for the revelation which Christ has made, . . . and the assurance that our dear ones are there waiting for our coming." Her certainty of this reunion was unassaila- ble. It was her chief source of power through all the years. One of her pupils at this time, Hattie Alexander, now Mrs. Holliday, writes, "Her silent grief impressed the girls very much, and created more sympathy than if she had openly manifested it. ... For her pupils there was always a smile and a loving caress, perhaps bestowed as she thought of the beautiful daughter she had lost. "Honour was Mrs. Stearns's rule. We were never commanded to do anything, but were [ 277 ] I IFE ALONE simply told what she desired, and what she thought was right. It was her trust in the girls that won their love." This was about the rime when Mr. H. G. Tucker, of Boston, began to come to M Stearns's school once a week to give piano- forte lessons. Aside from the pleasure she took in his playing and teaching, his visits were a very real help to her. We all remember how eagerly she looked forward to "Mr. Tucker's day," their dinner-time discussions of topics which we could not imagine interesting, but which had a world-wide scope! It may not be too inappropriate to insert, here, an appreciation of Mrs. Stearns sent by Mr. Tucker, shortly after her death. "The dearest friend on earth. The kindest and most loving of women. The best condi- tioned and most unwearied spirit in doing cour- tesies. Her words were bonds. Her love sin- cere. Her thoughts immaculate. Her tears pure messengers sent from the heart. Her heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth. Remember her? Aye, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe." From this rime on, art formed an important 1 278] EARLY YEARS OF THE SCHOOL part of the school life. Many girls studied not only the pianoforte with Mr. Tucker, but sing- ing and painting in oil and water colour with Mrs. Todd. Mrs. Hollidaygoes on, "After 3 130, we could play tennis or walk. In the winter we made these walks very short. Instead, we would go to Mrs. Stearns's room, where there was a large open wood fire, and we would sew for our bazaar. Each girl felt she was welcome at this fireside. This was one of Mrs. Stearns's endearing ways. It was during the long winter afternoons that we would prevail on her to open her curio trunks, and show us the Eastern dresses, embroideries and souvenirs, which were very rare and beautiful. . . . "In the early spring evenings, just as we were retiring, we heard the Psi U songs. No- thing gave us more pleasure than the occasional serenades of the college men. In an instant we were up, and showering them with bou- quets. Someway we always knew these sere- nades were to take place, and no one was more enthusiastic than Mrs. Stearns. The only objection she had was that we never could decide amicably who should throw the flowers. [ 279 ] I II I \I <>NE hen came the baseball games. All was excitement. Our par.is< .U, hats and colours (we were always loyal toAmlu-rst >.\M n- tin- absorb- ing thoughts for days. We had a great deal of fun at these games. The men we knew would come and surround the steps of our carriages. This was the nearest we ever came to driving with them. . . . "Mrs. Stearns had a wonderful influence over every one. There was no jealousy, envy or backbiting, or any of the petty vices so ot prevalent among school girls. Her religious influence was deeply felt, and has remained with many of the girls, now women, through life. "In the fall the hills were covered with radiant colours. 'Mountain Day 'was always looked forward to with more real joy than any other holiday." It was on the Mountain Day of 1882, the day before that of the college, that a famous escapade took place. In the words of one of the chief actors, "We went to Mount Holyoke, and, before leaving, wrote our names on a blue ribbon, and tied it to a stake on the summit. The following day the sophomore class went EARLY YEARS OF THE SCHOOL to Mount Holyoke, captured the ribbon, and the next morning as they went up the hill to chapel, we were electrified by the bits of blue in their button holes ! ... So we decided on blue as our colour. The gold was added later." An Amherst friend of Mrs. Stearns writes, "The relation of the student body to the school was fine and chivalrous. Every young man admitted to the 'Convent' must be pro- perly introduced by parent or guardian of the pupil he wished to see, before he could be- come even a Friday evening caller; and those invited to the musicales and receptions, the annual fair, or other occasional festivities, were either friends of Mrs. Stearns, or, if it may be so expressed, hereditary acquaintances of the pupils. One result of this careful guard- ing of the girls from too casual companion- ships, was a mighty enhancement of the de- sirability of entree. To many college students nothing in their course was more highly prized than the trust and approval of Mrs. Stearns, evidenced by their admission to her home. "In the President's house, with college buildings close at hand, it must have been [281 ] LIFE ALONE sometimes a difficult n maintain that ili licate adjustment of relation, uhiili rirrtim- stances demanded, between a bevy of girls and several hundred young men. Hut she never failed. Her situation was furthrr complicated by the fact that through most the eighties, and until 1894, Mrs. Stearns had sons in college. They lived, however, at the Psi Upsilon fraternity house, of which they were members. " 1 f occasionally there was some enthusiastic pupil to whom this delightful wilderness of youths was new and intoxicating, so that she was inclined to overstep bounds of stric- propriety in the delights of sub rosa flirtation, no one outside heard or knew of it; and the offender, after an intimate talk with the dearest of mentors, must have felt that to be forgiven and helped by Mrs. Stearns was positive as- surance and guarantee for future perfection." Such were Mrs. Stearns's relations to the college students, formal indeed, so far as the school was concerned. But to the men as her sons' friends, she was the "valued adviser and dear friend." They felt instinctively her su- perior judgment, her power of discerning the [282] EARLY YEARS OF THE SCHOOL right in a tangled situation, and her ability to help them choose the right when once it was shown them. What she was to them as a friend is best expressed in their own words. "I first had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Stearns during the opening months of my sophomore year. From that time on, through my college course, I saw her frequently, both in and out of her home. There was about her a motherliness that drew the boy who was away from home naturally to her. I remember so well her quiet dignity and self-poise, her spon- taneous interest in all that occupied the atten- tion of the young people about her, her un- affected genuineness, her frank kindliness. "And now that my college days are receding into a past which the calendar says is already distant, I find the memory of her is one of the most vivid recollections of that happy time. After a period of many years, during which I saw her only once or twice, I was again brought into association with her. The physical change was great, for the infirmities of age were upon her, but she was the same Mrs. Stearns, alert, and vigorous in mind, affectionate, living in her children and in the wide circle of men and [283] LIFE ALONE women, older and younger, who had been her boys and girls in i-arlit-r days. She never grew old in spirit. The many trials and sorrows that fell to her lot only ripened and sweetened the beautiful nature, so that her old age was a mellowed youth, and at the end of life, as in its prime, she was still the interested com- panion, the sympathetic friend, of everyone who had the privilege of knowing her." Again: "Her great wisdom in handling the girls under her care, and the college boys who were her sons' friends, and who were proud to look to her as their friend, was a constant source of wonder. She trusted the. men whom she honoured with her friendship, and this very trust made them more manly and worthy of her confidence. . . . When her dearest ones were taken from her . . . even in her own grief she was a tower of strength to those of us who were in trouble ourselves." Again : "My mind's eye holds distinctly and gratefully the image of Mrs. Stearns. . . . Mental breadth and alertness united with warm human sympathies to make the world widely-horizoned and endlessly interesting to her. It followed that she was delightful in con- [284] EARLY YEARS OF THE SCHOOL versation. ... I feel sure that many college men count their acquaintance with Mrs. Stearns, and the open door of her gracious home, as one of the best of the good providences of their Amherst days." Mrs. Stearns was often a mediator between the men and girls, as her sponsorship in sev- eral love affairs proves. Harold had returned from his long voyage, apparently well. He had been only a short time in Amherst, however, when the serious symp- toms reappeared. He went west to remain, studying medicine in Kansas City and Denver. Arthur was sent to Andover, to prepare for college, and entered Amherst in the fall of 1884. Meanwhile Annie, who showed no signs of tuberculosis until a year after Ethel's death, was taken ill. At the first suspicion, Miss Kittredge took her to Florida. This was in the late winter of 1884. The trip did not seem to benefit her. She grew steadily worse during the summer. The school began as usual in the fall of 1884. Of the five remaining children, Harold was in the west, Arthur was a freshman in college, Alfred had been taken to Florida, [285] I IKE ALONE Mabel was in school at home, and Annie, also at home, was now confined to her bed. Unlike I rhel, she suffered untold agony, in r heart as \M-I1 as lungs being affected. Ir would seem as though no human I could bear such burdens as rested upon Mi-. S reams. But when is added the fact that her own health was in a precarious state, and her eyes giving her constant trouble, so that any one else would have been a hopeless invalid, what she accomplished is indeed incredible. Her heart wrung with anguish unable to help her child, whose sufferings were growing more intense every day, she was obliged to take to her bed herself. She heard all her recita- tions from September to Christmas, 1884, on her back. The girls could come to her just as usual. She seemed surrounded with a sublime peace. As always, she was the tender sympathizer with all their trifling mishaps. On the fourth of March, 1885, at the age of sixteen, Annie died. All the girls remained in the house. Mrs. Stearns rose to greater and greater heights of serenity. "She did not allow a curtain to be drawn down, nor any crape to [286] EARLY YEARS OF THE SCHOOL be placed on the door. To the girls she said, 'I do not wish the school lessons to be inter- rupted, nor the piano closed. Our dear one has only gone to a more beautiful home, and we cannot weep for her. She has gone to her father. He will be there to greet her/ "Were this calmness and peace unnatural ? No ! not for one who walked so close with God, and who lived every day and in all circum- stances the religion she professed. . . . "Never have I witnessed such a triumph of soul over heart sorrow as shown in her per- fect peace and absolute trust in the infinite love that was back of the severe chastening. It was not stoicism, though those who did not know her might call it such, nor was her calmness assumed, when she met with others, but it was simply her anchor-hope, which no storms . could move." [287] IV Amherst Activities THE anxieties of these heart-breaking years, the responsibilities of running her, now, large school, of meeting her own teaching appoint- ments, of caring for her children, and of her perfect housekeeping, were not apparent. Her Amherst friends never guessed that she was over busy, or had duties more exacting than those of other women. Of what she was to the town of Amherst we can best judge by the fol- lowing appreciation, written by a fellow towns- woman and dear friend. " In the midst of a simple New England col- lege town, Mrs. Stearns established a gracious, cosmopolitan centre. Homesick at times she must have been not only for the husband and children who had already gone onward into the unknown, but even for the details of that far different environment from which she had come, a life brilliant with all the glamour of the East, whose everyday incidents, when t 288 ] ' AMHERST ACTIVITIES she could be induced to speak of them, sounded like actual chapters from the Arabian Nights. From the splendour of the Orient she passed to the plainer life of a small college town, the same sweet, unspoiled, forceful, cultivated woman who had so profoundly impressed the society of Bombay. "Almost at once she had become one of the moving spirits in Amherst, always on the side of betterment, genuinely interested, despite continued personal bereavement, in all that pertained to town and college. "Unconsciously to herself she broadened the outlook of all with whom she came in contact. Wider horizons dawned gradually in narrow lives, eyes unexpectedly opened to larger things, not only in details of daily living, but in mental attitude and toleration of what to them was new. Routine had never cramped her own outlook. "Frequently Mrs. Stearns was called the 'first citizen of Amherst.' Her standards be- came a fixed quantity for comparison. For years, frequent and heartbreaking losses kept her enveloped in crape. But it was her only sign of grief. Always her face was serene and [289] LIFE ALONE cheerful, her greeting genial. lu-r response to another's happiness as In artklt as if no d uui had ever dimmed the sunshine of her own blue sky. "In the long veil and handsome seal cloak which spoke of more opulent years, she would have bestowed distinction on any com- munity; and her dignified presence in the vil- lage streets became familiarly welcome - always a commanding and distinguished figure. " Of the girls who came to her ' home-school ' for education with her own daughters, sadly reduced by death from three to one, all felt her inspiring uplift, her optimistic attitude, her tenacious and unswerving hold upon all high planes of thought. Her spirit never faltered in its celestial lift. "Rough manners, were there any in a new pupil, softened under her influence to all the externals of ladyhood. The simple elegance of her table took for granted the familiarity of all with the proprieties of the world at large, and the furnishings of her house carved teak, Persian rugs, Eastern embroideries - accustomed pupils and visitors alike to an unusual and picturesque setting. [ 290 ] AMHERST ACTIVITIES "While entering heartily into the cheerful young life about her, conducting classes most inspiringly, and doing her part bravely and unshrinkingly in town and church, all aspects of the inner life of Mrs. Stearns, her sadness, her memories, the hopes still left, were for her- self alone. She never asked sympathy, or ob- truded the slightest suggestion that the present was in any way a different experience from her delightful life in Paris, or the almost regal years in India. "Sacrifice of herself was constant and in- stinctive. One instance will illustrate. "When, during a certain period, the girls seemed unusually gay and conscious of the proximity of the dominant sex, she quietly withdrew, permanently, her pewfuls of bloom- ing maidens from the college church that gift of her husband in his successful years, and in which are tablets in his honour and that of his father, for twenty-one years president of Am- herst College. This, her normal Sunday home, she left with genuine sadness ; but at the village church, she said, there would be less to dis- tract the thoughts of young girls from the real worship of God. [ 291 ] I IKE ALONE "A consistent opponent of the movement for woman's suffrage, she nevertheless ex- hibited in In r <>\\n power and achievement, the very qualities which in a wider ami n public position \\ould have brought i to herself and large betterment to the world. "During a time when the anti-suffrage society was seeking membership in to\\n. In r sympathy with the movement led her into an ardent house-to-house canvass in a certain sec- tion. Her life had been heretofore quite tin- reverse of democratic, but she was both sur- prised and gratified at the interesting homes and persons she encountered on this unusual excursion. " Elected on one occasion to the school com- mittee appropriate tribute to her well-known interest and authoritative views in educational matters she resigned at once, a consistent example of her life-long objection to seeing women occupy public office. " But in home and private educational lines, she believed, lay the true sphere of woman's strongest influence, and she never swerved from that position, despite the devotion and high character of many who believed in and [ 292 1 AM H ERST ACTIVITIES worked for the franchise, as the first step to the salvation of modern conditions a nobility of purpose which she freely acknowledged. It was simply not her way of aiding the up- lifting of womanhood. "Mrs. Stearns was always keenly suscep- tible to the best music. Well trained herself, she warmly appreciated thoroughness and good method, even more in singing than in pianoforte study. Nor was she less sensitive to quality in the speaking voice, so generally ignored in America. Frequent recitals of the best music in her home formed an entering wedge for a gradually rising musical standard in the town at large; and the presence there of artists of wide reputation, really helped to pave the way for that larger development along classic lines, which has come to town and col- lege in later years." Left alone as she had been, the average woman would have considered merely "getting along" all that could be expected. To Mrs. Stearns the problem of daily living was but incidental to a still constantly broadening life. "With a brilliant wit, beautifully sincere, the home-making talent in generous measure, a deep [ 293 ] I IFF. ALONE kn<>\\lrdge of girl nature and necessities, thorough appreciation of the ;nn tu i,i life, a truly religious heart and loyalty un- bounded, Mrs. Stearns was always vividly alive, not only to world matters, on uhuh she was authority, hut in details of every day, in the experiences of her frumls, in the inter- ests of the town. " It was not so much what she taught the girls in actual text-book information, \\lmh made every one who left her school a finer and nobler woman than when she came, but the mere contact with so fully rounded and un- usual a personality was in itself a liberal edu- cation. " I he town was poorer when she went; and to her special friends the niche will always remain empty where once she reigned." The school was growing in popularity every year. She was succeeding with it far beyond her hopes. It had become the gracious centre she had wished. Day scholars were begging admission. Mrs. Stearns accepted four or five, never more in any year. Dr. Bancroft, her brother-in-law, wrote her in 1886, "We rejoice that you have brought your school so [ 294 ] AM H ERST ACTIVITIES handsomely forward. God has led you through the deep, deep waters, and I am glad the prayer is heard for you that your faith fail not." Miss Parsons had come to teach in 1886. In 1887 Miss Wright came, though not as a resident teacher. In the spring of 1887 Mrs. Stearns had her only critical illness, a sudden attack of pneu- monia. For a time her life was despaired of. She recovered, however, after but a short ab- sence from her school duties. Experiences are of avail only when their results are embodied in character. Even this illness she took joyfully, and gained from it inspiration for further effort. Another ob- stacle converted into an opportunity! She had gone to bed when it was winter. When she got up, the earth had blossomed. She gasped with wonder over the spring, which she insisted was more beautiful than ever be- fore. "Why," she exclaimed, "have I never known what it was to love nature ! " She found great happiness in the small things of nature. She knew there was beauty enough in any single landscape to rejoice the heart if [ 295 ] I. IKE ALONE only one wished to find it. From the early spring chorus of wee things ID the grass, and the marvels of an ice-crystal, to the fury of a great storm, all gave her keen en- joyment. She had sources of happiness un- dreamed of by small minds. Shall we ever forget the joy witti \\hu-h, in later years, she announced the return of the song sparrow in the big hedge, the first note of the cat-bird, or how she would rush from one \\imlow to another to see the northern lights ? She loved them for themselves, yet she felt in them a larger and deeper meaning. Charles Kingsley, in a little passage she often quoted, explains her attitude. "Do not study matter for its own sake, but as the countenance of God ! Try to ex- tract every line of beauty, every association, every moral reflection, every inexpressible feeling from it. Study the forms and colours of leaves and flowers, and the growth and habits of plants; not to classify them but to admire them, and adore God. Study the sky ! Study water! Study trees! Study the sounds and scents of nature ! Study all these, as beau- tiful in themselves, in order to re-combine the [296] AMHERST ACTIVITIES elements of beauty; next, as allegories and examples from whence moral reflections may be drawn; next, as types of certain tones of feeling. . . . It is a great cause for thankful- ness that we can appreciate all this ! How it adds to the joy of living, and also to the sense of God's love for all his creatures ! " Harold had been for four years a practising physician in Colorado. He had married one of Mrs. Stearns's pupils in 1885, and had two children. During this time he was apparently perfectly well. Removing to a less stimulating climate, the tuberculosis contracted possibly ten years before broke forth suddenly, reached a climax, and Harold died on the fourth of July, 1890. One of the most remarkable achieve- ments in Mrs. Stearns's life is a comment upon the care which she gave her girls. Not one pupil ever contracted tuberculosis in her school! Amherst was electing a new president. He would need the President's House. Mrs. Stearns was now obliged to leave the family home and begin again. The more hardship, the more capable of enduring it she steadily became. The winter after Harold's death she [ 297 ] LIFE ALONE chose her new home, which became the we II- known "Convent" of later days. During the following summer she moved. The house was ready for the beginning of the school year, 1891. Of her three children now left, only Mabel was at home. Arthur was teaching, and Alfred had entered college in the fall of 1890. An illuminating incident occurred dining the period just after moving. It was Saturday morning, at the end of a long, busy wi when Mrs. Stearns was particularly fatigued. One of the girls wanted to tack up some pic- tures in her room. She went upstairs to the big closet where she found Mrs. Stearns put- ting away linen. "Mrs. Stearns," she asked, "do you know where the hammer is?" "I think it must be in the cellar," was the reply, "I'll go right down and see." And it was only with difficulty that she was persuaded not to hurry off in search of it ! Mrs. Stearns's attitude toward life precluded the possibility of such faults as envy, jealousy, worldly ambition or selfishness of any sort. Are our desires to be somewhere else than AMHERST ACTIVITIES where we are, to have something else than what we have, to do something else than what we do, her desires ? Did she wonder whether she was getting the consideration she deserved ? Expecting deference, was she hurt at any trifle she failed to receive ? Can we measure her by the world's standards ? Mrs. Stearns had always considered the in- clinations of the rest of mankind, rather than her own : on the New England farm where the good of the individual was secondary to that of the family ; in subordinating her wishes to those of the aunt by whose kindness she was enabled to go to school in Cambridge; in her married life, or supremely, in that longer period when children and adopted children depended upon her joyously-given devotion. I love to contemplate her! A bird far, far up just sailed majestically past without a flutter. His flight is as easy for him as for the sparrows of the underbrush to find grubs. Should we be jealous if some persons are like that ? And envy them their effortless progress through the upper air ? [ 299 ] LIFE ALONE " Angelic woman! pan my power to praise "In language men thy r.ilnti, temper, nun.!, "Thy solid worth, thy captivating gra " 1 hou friend and ornament of human kind. "Listen! It is not sound alone, 't is sense, " T is genius, taste and tenderness of soul; 44 T is genuine warmth of heart without pretense, "And purity of mind that crowns the whole." V Later Years of the School To us who entered Mrs. Stearns's school in its later years, came, perhaps, a fuller revela- tion of the sweetness and power of her life than to those who knew her before she had reached the acme of heroism, before sorrow had tested the depths of her nature. Such a flood of memories rushes over me ! There seems to be not one noble trait of character which she did not possess. This is the danger in trying to describe so great a character. The tempta- tion is to give it all the virtues, without differen- tiating those peculiar to it, and to make it, not an individual, but a catalogue of virtues. But I have searched in vain for offsetting faults. Each slightest incident reveals something of her personality just as truly as the most gen- eral sketch which tries to include everything in a characteristic phrase. How vividly we remember her as she sat at dinner, crumbling her little slice of Swedish brown-bread, or [ 301 1 I IFF ALONE reading us the Springfield Republican inter- esting us in foreign world movements of \\ hu li we might never have heard but t.r In i ' I remember her broadmindcd approval of the English during the Boer war, that delicate sub- ject which so many families handled with white gloves if they dared approach it at all. We picture her as she sat at the grand piano- forte every morning after breakfast, playing for us to sing "Awake my soul, and with the sun," "Love divine," " 1 tcrnal Father, strong to save," or "Immanuel." Or on Sunday evenings when we might choose our favourite hymns from Mr. Glezen's book, and sing as long as our ambitious voices lasted. One of the girls wrote Mrs. Stearns on her seventieth birthday: "The dearest hour of our Sunday at school was when you used to play hymns for us. ... As the years go by, those memo- ries are ever more precious. Don't think, Mrs. Stearns, that the lessons which you taught us then are all forgotten. You often had cause for discouragement, but you did not know how your words and example would remain in our minds long after we had left you and the dear 'Convent/ You and your teaching have been [ 302 ] LATER YEARS OF THE SCHOOL the most powerful influence for good in my life. Your girls rise up to call you Blessed." Or, we picture her as we repeated with quaking voices La Fontaine's fables in the big school-room, or as she taught us philosophy, or interpreted the Bible in her own room, on Sunday afternoons, or read aloud the one hun- dred and nineteenth Psalm. Can we not see her as she sat every evening after supper in her great arm-chair, under the standing lamp in the library, reading to us the Sun Maid or the White Seal, John Halifax, Gentleman, Young Mrs. Jardine, Ramona or The Sowers, while the girls clustered about do- ing fancy-work for the fair ? The books which she selected for us to hear were those which would both interest us and give us an insight into high motives and ideals. Mrs. Stearns never became a slave to books with all sorts of imaginary obligations to them. They were made for enjoyment, as people were made to be loved. Or is our clearest remembrance of her as she started up town in her long, black veil, followed at a respectful distance by majestic Jet, meeting Mrs. Tuckerman on her way [ 303 ] I IFF ALONE home, and walking up and down with her to the end of the pavement till almost mail time ? Or is it as she sat rocking and reading to us our favourite books when we were ill in bed ? No detail is too small to express her, and she is expressed in each one. Everything in the school routine was ar- ranged for the least irksome good of the scholars. After breakfast at 7 130 we had prayers, then a walk, always two girls together; recitati- study and practice, beginning at nine. At 10 130 we had either milk or apples. At twelve we all trooped to Mrs. Stearns's room to receive our mail. At 12 130 we had dinner. From 1 130 to 4 we had recitations, and then we walked or played tennis till supper at six. She read to us rill 7 130, we studied an hour, had gymnastics in the school-room, crackers and milk in the pantry, and put out our lights at ten. On Wednesdays the whole school joined in rather a different programme. We had dicta- tion, mental arithmetic our triumph or our despair! spelling, "critical readings" of American authors and our gymnastic lesson, for which we all practised fifteen minutes every day during the week. [304] LATER YEARS OF THE SCHOOL Mrs. Stearns was very apt to spend the evenings with her Swedish servants. Knut, her Swedish man, whom we knew in the later years, said, "She took such an interest in us all ! After the dishes were done she would often come out into the kitchen and sit in the big rocking chair and read English with us we were all but a short time over. I never had anybody so kind to me in all my life as Mrs. Stearns. She was always so." Two girls entertained the school on Friday evenings, except once in the month, when the older girls were allowed to have their callers, certified, so to speak, college students. Some of these parties were very ingenious, all of them delightful. On Saturday morning we arranged our bureau-drawers, did our mending, and then went in two divisions up town, where we had one thrilling opportunity of going into the shops, to us a most impressive rite, and a privilege to be profoundly grateful for! After dinner we had "missionary hour" when we sewed for the fair. Then we might drive with Miss Kittredge or Miss Parsons, or amuse ourselves as we liked till supper time. The evening passed as usual. [305] LIFE ALONE On Sunday morning we studied our Bible lesson, and went to church. We were all to go to church, either with Mrs. Stearns to the Con- gregational, or with one of the other teachers to the Episcopal church. Nobody must be kept from going, the maids by their work, or the girls by a makeshift headache. This was one of the strictest rules. (Another was punctuality at meals. For being late there was no penalty except one's own unfailing loss of self-respt We went to dear Mrs. Stearns's Bible class after dinner, then passed a quiet afternoon, sometimes going, a select few at a time, to vespers at the college church; and hymns closed the day. Even more than the school routine, the days that she gave up to our pleasure show her wise indulgence. She allowed us to go to the col- lege gymnastic exhibitions, some lectures and baseball games, yet the number of such func- tions was so discreetly limited that the girls looked forward to them as the dearest excite- ments of the year. There was just enough in- tercourse allowed with the college men, not enough, however, to neutralize the old proverb that distance lends enchantment. [306] LATER YEARS OF THE SCHOOL Can we ever forget the Mountain Days ? In autumn, when we drove through Mill Valley, past the house with D K written on the roof, which profound riddle it was my never-ending shame not to have guessed alone, through the Notch and the Devil's Garden, inhabited then by dainty white asters and powdery golden-rod, on to South Hadley and up the other side of Mount Holyoke, taking the inclined railway to the top ? And then the fun as the barges stopped at Titan's Pier, the great cliffs above the Con- necticut, and we set the table, and forgot the scurry we had had to cut all the bread and make all the sandwiches fit in the box before starting (for Mountain Day could never be se- lected until blue sky indicated perfect weather in the early morning) ? And later, when we bowled through Hadley Street on our way home toward dark, and sang all the old songs when we were not in the village ! and came in tired but happy as larks ? Then there was the Saturday in late March before the snow was all gone, when we went to Plum Trees for a " sugaring-off " in true old- fashioned style. How we burrowed under the hay in the big barns, and watched the sap in [ 307 ] LIFE ALONE the great ten-foot rin pan bubble up over a fire of whole trees! And how we ate die maple-wax on snow at supper time, and baking-povs biscuits, and large pick! We passed our spring Mountain Day in the silent hills toward the north, where the deeply hidden Toby stream tumbled down over mossy rocks, the columbines and maiden-hair Km balanced on their trembling stems, and the rare Louisiana water- thrush tilted up and down. We used to think how wonderful it was that he should be here when he is found no where else in the vicinity here, the only part of the hills we visited ! There was not a grow- ing or singing thing, not a wisp of cloud in the farthest sky that did not delight dear Mrs. Stearns, and tempt her to show it to us for she hated to have us miss what had given her pleasure. It is precious to know that she loved nature so. Of far another kind was die enjoyment we had in the concert which Mr. Tucker and other artists gave at Mrs. Stearns's house in the spring, and the musicale a week later cnu-1 contrast! when all his quaking pupils per- formed. The fair, for which we had been sew- LATER YEARS OF THE SCHOOL ing all winter, or indeed, since the previous fair, was the most exciting event of all. For to this were invited not only all of Amherst, but certain favoured students as well. Ladies, who would be liable to add materially to the funds, were invited in the afternoon, the less desirable students came in the evening for the candy and eatables, left-overs and certain little carefully designated objects which had not appeared in the afternoon, value not to exceed twenty- five cents ! The proceeds of this fair Mrs. Stearns divided between the McCall Mission and India, where it was sent for the education of the very little widows whom we had heard about in story-telling time, or during mission- ary hour on Saturday afternoons. Mrs. Stearns so enthused us all with the missionary fervour, that I distinctly remember one girl who washed three other girls' hair in an afternoon, gaining forty-five cents for the missionary box. Certain much appreciated privileges were given us. Were we "old girls," Mrs. Stearns allowed us to choose our room-mate, or mates, for the coming year. Did we realize her kind forbearance with our "initiation," letting us sit up on that eventful night until eleven [ 309 1 LIFE ALONE o'clock, her actual anxiety over the woes of the thousand and one Greek letter and other secret societies, with which the school spas- modically swarmed ? She did not laugh at them they were more important t<> us than the whole Chinese- Japanese war nor, on the contrary, did she allow us to go too far. < >n one occasion we were to have a double wed- ding. The altar had been decorated, the orange blossoms, even, arranged. Just as the nuptial march on combs had begun, Mrs. Stearns dis- covered the trend of affairs, and forbade the sacrilege. Much has been said of Mrs. Stearns as a mother. And a mother she wished primarily to be. But she was a gifted teacher. Who of us who heard her explain the inner signifi- cance of Bible stories and the life of Christ can ever forget the special force with which they were impressed upon us ? And she had the greatest of all the teach- er's gifts that of giving confidence in their own ideas to her pupils. One day in philo- sophy class we were discussing free-will, and were getting much confused. Mrs. Stearns said, "Great philosophers, girls, cannot un- [310] LATER YEARS OF THE SCHOOL derstand this subject." "But/ can," piped up one enthusiast, and we all solemnly listened to her exposition of the subject. Mrs. Stearns's quiet little sense of humour let us out of many tight places. On one occa- sion there had been some shocking misde- meanour. The culprits waited a long time much longer than excusable before acquaint- ing Mrs. Stearns with the full extent of their guilt. When the confession was over, she looked at them gravely and asked, "Is that all ? " They felt that no conceivable punish- ment would be too severe. "Yes, Mrs. Stearns." . . . "You may go now." To each girl Mrs. Stearns gave a specific object to struggle for, its calibre perfectly suited to the individual, sometimes summed up in a word. Her range of selection was as wide as her knowledge of human nature, for the watchwords might be "Leave time enough!" or "Human kindness!" She encouraged us to work out problems for ourselves, even though they had been solved a thousand times over, or a thousand years ago. She gave self-confidence to the shy girl, and to the over-confident she taught the grace [3"] I III A I oNB of consideration for other people. From each she drew the best, and put the best inrrrprc- t.ition on what she did; and Mrs. Stearns was never slow to change her opinion of a girl when a disagreeable trait, once shown, had ceased to characterize her. She did not compare excellences, wliuh would not admit of comparison, nor discount one girl's best because it was another's start- ing point. " Because the eagle can fly higher, it does not follow that the gnat cannot fly at all ! " Unlike such large numbers of virtuous New Englanders, who are perfect, or would be if they did not think they were, and scorn the rest of the world on that account, Mrs. Stearns could tolerate a point of view differing from her own. She did not share the inhuman attitude of the quick New Englander, who says of a wrong-doer, "How stupid of him! What did he for ?" Through her husband's buoyant nature she had learned to understand temper- aments unlike her own. Her foreign experience had broadened her sympathies. Standards, however, lower than hers she could not tol- erate, and her methods of raising them were sometimes heroic. LATER YEARS OF THE SCHOOL She helped us not only in concrete, appreci- able ways, but in intangible, incalculable ways. She was a practical adviser, yet a very real inspiration. Our environment there enabled us to appre- ciate the value of good taste. Mrs. Stearns's standard was accepted as ours in other things as well as in taste. Her character was un- consciously adopted as our model. She per- sonifies to us all those qualities which we have seen embodied in her. We know that trust and strength to face anything that the world calls bereavement can exist, because we have known her living example. For a young girl to have such a visible ideal gives her the assur- ance that it is possible of attainment. Yet, as has been said of another great wo- man, she had small desire to re-make the characters of others into her own likeness; seeking rather to find some hidden virtue in them which she might develop into a lovely fabric of finer texture, possibly, than her own. Nothing can more beautifully show her love for her girls than a letter she wrote them just after a reunion, at Amherst, of all her former pupils. It is dated, [ 313 ] I IFE ALONE " November i, 1898. "Mv DEAR GIRLS: " It will be impossible for me ever to express half the joy which our delightful reunion caused me. To look into your faces once more, to hear your expressions of loyalty to the school, to be made sure that you were acting well your part in life, all this caused me the deepest happi- ness. "And then the beautiful gift which followed our pleasant meeting together! How can I sufficiently thank you for it ? I look at it con- stantly with delight, feeling sure that it ex- presses the love of my dear girls. How could you have guessed that I greatly desired to pos- sess the complete works of George Eliot ? "I have never realized, as fully as now, how rich my own life has been. To love you all, to rejoice in your happiness, to enter with deep sympathy into your sorrows, to follow every step in your lives with loving interest, is not this an experience for which to be truly grateful ? And all this has come to me through what the world calls misfortune ! How safely may we trust our lives to the care of a loving Heavenly Father, feeling sure that the [3-4] LATER YEARS OF THE SCHOOL seeming misfortunes may prove the richest blessings. "And now may the dear Father bless you all. It is a great grief to me that I am too busy to write you often, but I never forget you. And I am very happy to have you write to tell me of any new experience of joy or sorrow. "As it will be impossible for me to write you separately, may I ask you to kindly for- ward this letter to the person whose name follows your own on the list which I enclose. "Always affectionately yours, "MARY E. STEARNS." There were few changes in the school. Miss Wright had left. Her place was taken by Miss Bigelow or Miss Crowell. Miss Becker came to relieve Miss Kittredge of the work in German. Bereavement never left Mrs. Stearns for long. In 1896 her brother, Dr. Kittredge, died, and in 1898 her sister, Mrs. Bancroft. At the time of Mrs. Bancroft's death she wrote, "For those who are gone, all is well, but we must still be anxious for the living, and long that they may act their part well. [3-5] LIFE ALONE "That Fannie is really gone from us seems like a dream. Let us thank God that she J so well and that we have only blessed memories and joyful anticipations. . . . "Poor Mr. Bancroft! My heart goes out in deepest sympathy to him, for 1 know what the loss of that sweet companionship means. The process of becoming accustomed to the loneliness is long and painful." And again: "Could we bear these separations from our dear ones did we not feel sure that we shall meet them again ? . . . We can trust it all to a loving Heavenly Father who has not given us these strong affections to be finally disappointed." Of her own family Miss Minnie Kittredge was the only one remaining. VI Closing of the School, and Death ON the twenty-eighth of June, 1900, Mrs. Stearns's daughter, Mabel, was married to Harvey F. Noble of Colorado Springs. "Peo- ple will think I am extravagant," said Mrs. Stearns, as she looked at the beautiful trous- seau, "but Mabel is my only daughter! She shall have her wedding just as she wants it." "As for the girls, "--who returned for the occasion, "they must all be in the house," and they were, twenty-four of them ! The wedding was held in the evening, in the college church. It was a memorably beautiful occasion. Dr. Bancroft of Andover performed the ceremony. A large reception was held at the house afterwards. As soon as Mrs. Stearns could leave, she went to First Connecticut Lake to spend the summer. Three lakes are the source of the Connecticut River, far up on the Canadian border. The largest, where Metallak Camp [317] LIFE ALONE is situated, settles down among the hilK. omu il with unbroken forests, where bubbling ti< nit-streams, half over-grown with moss, tumble along under the black spruce woods or, flecked with sunshim, glide between tall black and yellow birches. One sits on a little sheltered beach to watch the low-lying clouds rush along over the choppy lake, or paddles in a canoe over the glassy surface, hearing the lu rmit thrushes or clear whistle of the pea- body bird, the sharp bark of a fox on the wooded shore, or the weird laugh of a loon from over the lake. Suddenly there is a stam- pede of ducks, their footprints leaving an ever widening wake across the water. Great blue herons stalk about in secluded corners, little sand-pipers run along the beach, rare warblers and partridges fill the woods, and at night the deer come out to graze upon crisp lily-pads in the inlets. The summer here would have given Mrs. Stearns perfect happiness it did give her peace except for the anxiety she felt about the following year. For a long rime her friends had been urging her to give up the school. It had been a success, - "due to God's bless- CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH ing," her children were carefully brought up, and now settled in life; Mabel married, Arthur married, and teaching in Lakewood; Alfred engaged to be married, and his uncle's assistant at Phillips-Andover Academy. Why should she continue ? Her own health, which had never been vigorous, seemed now to de- mand rest. But it was very hard to make the decision. She had written from Amherst to Miss Kit- tredge, who had been caring for their bro- ther's family in Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, since his death, in 1896, "It has been a restful, peaceful Sunday, and the religious aspect of the crisis through which I am passing has been uppermost in my thoughts. I feel so sure that God is guiding me, perhaps to a much needed rest. ... I have often wondered if I did not care too much for this home. It had been the dream of my whole married life, and it came so late, and was partly the fruit of my own exertions. I love my books, many of them connected with Will, I love the artistic ornaments, many of them the gifts of my dear girls. I love the grounds, the distant views, and cannot give [ 3*9 1 LIFE ALONE them up without a pang. If they attach my soul too strongly to this world, and to all that perishes, let them go, if only it will be the easier to go on to the next stage of exi where I am sure the love of the beautiful \\ill be more deeply met than even here." To give it up seemed best, and so the school did not reopen in the fall of 1900. The years which elapsed between the closing of the school and Mrs. Stearns's death were a happy memory of various visits and long, restful hours at Metallak, where she basked in the cool northern summer sun. The story of these years is told by Mrs. Noble. "I think many of mother's best friends wondered what she would do with her life after the close of her school, how she could give up the work around which all her inter- est had centred for twenty-three years. . In a letter dated September, 1900, she tells me of her intention of giving up the school and the house. * I hope I may make the change cheerfully. When I think of my being left with seven children, and no money, and how I longed to be able to do for them all that your father would have done, . . . when I remem- [ 320 ] CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH her that I have done all this, my heart is filled with gratitude to the dear Father who has led me thus far, and I will trust Him for my future, though it be not as I had planned/ . . . "Who even guessed what it cost to give up her home ? . . . How many times have I heard her say, 'If I might only have a tiny cottage somewhere, and have with me my books and my Indian things, and make a little nest for myself!' Yet always it was said with a smile, knowing that it could not be." Mrs. Stearns spent the greater part of the year in Amherst with Madame Stearns. She wrote to her sister, Miss Kittredge : "AMHERST, October 28, 1900. "Mv DEAR MINNIE: You will, I know, be anxious to hear of my leaving the home, and of my being settled at mother's. The work at the house was terrible, and seems to me like a horrid night-mare. I managed to leave on Thursday afternoon as I planned, though Knut, Mrs. Hoar and I were obliged to go back the next afternoon to put things in better order. I had a little fire in the furnace, and have escaped, so far, without a cold. My [ 321 ] LIFE ALONE reception at mother's was very warm; there were flowers in my room, and I know that both mother and N were glad that I had come. "I am surprised at myself that ... I felt no regret at leaving my beautiful home. It seemed delightful to lay aside the care of it. . . . |ust now I do not feel that 1 shall ever care to re- turn, but my feelings may entirely change before the year is gone. ... As in all the crises in my life, 1 seem to feel underneath me the everlasting arms, and to have had a strength more than human given me. My heart is so full of gratitude to the dear Heavenly Father who has given me strength to accom- plish the work which I set out to do, after Will was taken from me, that I must feel sure that He will guide me to the end." In De- cember she wrote again, "Rest is still very delicious." Mrs. Noble continues, "I believe no one who saw her that winter was not surprised at the ease and grace which she displayed in be- ing able to lay down, without a murmur, one line of work and to take up another so totally different. Did she lose her interest in life or [3"] CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH in people ? Did she sit with folded hands and consider that at last life was to be one long vacation ? Far from it. Her letters that win- ter are full of her interests, the people she saw, the new friendships formed, the old ones made more fast because she now had more time to conscientiously give them, her ever broadening outlook on life, her deep interest in her girls, many of whom wrote her of their life-secrets, joys, ambitions, loves. Those who were mar- ried while she was still strong enough to write, will, I am sure, treasure always the words sent to them at that time. I am confident she let them look into the depths of her great, lov- ing heart as she told them of her own happy marriage." Mrs. Stearns once wrote to one of her chil- dren, "It grieves me that I was able to do so little to keep your father in the minds of you children, and I trust that the letters which you will have later will help you to appreciate his character, which was above all deeply reli- gious." With this in mind, Mrs. Noble's next words show how different was the fact ! "We, her children, heard his name so often from her lips that it seemed almost as if he still [ 323 ] LIFE ALONE li\cd. To those of us who wefe too young, \\lu-n he died, to remember him, she was always painting a faithful likeness. His hopes and his ambitions for his children were t stantly put before us, his views of life, his thoughts of heaven; bits from his K-ttrrs were read to us, letters that he had written to his older children were given to us to read, 'that you may see how he would have writtrii to you, had he lived longer or you been ohi "After her winter in Amherst, a visit with her sister at Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, others with her sons in Andover Alfred was now married and Lakewood, she again went for the summer to Metallak. She had grown to love it dearly. The mountain air agreed with her. She gained in strength. "Many of her own family and friends came there for a part of the summer, some of her girls found their way up there, and, surrounded by her ever dear young people, she spent some of the happiest, most restful days of her life. I suppose it must have been the atmosphere in which she lived for so many years that kept her so young at heart. There was no time when she did not enter with zest into our games and [324] CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH sports, not only giving her loving interest, but her presence, often, indeed, entering with the rest into the fun whenever she was physically able. Many will remember one summer in Amherst, when, as usual, her house was filled with boys and girls, and she went, reluctantly indeed, to seek a much needed rest in the Adirondacks. We expected her to be gone at least two weeks, and though we missed her sorely, we rejoiced to think that she was having a happy and helpful change. To our great sur- prise she returned at the end of one week, with the rather lame excuse, given with an apologetic smile, that she missed her young people too much. She would be much happier at home with them, and they would give her all the rest and change she needed. "Again, another summer, another rest had been planned for her. Her trunks and bags were packed. She was to leave for Boston the next morning, early. When morning came, she appeared at the breakfast table, smiling and triumphant! With a glance out of the window, she said, ' I could n't possibly start out in such a rain as this ! ' The trip was given up, not postponed. I IFE ALONE "Writing from Metallak in the summer of 1901, she says, 'I have bem iruitod to goon a picnic this afternoon. We are going to a place not far from the old camp, across the lake, to have our supper there, and come home late in die evening. I shall enjoy this very much, and shall feel as young as any of the party. It is thought quite strange that at my age I can enjoy these excursions so murh. Perhaps it is because I have kept up the habit of going with my girls, but more likely because of my intense love for nature.' And this after she had begun to fail physically, and looked so thin and frail. "Once she said to me, 'When the time comes for me to die, I shall be ready to go,' and then she added, and her whole face lighted with a wonderful glow, 'but oh, I love life!' In an- other letter speaking of old age, she writes, *How we cling to life! Why is life here de- sirable when . . . dear ones are waiting for us?' And again, 'If we were living as God meant us to live, life here would be full of interest, and we should not be longing to get away from it." She felt that [326] CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH "... age is opportunity, no less than youth itself, " Though in another dress. " For when the evening twilight fades away, "The stars come out, invisible by day." " She never liked to sing the hymns expressing a morbid desire to leave this life for a paradise of rest. Those who knew her well, feel that that was really the cornerstone of her character. Life! truly did she love it, its opportunities, its many spheres for work, its interests, people to be helped, uplifted, broadened ; in her school young characters to form. "The plans for her coming west were now completed. In answer to my letter, in which I suggested meeting her in Chicago, she wrote, 'Why, my dear child, I am not a silly, selfish woman who must be cared for like a baby, and petted and entertained like a small child ! So be careful not to do too much for me, else I shall be running back east for fear of having my character ruined ! ' "Oh, the sweet joy of that year, from Octo- ber first, 1901, to October, 1902, when I was able to pet and spoil her to my heart's content, when it was my delight to see her daily gaining in strength under the warmth and brightness [ 327 ] I IFE ALONE of our Colorado sun, and because of the clear, bracing air. 'I am \i \\ith the place/ she said, 'and would liki t<> t.ikr ;i o.rtage and spend the remainder of my life here'; adding, 'Colorado is so like dear Matheran! Moun- tain air I always love.' In the mornings we took long drives. In the afternoons we v. to see friends, or they came to us, for here, as elsewhere, she had her dear friends, and it was strange, though perhaps not so strange after all, that they were mostly younger women and girls who found in her, as her own school girls had done, that same ready interest in them and their affairs. "In the evenings there were concerts, lec- tures, panics, or the quiet hours at home, when we could have music, or she would read to my husband and myself. What a tremendous reader she always was! How she found time to read the daily papers, her special magazines, the Outlook, World's Work> and her many religious papers ! She had her hobbies always. . . . Her interest in missions never waned. [At one rime she even tried to sell her diamond engagement ring to give more money to mis- sions!] During the last years she followed [328] CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH the work of a converted Catholic, Father O'Connor of New York, and also that of a converted Jew. Her interest in the great ques- tions of the day increased rather than de- creased. Her correspondence was very heavy. We, her children, know how faithful she was in writing us, and how she enjoyed our letters in return. Then the letters from her dear girls. How she regretted that she had n't more time to write to them all ! I can see her now coming into my room, an open letter in her hand, to announce to me that one had a small son, or that another was to be married, or that still a third had lost her father or mother, and then the tone of deep tenderness with which she would say, * Poor girl ! I must write her at once/ With all these interests she found time every day to be with her little grandson, who at the time of her coming was only four months old. I rejoice to recall the picture they made, he sitting in her lap when later in the winter he had learned, through her careful instruc- tion, to notice the birds and flowers, pictures, and even the school children passing by on the street. "I shall never forget the surprise of my [ 329 ] 1 IKE ALONE friends when I announced that mother was to accompany my husband and myself to the I 1 Paso ball, the greatest social event of the year in Colorado Springs. It never occurred to her that it was strange. She was well enough to bear the excitement, and she wanted to go. She wanted to make new friends, to see our little world. Had she forgotten the many, many times in Amherst when she had been patroness at the promenades and cotillions ? She went to the ball, and enjoyed every minute ! I seated her beside a woman who, I knew, would tell her all about every one there. Often during the evening I came up to her and said, 'Are you tired, mother? Do you want to go home ?' She always answered in the negative, followed by an assurance that she was thor- oughly enjoying the evening. " At half-past two in the morning we took her home, tired but happy, with her circle of friends increased. I could write forever on the joys of that year, how I learned to love anew the strong and splendid elements in her charac- ter, how I never failed to find her interested in the smallest details of my daily life, how she grew always stronger in our glorious climate, [ 330 ] CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH how she entered with her usual zest into the life of the church, going often twice on Sun- day, how in the summer of 1902, when a sum- mer school was started in the Garden of the Gods, fully five miles from here, she went once, sometimes twice a day to attend lectures, as- suring me that she gained as much good from the nearness to nature in that wonderful spot, as from the lectures themselves. "Then came the separation. The other children claimed her and I had to let her go. A hard, trying trip east, consisting of numer- ous delays and slight accidents, hastened to undo all the good she had gained by her year in Colorado. Her winter in Andover [where Alfred was now Principal of Phillips Acad- emy], and the next winter in Lakewood, were in one way a great disappointment to her, for she failed rather than gained in strength. The climate suited her in one place no better than the other. A summer at Metallak, in between these two visits, helped somewhat to restore her. "In Lakewood during the winter of 1903-04 she had several serious illnesses from which we feared she might not recover, for the heart [ 33 1 1 LIFE ALONE trouMr, \\hu-h had been present for several years, was irun.iMi^ in s t \< rity. From each attack, however, slu ralluil in a marvellous manner so that she was able to enjoy her books, her letters and her friends. "In May, 1904, we began to discuss tlu- subject of mother's again coming to her be- loved Colorado. Once she said to me, ' I would ask for nothing more than to spend my last days in Colorado and die there.' At it seemed as if she never could bear the long journey. But when her sister said that if she would only get strong enough, she herself would bring her, the news acted like a powerful tonic. Though she was far from being well, she gained enough so that the journey was undertaken, and in June they came. Oh, how glad she was to get here! How glad we were to have her! When I said to her, 'Now you shall never move again, mother,' she seemed to feel a great peace. She gained slowly at first, but she gained. She had a doctor who was always, she said, 'like one of my boys.' She had a loyal and devoted nurse, who for seven months gave her the best of care. Soon she was able to sit up in her room, then, to go [33*1 CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH down stairs, though at first she was carried both ways. Whole hours of every day she spent out in her glorious sunshine. There, seated in a comfortable wheeled chair, she spent much time in reading over the letters her husband had written to her when she was in Paris, and business kept him in India. She said she lived over again those happy days. She was able to see her friends, to take some of her meals, at least, with the family, and she enjoyed a number of automobile rides." On the twenty-fifth of July, 1904, Mrs. Stearns was seventy years old. As a delightful surprise, she had many letters from friends all over the world. "The day before Christmas, she went with me to town, to do a little shopping. She did so enjoy seeing the crowds, feeling the Christmas spirit. On Christmas day itself, she came down to dinner, and looked so well that I dared to hope she might be spared to us for many years yet. After dinner came the tree. I know she enjoyed it, and her many presents, as much as did her three-year-old grandson. Many of her girls and friends contributed to the * friendship calendar * which her sister sent [ 333 ] LIFE ALONE her, and they will be glad to know that she did not wait to read each quotation as the days came, but read them all that very hour, and again, a few days later, and was happy in tiu knowledge that so many had thought of her. It was such a joy to see mother's plea sun m her Christmas! "Many times when I have had card-parties or receptions here, some of my friends would find their way up to her room. " I remember one such occasion vividly. She was dressed, and ready for her visitors. When they came, she must get up from her easy chair, and, with that sweet, courteous grace so characteristic of her, say to one of them, 4 Won't you take this chair ? ' It seemed as if it must be a gathering of her own, much- loved school girls. "Always in the afternoon she would spend an hour at least with her grandson, reading to him or entering into his little games, and though she slept in the afternoon, she wanted the nurse to open her door and have her dressed by five, for that was the time when, fresh and rosy from his bath, he would come to his 'dear gran'ma.' [ 334 ] CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH "When, at the very last, she grew suddenly worse, and had, once more, to take to her bed, she never lost her energy of mind, nor her in- terest in the affairs of the day. She loved life to the end. While waiting for her breakfast, she would read in the paragraph Bible, and then the daily paper. Only the last morning before she died, she said as I handed her the paper, 'Read me the headlines. I am too tired to read to-day.' And when I read her about the riots and uprisings in Russia, she said, ' Poor Czar ! I am afraid he will never live through it ! ' "She knew she was going to die, but we could not believe her. We hoped until the end. While she did not leave any last messages, she spoke of many of her loved ones, and she gave reasons why she felt so happy about us all. Her very last act was characteristic, for it was always she who did for others, and seldom that we could find the opportunity to do for her. "It was the twenty-fourth of January, 1905. She had seemed better, and the doctor thought she might pull through the night, and rally from this attack of heart-failure, as from so many others. He roused her from sleep to give her some strong stimulant, but before he could [ 335 J LIFE ALONE put his arm around her to raise her , she had, with wonderful energy, lifted herself. He said, 'You are too quick, Mrs. Stearns. You should have waited for me.' His only answer was a sweet smile and she was gone! She, too, had 'penetrated the veil which hides the loved ones from our view.' ' Mrs. Noble brought her body back to Am- herst, Mrs. Stearns's son, Alfred, meeting them at Chicago. Two descriptions of the funeral, sent to Miss Kittredge, who was prevented by illness from being there, follow, the first by Mrs. Marshall, the second by a nephew, Cecil Bancroft. "January 28, 1905. "Saturday morning we went early to the church, and spent the entire morning arranging the beautiful flowers which were sent by dear Mrs. Stearns's many friends. I can't tell you what a comfort it was to be there, and do the last small service for her whom we all loved and reverenced so deeply. We felt we were only a small delegation from the entire number of her girls who were thinking of her with such [336] CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH sad and glad hearts, sad for our loss, glad for her great gain. "The church looked beautiful, with a large wreath of cream roses and violets over Mr. Stearns's memorial tablet, and a wreath of pink roses and lilies-of-the-valley over Presi- dent Stearns's tablet. "The casket was covered with bunches and sprays of lovely violets. Across the centre lay a few stalks of Easter lilies (the flower of the resurrection). At the foot of the casket lay Mr. Tucker's beautiful wreath of bronze-col- oured leaves, with a few violets to give a touch of sweetness. . . . She was lying beneath a cover of violets, and even the physical part of death was robbed of its sting. . . . "We expected to be overcome by grief, but for my part I thought only of the glad reunion above with her precious husband and children, and somehow through all the service the image came to me as she sat among the girls during Bible class hour with her own well-worn Bible in her hands. She was a blessed woman!" "I found two of her girls in charge of the flowers at the church, which they had arranged [ 337 ] LIFE ALONE very tastefully. . . . There were many beau- tiful wn-aths, and roses, and carh.in..n . and much smilax. The service advertised for twelve was not begun till 12:30, as the train from Boston was fifty minutes late. The or- ganist played for us while we waited, ' 1 ki that my Redeemer liw-th,' HiimKTs Mes- siah, I think one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words, Handel's Largo, and a sweet and beautiful piece I cannot now recall. The other music consisted of two unaccompanied male quartettes, 'Peace, perfect peace* and 'Abide with me/ and the reading (very effect- ive, by President Harris) of 'For all the saints who from their labours rest.' He also made a very beautiful and comforting prayer. The village pastor read scripture, as did also Dr. Preserved Smith. . . . " You would have been touched to see the little group of Convent girls sitting together behind the relatives and intimate friends. . . . "We left the church at about 1 140 for the cemetery. . . . Except for the cold, the wea- ther was perfect, a cloudless sky, the earth all pure white, the beautiful hills encircling the town, and everywhere visible because of the [338] CLOSING OF THE SCHOOL, AND DEATH leafless trees. . . . About twenty went to the cemetery where President Harris gave the brief commitment service." And then we put her away, all repeating the Lord's Prayer, those of us who could, and she was at rest beside her husband, from whom she had for over thirty years been separated. After all, the events of Mrs. Stearns's life hardly seem to count. The greater part of it was spent in quiet New England, a round of daily tasks which she did not find humdrum, of annoying details over which she did not worry. Though her children had been carefully brought up, and her life work ended fortu- nately, her personality was her supreme suc- cess. She had lived a full-orbed life, as a wife, as a mother, as a teacher, as a child of God, and was at last " earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected." It is said that on the day of Henry Thoreau's funeral, while his friends were quietly sitting at supper, Mr. Channing suddenly leaped [ 339 ] I IFE ALONE up from the table as he saw a brilliant after- glow illuminate the eastern clouds, exclaim- ing, " No, no, he is not dead ! ... He is not dead ! He lives in every trembling leaf and blade of grass ! In the glory of the sky and the beauty of earth which he so much loved!" Even so Mrs. Stearns lives in our hearts, and by the "power of a beautiful contagion" will continue to live as long as ideals exist, or aspiration is reality. [ 340 ] APPENDIX Appendix A Dates Mary Emmeline Kittredge, born, July 25, 1834* Mary Emmeline Kittredge, married, Aug. 24, 1859 Mary Emmeline Kittredge Stearns left America for India, Sept. 28, 1859 Wm. Kittredge Stearns, born in Bombay, May 18, 1860 Mr. and Mrs. Stearns visited America, 1862 Frazar A. Stearns, died, March 14, 1862 Harold Stearns, born in Bombay, May 31, 1863 Arthur French Stearns, born in Bombay, July 30, 1864 Mr. and Mrs. Stearns went to Paris, 1865 Mrs. Faithfull, died, June, 1865 Ethel Stearns, born in Paris, Oct. n, 1865 Mr. and Mrs. Stearns came to America, Nov., 1866 Mr. and Mrs. Stearns returned to Bombay, Jan., 1867 Mr. and Mrs. Stearns left Bombay for America, April 20, 1868 Annie Kirby Stearns, born in Orange, Nov. 6, 1868 Mr. Stearns in Bombay, Jan.-April, 1869 Captain Timothy Kittredge, died, Feb. 10, 1870 Mr. Stearns visited England, J u ty *$7 Mrs. Timothy Kittredge, died, Aug. 28, 1870 College Church corner-stone laid, Sept. 22, 1870 Mr. and Mrs. Stearns visited Florida, March, 1871 * The date of the birth of Mrs. Stearns, as well as of Mr. Stearns, is given as 1835 on their gravestones in the old West Cemetery at Am- herst. They were both born in 1834. [ 343 ] APPENDIX Alfred Ernest Stearns, born in Orange, June 6, 1871 Mr. and Mrs. Stearns visited London, Sept. -Oct., 1871 Mab< I KimriliM- Strums, '" in Orange, Dec. 24, 1872 Mr. Stearns visited England, Nov., i873-Jan.,i8;4 Mi Stearns, died, May 21, 1874 President Stearns, ditd, June 8, 1876 George Kinrcdgc, dud, March 6, 1877 Mrs. Stearns moved into the President's House, Aug., 1877 Mrs. Steams's school opened, Sept., 1877 William Kittredge Stearns, ditd in Colorado Springs, May 12, 1881 Ethel Stearns, ditd in Amhcrst, Oct. 15, 1882 Annie Kirby Stearns, died in Amherst, March 4, 1885 Harold Stearns, ditd in Idaho Springs, July 4, 1890 Mrs. Stearns moved from President's House, 1891 Dr. Charles Kittredge, died, 1896 Mrs. Bancroft, ditd, 1898 Mrs. Stearns gave up the school, June, 1900 Mary Emmeline Kittredge Stearns, died, Jan. 24, 1905 [344] Appendix B AFTER the death of Mrs. Stearns her girls wished to have a memorial which would not be displeasing to Mrs. Stearns herself. Among many things discussed was a window in the College Church. But we knew she would pre- fer that the money collected in her memory should accomplish some real good. We felt that if we could procure enough to found a scholarship in an Indian school, it would please her best. Five hundred dollars was raised among the teachers and girls of her school, chiefly owing to the exertions of Mrs. (Sophie Hall) Marshall, and was sent in 1906 to Ahmed- nagar, India, a mission in which her interest had already been established. For her girls who founded the scholarship, I insert a picture of Mathura Dhondiba, as well as the following short account of her. This letter was received from the Rev. R. A. Hume, D. D., of the American Marathi Mis- sion, in regard to Mathura, who is being edu- cated by the Mary E. Stearns Memorial Fund. [345] APPENDIX Tin- p.iru in single quotation marks are taken from a lettt n by Dr. Hume two years previously to the founders of the scholarship. "AMERICAN MARATHI MISSION, 44 Ahmcdnagar Districts, Nov. 23, 1908. "DEAR Miss TODD: Mrs. Hume and I are touring in the villages. Just now we are tenting in a beautiful mango-grove in tin \il- lage in which Mathura Dhondiba Salve has her home. . . . She now sits before my wife and myself. The Girls' School in Ahmednagar has a month's vacation. So she is now at home. "Mathura has for a year been studying in the fourth Marathi and the first English standards. At the end of the year she was pro- moted into the fifth Marathi and second English standards. In her class there v, twenty-five girls. In order of merit she stood eighth. This shows that she is bright. 'This school has two departments, a Vernacular Department in which the girls study only Marathi, and an Anglo-Vernacular Depart- ment, in which they study English as well as Marathi. ... At present the hours of that department are from 7 A. M. till 12:30 P. M. [346] Matbura Dbondiba Salve APPENDIX In the afternoon the girls of that department have sewing, drawing, musical drill, etc. The subjects studied are the ordinary ones in any school. English is studied very much as French or German is studied in America. In addition to the study of books, attention is paid to using English in speech.' "Hitherto she has lived in the Vernacular section of the Girls' School. Hereafter, she and her sister Miriam will live in the Anglo- Vernacular section. . . . " She is a modest, gentle girl. 'Mathura has good ability and good character. So there is every prospect that she will become a fine woman. It will probably take her seven years [written in 1906] to finish her studies if she studies as far as the requirements for admis- sion to college. Comparatively few Indian girls have yet gone to college. If Mathura should prove worthy and promising, as now appears probable, perhaps she might be thought worthy of being helped to gain a college education. If you should be willing, by and by, to help her to that, it might be that you have fitted a fine Indian girl for a wide sphere of usefulness.' " She and her parents, all of whom are now [347] APPENDIX seated in front of our small tent (which is ten feet square), send their hearty thanks to tin- young ladies who founded the scholarship which gives her an education. Her father is pastor of the church in Jamgaon fifteen miles west of Ahmednagar City in tht District. - He is a steady, faithful minister, with a very large family, viz., eight daughters and two sons. ' Her older sisters have all had a good education. Two of them became teachers, one a capable kindergartner.' Of the eight daughters four are married. Of the two sons one is a drawing teacher in a mission school. But you can imagine how hard it is for the father, whose pay is $5 a month, to support four girls and one boy. "*Her mother, Pritabai (the meaning of whose name is Mrs. Love), is a very nice wo- man. She has trained all her daughters well, and is very anxious for their advancement in good things.' " Mrs. Hume joins me in thanks to the young ladies of the Stearns Scholarship circle, and with kind regards to your parents and yourself, I am, " Sincerely yours, "R. A. HUME." [348] APPENDIX In spite of some repetition, I add another letter, the first ever sent us by Mathura herself, and received on the eighth of October, after the book is in press. AHMEDNAGAR, August, 1909. DEAR MADAM, Many salaams to you. I am in the Marathi Vth and English 1st standard. My studies are going on well. Our school begins at 7 A. M. and is closed at 12 P. M. Girls live in separate houses according to classes: Girls in the Vth standard live in one house and so on. We all live very friendly with one another. I have eight sisters and two brothers. Out of eight four are married, and they are living comfortably; the other four are studying in schools. The elder brother is a school- master and the younger one is in the English IVth stand- ard. My father is a village -pastor. He goes to a village daily to preach the word of God. The name of our village is "Jamgaon," means the village of guavas; but the fact is there is not a single guava-tree. There is a very old palace in this village. It is in good order. It has four stories. It is all built of pure white marble stone. The carving on the walls is very interesting and worth-seeing. In one room the walls are such that if you touch them your hand sticks to them. In another room three old rupees (silver coins). When any one brings out some of them they immediately turn into coals. It is a wonder. Nobody knows why it happens; but there is the fact. In front of this palace there is a well. Through this well there is, it is said, an under- ground passage up to the great Mahal of Sultana Chand- bibi (the celebrated queen of Ahmednagar). There is [ 349 ] APPENDIX great scarcity of water in this village of Jamgaon obliged to bring water daily from a distance of more than two miles, though tin < ,. .. mmcnt has dug a grrat tank near the village. However, there is a great number of mango and other fruit tree*. it I go home for vacation I tell to Hindu children many stories from the Hiblr, and try to make them see the love of God and Jesus Christ. I thank you for the kind interest you take in me, a poor girl and also for the money you send for me. I pray God my 1 1 ather to blest you abundantly and keep you safe from all danger*. Please do not forget to pray for me. Your humble daughter, MATHURA DHONDIBA . After the money had been sent to India, we all realized that we must have some memorial nearer home as well. We decided on a small pamphlet, which should contain many tt monials from the friends of Mrs. Stearns, and a short sketch of her life. I do not apologize for reversing the order ! The lesson of her life is too apparent. But for the benefit of her pu- pils who still expect what, three years ago, we decided to have, I have inserted a few quota- tions from letters sent to Mrs. Stearns's sister and daughter after her death. Appreciations from some of the teachers in her school follow the quotations. [350] APPENDIX "Dear Mrs. Stearns, your beloved mother, is dead. . . . "It is sad that earth has been robbed of such a life, for there are few like her. She was an angel while here." "We can never forget her, and the world seems different and lacking without her." "I have missed her so, thinking of her each time I looked from my windows" toward her Amherst home. "The beauty of her giving was that she al- ways made you see that she was really getting pleasure out of pleasing you." "When we look at life from her standpoint, what a wonderful thing it is to live!" "I love to think of your mother and the beautiful example she set for all her girls, giving to each some personal touch which will last to the end of their lives." "I have a deep feeling of personal loss, too, . . . for no one could have lived with her and not have loved her. She was .the wisest, bravest and best woman I ever knew." "Those three years under her care were the turning point of my life." "You know only too well all she did for me, [351 ] APPENDIX and how I prize everything I can remember about her." "It seems a personal loss to me." "I he kindly interest she had in me and her good advice were just what I needed." " I have the sweetest memories of your dear mother and her loving counsels to me, and of the goodness and truth she taught and lived." " If we could only say how much we loved her!" "With all my faults, I don't remember any- thing but the most sympathetic and affection- ate consideration from her. Of course such a regard from her drew or gave me the deepest love for her." " Your dear mother was like a mother to us all." "Your sweet mother was such a saint." "My boys are at school ... as nearly like your dear mother's school as any we could find for boys." "... Loving appreciation of what her brave, beautiful character did for me. I count her influence as one of the strongest in my life, and her heroism and trust in God will make all my life easier." [352] APPENDIX "When I get blue and despondent and feel that I don't amount to much after all, it does me good to think of her plucky fight, and makes me ashamed to be weak-minded." "Mrs. Stearns was the finest and grandest example of Christian womanhood I have ever known. . . . Her helpful talks to us made an indelible impression upon my mind. . . . No one could come in contact with her without being the better for it." "Has she not been a second mother to me?" " A great many of us have lost the best friend we have ever had." "That dear face with God's seal set upon it. My heart is with you, ... for I know what you have lost. I have loved her for years and years. ... I think of her happiness in being with her dear husband and children, and I rejoice with her." "I am so happy and grateful that she is having the peace she so richly deserves. . . . If any human being was prepared for eternal life it is the dear one who has gone, who so bravely worked for you all here." [ 353 ] Ai'i-i NDI\ 44 Home School for Girls, it is a name in frequent use, but rarely so truly representing the character of the school as it did that Mrs. Stearns. Many are the family schools, where all are gathered under one roof, but rare is it to find a true home where the mothi- present. Mrs. Stearns had the true moth- heart; a heart large enough to reach out be- yond her own seven children, embrace every pupil who came within the home, and make of her a daughter. To you, dear girls, for whom this little memorial is prepared, I do not need to enlarge upon this thought. You all recall the tender care, the sympathetic ear, the 4 mother ' to whom you could ever go, and in the privacy of her room gain the comfort and help and strength that met your need. The burden upon her heart, to which she constantly gave expression when talking with her teach- ers, was the longing to help each girl to a more useful, more Christ-like life; as if you were her own daughters, she earnestly sought for this. It is a fitting tribute you have paid to her memory in making provision that her loved work may never cease, by establishing a perma- nent fund for the Christian training of some [35+] APPENDIX child in India, that happy home of her early married life. " She may not move among us again, her lips may not speak the words we long to hear, but among the memories of each of us, teacher as well as pupil, is a loving mother who cannot fail to influence our lives to the very end. "S. C. S." [ 355 1 APPENDIX "One dear and lovely view in our valley is this. Across the meadows and the river, beyond the Hadley spires when the afternoon sun is shining on the Chapel tower, and College Hill stands out in outlines both picturesque and classic, the eye is pleased with seeing, and mem- ories and associations come thronging. To me, with this vision, one strong personality stands out by itself, for it was no slight privilege to live with a large-minded, generous woman for fourteen years. "Mrs. Stearns was born in the White Moun- tain country and loved to recall the glorious view all the way from her own home to the Mont Vernon village. She has told me about her mother, how she was really the one to start the Academy, how she gathered the neigh- bours' children with her own, and taught them to sing, and when nature study had not even the name, interested the children in flowers and minerals. This mother, amid the cares and duties of a hill farm, weaving into childish minds the interests pertaining to a wider and more beautiful life, was a fair prototype of her oldest daughter. In this daughter were the basal elements of truth and high principle, firm [356] APPENDIX as the rocks of the Granite State. Rooted in such a character and flowering out of it were the graces of gentleness and courtesy that so drew even the stranger. It would be a long procession if all those were to file past, who in either joy or sorrow were wont to pour out their hearts to that kind friend who never refused a listening ear. "The house might be very quiet when the girls were all out, but never lonesome as long as she was there. It is to such that Ruskin would have allotted a large plot in Queen's Gardens. A fragrance like roses and all sweet herbs permeates her memory. "A. M. P." 357 ] APPENDIX "My acquaintance with Mrs. Stearns began in 1887 when I became a teacher in her school. "As my duties there required my attend- ance for only a few hours in the morning when Mis. Stearns was particularly engaged, I had little opportunity of seeing her, but , . . no one could be brought in contact with Mrs. Stearns in the most casual way without izing her high standard of womanhood. Her quiet strength, her pure child-like spirit, and the perfect openness of her mind, were charac- teristics too manifest to be overlooked. I never knew one so able intellectually who made less display of her gifts, or who thought it less necessary to maintain the dignity of her posi- tion. This was, indeed, unnecessary, as her very character won for her, without effort, the honourable place she held in the estimation of all who knew her. Her sincere religious life was also most apparent. "The devoted attachment of her pupils testifies more strongly than can any words of mine to the hold she had upon them. In all their interests, physical, mental and spiritual, she watched over them with a wise and loving mother's care, and after they had gone out to [ 358 ] ' APPENDIX take their places in the world, they came back from time to time to tell her of their loving gratitude for all her care. "One in particular I have in mind, who was with Mrs. Stearns as a pupil for many years. . . . Year after year she returned to this school home, and after its existence as a school had ceased, she made frequent pilgrimages to the town, that she might be near the scenes of those happy years. "The influence of such a life as Mrs. Stearns lived in the presence of her pupils, leading them by word and example to seek and love the better way, can never be over estimated. "A. L. W. W." [ 359 ] APPENDIX "It was my privilege to spend four. happy years in Mrs. Steai l as a teacher of German. ... It was a revelation to me to see how Mrs. Stearns, as head of the school, was at the same time the heart and soul of the school. Truly, hers was a home school, for as a mother she cherished and cared for every scholar, treating all alike, showing no prefer- ence, and with loving consideration caring tor the intellectual and spiritual welfare of each and every one. Her life centred in the school, although her outside interests and activities were many. Broad-minded, with a mind keen, and judgment fair and just, never suspecting evil of any one until the evil was proven, she was honoured, admired and beloved by all with whom she came in contact. "Having been brought up in Germany, and taught in schools where only rigid and strict discipline rules, and where the teachers and scholars move, as it were, on different planes, it was, as I have said, a revelation to see her motherly and fair-minded discipline in the treatment of her scholars and those under her. "To me personally she was like a mother. A stranger in this country and having no other [360] APPENDIX home on this side of the water, she took me into the very narrowest circles of her home and bade me welcome, giving me such a wel- come as only Mrs. Stearns, with her great heart, could give. I shall never forget those happy hours when, freed from duties and cares of school life, she gave herself to the home life and her books. Those hours spent together in vacation time, in the evening in her library, when she would relate experiences and stories from her past life, so rich and full of interest, those hours in which I came to learn and know her character, so broad, so deep and Christian, those hours I shall never forget, and I shall ever be happy that it was my lot to come under the influence and power of such a grand, noble and self-sacrificing life as was that of Mrs. Stearns. H. B. K." "... She was evidently not merely an in- structor but also a friend and often mother. The whole atmosphere of her home was filled with the personality of a rarely beautiful and serenely strong character. J. C. C." [361 ] APPENDIX " I hat \\hich appealed to me most in Mrs. Stearns \\.ts lu r uoiulnl'iil womanliness, - progressive in i-vi-rything that it-mini her ideal in womanhood, yet const io\\anl whatever seemed to overstep that boundary line. With a real mother-love and sympathy she saw the good, and sough r develop the best, in every one of her girls. More than once, in speaking of certain ones, she has said, 'Miss may not excel as a scholar, but she has character, and will make a fine woman.' The true woman to her was more than the scholar. "So, during my teaching, her faith and confi- dence were a great inspiration. With peculiar insight she seemed to understand for what one was striving, and was always ready with words of encouragement and praise. To work for her was a privilege and a pleasure. The memory of such a life is a precious legacy. "L.M.B." [362] Lfi 2317 A I 111 1 IKK \R\ \ M\ I KM \\ 01 ( U MnKM \ S.llll.l K.lllMI.I I Mis KOOK is 1)1 I ON I III I \s I ]>\TE si \\ll'| I) K| I o\\ 000902032 2