Julia Ward Howe

“ Howe used to say of me: "Mrs. Howe is not a great reader, but she always studies."
Albeit my intellectual pursuits have always been such as to task my mind, I cannot boast that I have acquired much in the way of technical erudition. I have only drawn from history and philosophy some understanding of human life, some lessons in the value of thought for thought's sake, and, above all, a sense of the dignity of character above every other dignity. Goethe chose well for his motto the words:—
"Die Zeit ist mein Vermächtniss, mein Acker ist die Zeit." "Time is my inheritance; time is my estate." ”

“ We returned to the city very slowly, of necessity, for the troops nearly filled the road. My dear minister was in the carriage with me, as were several other friends. To beguile the rather tedious drive, we sang from time to time snatches of the army songs so popular at that time, concluding, I think, with
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground;
His soul is marching on."
The soldiers seemed to like this, and answered back, "Good for you!" Mr. Clarke said, "Mrs. Howe, why do you not write some good words for [p. 275] that stirring tune?" ”

“ Oh, to have been in Faneuil Hall on that memorable day when the pentecostal flame first visited him; when he leaped to the platform, all untrained for such an encounter, and his eloquent soul uttered itself in protest against a low and sordid acquiescence in the claims of oppression and tyranny! In that hour he was sealed as an apostle of the higher law, to whose advocacy he sacrificed his professional and social interests. The low-browed, chain-bound slave had now the best orator in America to plead his cause. ”

“ In an unexpected hour a new light came to me, showing me a world of thought and of character quite beyond the limits within which I had hitherto been content to abide. The new domain now made clear to me was that of true womanhood,—woman no longer in her ancillary relation to her opposite, man, but in her direct relation to the divine plan and purpose, as a free agent, fully sharing with man every human right and every human responsibility. ”

“ Among the manifold interests which now opened up before me, the cause of woman suffrage was for a time predominant. The novelty of the topic in the mind of the general public brought together large audiences in Boston and in the neighboring towns. Lucy Stone's fervent zeal, always guided by her faultless feeling of propriety, the earnest pleading of her husband, the brilliant eloquence and personal magnetism of Mary A. Livermore,—all these things combined to give to our platform a novel and sustained attraction. ”

“ I have been the chosen poet of several high festivals, to wit, the celebration of Bryant's sixtieth birthday, the commemoration of the centenary of his birth, and the unveiling of the statue of Columbus in Central Park, New York, in the Columbian year, so called. I have been the founder of a club of young girls, which has exercised a salutary influence upon the growing womanhood of my adopted city, and has won for itself an honorable place in the community, serving also as a model for similar associations in other cities. ”

“ The rapture of this new freedom, of this enlarged brotherhood, which made all men akin to the Divine Father of all, every religion, however ignorant, the expression of a sincere and availing worship, might well produce in a neophyte an exhilaration bordering upon ecstasy. The exclusive doctrine which had made Christianity, and special forms of it, the only way of spiritual redemption, now appeared to me to commend itself as little to human reason as to human affection. ”

“ He demanded for the blind an education which would render them self-supporting; for the idiot, the training of his poor and maimed capabilities; for the insane and the criminal, the watchful and redemptive tutelage of society. In the world as he would have had it, there should have been neither paupers nor outcasts. He did all that one man could do to advance the coming of this millennial consummation.
My husband, Dr. Howe, was my senior by nearly a score of years. ”

“ To me the experience was valuable in that I found myself brought nearer in sympathy to the general public, and helped to a better understanding of its needs and demands.
It was in the days now spoken of that I first saw Edwin Booth. Dr. Howe and I betook ourselves to the Boston Theatre one rainy evening, expecting to see nothing more than an ordinary performance. The play was "Richelieu," and we had seen but little of Mr. Booth's part in it before we turned to each other and said, "This is the real thing." In every word, in every gesture, the touch of genius made itself felt. ”

“ To attain instantaneous communication with our friends across oceans and through every continent; to command locomotion whose swiftness changes the relations of space and time; to steal from Nature her deepest secrets, and to make disease itself the minister of cure; to compel the sun to keep for us the record of scenes and faces, of the great shows and pageants of time, of the perishable forms whose charm and beauty deserve to remain in the world's possession,—these are some of the achievements of our nineteenth century. ”

“ To him, as to many, the final emancipation and unification of the human race, the millennium of universal peace and good-will, seemed near at hand. Alas! the great promise brought only a greater failure. The time for its fulfillment had not yet arrived. Freedom could not be attained by striking an attitude, nor secured by the issuing of a document. The prophet could see the plan of the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven, but the fact remained that the city of God must be built by patient day's work. Such builders Europe could not bring to the front. ”

“ I have often in my mind compared society to a vast orchestra, which, properly led, gives forth a heavenly music, and which, ill conducted, utters only harsh and discordant sounds. The true leader of the orchestra has the music in his mind. He can read the intricate scroll which is set up before him; and so the army of melody responds to his tap, and instrument after instrument wakes at his bidding and is silent at his command.
I cannot help thinking of Governor Andrew as such a leader. ”

“ Several of the former captives of Spielberg were living in Milan at this time. Of these I may mention Castiglia and the advocate Borsieri. Two others, Foresti and Albinola, I had often seen in New York, where they lived for many years, beloved and respected. In all of them, a perfectly childish delight in living seemed to make amends for the long and dreary years passed in prison. Every pulse-beat of freedom was a joy to them. Yet the iron had entered deeply into their souls. ”

“ One gentleman in Newport, not desiring to receive the count's visit, and knowing that he would not be safe anywhere in his own house, took refuge in the loft of his barn and drew the ladder up after him.
And yet Adam Gurowski was a true-hearted man, loyal to every good cause and devoted to his few friends. His life continued to the last to be a very checkered one. When the civil war broke out, his disapprobation of men and measures took expression in vehement and indignant protest against what appeared to him a willful mismanagement of public business. ”

“ My eldest brother, Samuel Ward, the fourth of the same name, has been so well known, both in public and in private life, that my reminiscences would not be complete without some special characterization of him. In my childhood he was my ideal and my idol. A handsome youth, quick of wit and tender of heart, brilliant in promise, and with a great and versatile power of work in him, I doubt whether Round Hill School ever turned out a more remarkable pupil. ”

“ Her house had long been a resort of the worthies of the capital. Men of mark and of intelligence gathered about her, regardless of party divisions. No one understood Washington society better than she did, and no one in it was more highly esteemed or less liable to be misrepresented. Mrs. Eames well knew how provoking and tormenting Count Gurowski was apt to be, but she knew, too, the remarkable qualities which went far to redeem his troublesome traits of character. ”

“ As I take account of my long life, I become well aware of its failures. What may I chronicle as its successes? It was a great distinction for me when the foremost philanthropist of the age chose me for his wife. It was a great success for me when, having been born and bred in New York city, I found myself able to enter into the intellectual life of Boston, and to appreciate the "high thinking" of its choice spirits. I have sat at the feet of the masters of literature, art, and [p. 443] science, and have been graciously admitted into their fellowship. ”

“ The club was one in which diversity of opinion sometimes brought individuals into sharp contrast with each other, but her gentle government was able to bring harmony out of discord, and to subdue alike the crudeness of skepticism and the fierceness of intolerance.
Her interest in her father's pupils was unremitting. A friend said to me not long ago, "It was one of the sights of Boston in the days of the Harvard musical concerts to see your Julia's radiant face as she would come into Music Hall, leading a blind pupil by either hand." ”

“ I have been accounted worthy to listen and to speak at the Boston Radical Club and at the Concord School of Philosophy. I have been exalted to [p. 444] occupy the pulpit of my own dear church and that of others, without regard to denominational limits. Lastly and chiefly, I have had the honor of pleading for the slave when he was a slave, of helping to initiate the woman's movement in many States of the Union, and of standing with the illustrious champions of justice and freedom, for woman suffrage, when to do so was a thankless office, involving public ridicule and private avoidance. ”

“ Holmes said to me, in a low tone, "Mrs. Howe, we may almost imagine the angels who announced a certain nativity to be hovering near these remains."
Otto Dresel, beloved as an artist and dreaded as a critic, was an intimate of the Benzon household, and was almost idolized by Mr. Dwight. He had the misfortune to be over-critical, but no less so of himself than of others. He did much to raise the appreciation of music in Boston, possessed as he was with a sense of the dignity and sacredness of the art. ”

“ I recall my first years of life in Boston as nearly touched by the sense of the unresolved discords which existed in its society. My husband was much concerned in some of the changes of front which took place at this time. An ardent friend both of Horace Mann and of Charles Sumner, he shared the educational views of the first and the political convictions of the second. In the year 1845, having been elected to serve on the Boston School Board, Dr. Howe instituted so drastic a research into the condition of the public schools as to draw upon himself much animadversion and some ill-will. ”

“ The Pope of Rome, for centuries the representative and upholder of absolute rule, had stood before the world as the head of the Christianity which liberalizes both institutions and ideas. In Germany the party of progress was triumphant. Europe had trembled with the birth-pangs of freedom. A new and glorious confederacy of states seemed to be promised in the near future. The tyrannies of the earth were surely about to meet their doom. ”

“ My husband's beloved pupil, Laura Bridgman, [p. 371] was seated upon the platform, where a friend interpreted the proceedings to her in the finger language. The music, which was of a high order, was furnished by the pupils of the institution for the blind at South Boston.
The occasion was one never to be forgotten. As I review it after an interval of many years, I find that the impression made upon me at the time does not diminish. I still wonder at the showing of such a solid power of work, such untiring industry, such prophetic foresight and intuition, so grand a trust in human nature. ”

“ Let me say at the very beginning that I esteem this century, now near its close, to have eminently deserved a record among those which have been great landmarks in human history. It has seen the culmination of prophecies, the birth of new hopes, and a marvelous multiplication both of the ideas which promote human happiness and of the resources which enable man to make himself master of the world. Napoleon is said to have forbidden his subordinates to tell him that any order of his was impossible of fulfillment. ”

“ When required to furnish a thesis at the close of his university course, he chose for his theme the proper education of women, and insisted that it ought not to be inferior to that given to men.
I need hardly relate how a most happy marriage in later life made him one of us, nor how this opened the way to the establishment in his house of a school whose girl pupils, in addition to other valuable instruction, enjoyed daily the privilege of listening to his clear and lucid exposition of the facts and laws of his favorite science. ”

“ Among the festivities of old New York, the observance of New Year's Day held an important place. In every house of any pretension, the ladies of the family sat in their drawing-rooms, arrayed in their best dresses, and the gentlemen of their acquaintance made short visits, during which wine and rich cakes were offered them. It was allowable to call as early as ten o'clock in the morning. The visitor sometimes did little more than appear and disappear, hastily muttering something about "the compliments of the season." ”