Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood

“ It is not the man who starts well in the race of whom we make a hero, but he who reaches the goal and ends well. These queer and dirty and disreputable Mormons became the most successful of colonists in their new home beyond the Rockies. ”

“ Holmes, now Professor of Law at Harvard, then a young lawyer, and the author of a book to prove that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare; also some pretty, very agreeable women; but my heart was too heavy to allow me to notice much, and I was too young to be a philosophic observer. My father and I, after his recovery, started off up the Mississippi, that muddy, great, dark river, and I always felt the force of the subsequent witticism when the indignant Yankee answered the assuming Briton, "You could stir the whole of England into the Mississippi without making it a bit muddier." ”

“ Webster as our guest in Keene, and he had asked us to visit him at Marshfield, his famous country-seat on the sea. To proceed thither to see our great hero, accompanied by a brass band, was rather exciting for a girl of thirteen, and to be met by Mrs. Webster in her carriage (all in white, a fine-looking, dark-eyed woman) seemed to me to be very distinguished. My mother and a friend were placed in the seat of honor, and I was asked to mount the box in which Mr. Webster was driving himself. ”

“ Our minds were cultivated more than our hearts.
There was a blue lookout for my dreamy shirkmg of the boundaries of Pennsylvania. Never, however, did so slight a fault lead to so useful a punishment. To go to Mr. Emerson's school, to be a "Boston girl" — even in name — was a vision of majesty. I determmed that I would learn how to study, and after a fashion I did. Female education was at a very low ebb in what were called "Ladies' Schools" in those days. "We learned to be ladies, I hope, for we certainly learned very little else. ”

“ Robert Wilson, a relative of General Stark, fought in the Revolutionary war, and settled down, an impoverished man, in Peterboro, N. H.; but his brave wife, full of good blood, kept up the traditions of her English and Scotch ancestry. The eldest son must be educated — indeed, she educated two sons at Harvard, a feat of extraordinary valor in those days.
Both lived to honor her, and she lived to see them both in Congress, a fact which delighted her much. Her son James, my grandfather, saw the Capitol burned by the British. ”

“ Try on that sacred day to dismiss all thoughts of yourself and your clothes. It is one reason I wish you to be well-dressed so you shall not think of yourself, for I know it is mortifying to a young person to be ill-dressed, but I trust you will rise above clothes. ”

“ He was a strange, romantic outcrop of Irish blood and Puritan surroundings, singularly unlike his prudent, reserved father. As a man of genius is unlike his race and is often misunderstood, my father was misunderstood, and I fear he became unhappy and disappointed. His political idol was Mr. Webster, and when Mr. Webster made the 7th-of-March speech my father's political heart broke.
A good patriot and a fine, unselfish character, always ready to work for any good cause. General James Wilson lived to be eighty-four years old, and died in the house where he had made us all so happy. ”

“ Emerson's School at Boston — Daniel Webster at Marshfield — Visit to Washington — "Tyler Too" — Charles Dickens — Along the Ohio and Down the Mississippi — The Carved Oxen at Nauvoo — Joseph Smith and the Mormons
My recollections of childhood are very vivid, especially of my father, a tall and most picturesque man, with blue eyes and fine curling black hair, with a great laughing mouth full of white teeth and of eloquent voice, and a laugh which filled the whole county of Cheshire; a man who liked to dance and to march, who never heard music but to keep step to it ”

“ There is a great pleasure in new clothes, isn't there? Do you think we attend to clothes quite enough, at Keene ? Here the girls talk and think of them, a great deal. I fear I have spent too much money, nearly one hundred dollars, since I left you, but I think I have got all I need get, for the winter. I am getting on pretty well at Mr. Emerson's, although it is as hard as a galley slave's life. ”

“ Selden had called on her the day before to say that they feared Mary Elizabeth was reading too many novels; that Mr. Tilden, the head of the circulating library, said that the same offending M. E. took out two novels every week, while Lucretia Brown took out Mrs. Chaporee's Letters and The Serious Call; and Mrs. Selden said she thought it very bad for a girl's future to be reading novels all the time. ”

“ Webster's nieces and some other fashionable ladies from New York were there, many of the diplomatic circle, and a number of literary women — Miss Sedgwick, Mrs. Sigourney, of Hartford, our New England poetess, "that woman," as Judge Wayne said, "who will die guiltless of anything but a false quantity." ”

“ The Astor House is very comfortable, and I saw all the fashion walk by. The Astor House parlor seems the centre of fashion. It is a very grand Hotel, and from the ladies who walk by in red velvet I get a picture of the great people of New York.
"Just think, next Tuesday I shall be in Washington, not to see old Tippecanoe, but only "Tyler too." Father is very cross on that subject. ”

“ In those days my father, still a boy himself, and a very boyish boy, was the best hand of us all at snowballing in the winter, teaching us to slide and to skate, and reading aloud to us in the evening the immortal stories of Walter Scott, with a mingled joy and pathos which the author himself would have enjoyed; a kind and loving and generous man, full of genius and eccentricity, who dressed in furs and moccasins in January, when he would go up to the White Mountains to hunt the moose with Anans, an Indian of the St. ”

“ She won't let me make a mistake, her eyes go right through me. I told Mr. Emerson I would rather recite to him or to Miss Monroe. He laughed and said he was glad Lucy was so correct. I think he and she mean to be kind — but oh! duty and pleasure have to be kept seperate. I miss home and Keene very much, but Mrs. P is very kind and gives me rather too good a breakfast. I have to walk up a steep hill, and then go up four flights of stairs, and I suffer a pain in my chest after all that. I trust your tic doloureaux is better.
"Ever your loving⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
"M. E."⁠
_____ ”

“ Emerson impresses me more and more every day. I see that he reads all our characters, and that, severe as he is, he does not mean to make machines of us; he is a real chivalrous gentleman as well, and most respected in Boston.
"I have been suffering again with that pain in the chest, on going upstairs. O, I wish there were no such things as stairs or hills in this world; but I am coming home for the Christmas holidays next week and that will cure me. Good-night, dear Mother.
"M. E."⁠
_____
"Boston, Feb., 184—.⁠ "Dearest Mother, — I had a sad coming to Boston through the snow storm ”

“ M. P. sings as delightfully as ever, and is the belle of all our little parties. We go out to tea often. Father's friends treat me with a great deal of attention, and the Lawrences and Mrs. Page have asked me to tea. I am to see Washington Allston's picture to-morrow.
"Ever your loving⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
"M. E."⁠
_____
"Keene, Dec.⁠ "My darling Daughter, — I hear you look very well in your new blue suit, and I think as you bought it all yourself, and not with my advice, you shall not be scolded for spending so much. ”