Chapter I: COPY in substance, and sometimes verbatim, the account written in (3)

I walked up the room to face eight bearded men, the youngest twenty-two years of age, drawn up in line of battle at the far end. I bowed and said “Good-afternoon,” in taking the seat and table set for me in front of the line. They bowed in silence. I began the attack by disclaiming the idea of “teaching” them, concealing as best I could my consternation at finding men where I had looked for lads. I asked “the privilege of studying with them,” and thanked them for the compliment of the invitation to do this. Then I opened the Bible and delivered a familiar running lecture upon the lesson for the day. Not a question was asked by one of the dumb eight, and not a comment was made at the close of the “exercises” upon what had been said. I went through the miserable form of shaking hands with them all as we separated, and carried home a thoroughly discouraged spirit. By the following Sunday I hit upon the idea of calling upon each student to read a reference text, as it occurred in the course of the lecture, and I took care there should be plenty of them. That was the first crack in the ice. Encouraged by the sound of their own voices, the young fellows put a query or two, and I used these as nails upon which to hang observations not indicated in the “lesson-papers.” Next week there were sixteen in line. Before the first year was out there were forty, and they gave a dramatic entertainment in a neighboring hall, which netted a sum large enough to enlarge the class-room to double the original size. They decorated it with their own hands, and I was with them every evening thus employed.

Still, there was never a syllable to indicate that this was anything but a business venture. I love boys with my whole heart, and I had said this and more in their hearing, eliciting no response.

At the end of the second year, when there were fifty members in the class, one of the eldest of the number removed from Springfield to a distant city. One of the greatest surprises of my life was in the form of a letter I had the week after he had bidden me good-bye as coolly as if he had expected to see me next Sunday as usual.

He began by telling me how often he had wished he could express what those Sunday afternoons had been in his life. He “feared that I might have thought him unresponsive and ungrateful.”

“If indeed you ever troubled yourself to bestow more than a passing thought upon this one of the many to whom you have ministered,” he went on, “I don’t believe you ever noticed that I let nobody else take the seat next to you on the left? I used to go very early to make sure of it. I shall unite with the church here next Sunday. You have a right to know of a purpose, formed weeks ago, in that class-room—the most sacred spot to me on earth.”

He wrote to me of his marriage two years later, then of the coming of his first-born son. About once a year I heard from him, and that he was prospering in business and happy in his home. Ten years ago I had a paper containing a marked obituary-notice bearing his name.

The same story, with variations that do not affect the general purport of the class-history, might be repeated here. I hear of “my boys” from all parts of the world. All are gray-haired now who have not preceded their grateful leader to the Changeless Home.

There were sixty-six of them when I told them, one Sunday afternoon, five years after our first meeting, that Doctor Terhune had accepted a pressing call to a Brooklyn church, and that I must leave them. The news was absolutely unexpected, and a dead silence ensued. Then one fellow, who had been received into the church with ten others of our class, at the preceding communion season, arose in his place:

“Is there anything _we_ could do to keep him—and you?” he asked, huskily. “Has anybody done anything to make your residence here unpleasant? If so”—stammering now, and a defiant scowl gathering upon his handsome face—“Say! can’t we fellows just _clean them out_, and keep you and the Doctor?”

It was impossible not to laugh. It was as impossible to hold back the tears at the odd demonstration of the “boys’” claim to membership in the Church Militant. He may have forgotten the upgushing of the warm water under the ice. I shall never lose the memory.

Nor yet of the farewell reception to which the boys rallied in force, excluding all other guests from the pleasant class-room we had built, and in which I spent some of the happiest hours vouchsafed to me in the city I had called “a cold-storage vault,” before I got under the ice of English reserve and Puritanical self-consciousness—engendered, as I am fain to believe, by the rigid self-examination enjoined by the founders of State and Church. In those rude and strenuous days, self-examination took the place, with tortured, naked souls, of the penances prescribed in the communion they had left to find

“Freedom to worship God,”

and

“A church without a bishop,
A state without a king.”

The class-room was wreathed with flowers; there was music by the boys, and social chat; a collation of their own devising: then the eldest of the band, a married man for years, goodly of form and feature, and with a nature as lovely as his face, arose to make a farewell “presentation address.” He never finished it, although it began bravely enough. The handsome set of brasses he passed over to me were labelled, as he showed me, “FROM YOUR BOYS.”

“You will have another class in your new home,” the speaker broke into the carefully prepared peroration to say, “but please let us always call ourselves, ‘Your Boys!’”

They are that still, and they will be evermore! A finer, more loyal body of young men it would be hard to find in New England, or elsewhere. It has happened so often that I have come to look for it, that, on steamer or train, on the street or in hotel, I am accosted by a middle-aged man—invariably highly respectable in appearance—with—

“I beg your pardon. Let me recall myself to your memory. I belonged to your Bible-class in Springfield.”

If, as usually happens, he adds to his name, “One of your boys”—the ashes are blown away from the embers of long-past acquaintanceship. The talk that ensues invariably emphasizes the pleasing fact that, if there were a black sheep in our fold, he has, up to date, escaped detection.

God bless each and every one of them!

I cannot close the chapter that has to do with our Springfield days, without paying a brief tribute to two who played important parts in the drama of our family life. Both have passed from mortal vision, and I may, therefore, name them freely.

The house built for us by a parishioner in the pleasantest part of the city, was in the immediate neighborhood of the homestead of the late Samuel Bowles, the well-known proprietor of the _Springfield Republican_. The house was now occupied by his widow and family. To the warm friendship that grew up between Mrs. Bowles and myself I owe more than I can trust my pen to express here. From our earliest meeting, the “middle wall of partition” of strangerhood ceased to be to either of us. Hers, as I often reminded her, was the one and only house in the place into which I could drop, between the lights, unannounced, when the humor seized me, and without putting on hat or coat. The ascent of the half-block of space dividing our doors is ever associated in my mind with the gloaming and moonlight, and slipping away from duties to relax thought and tongue, for one calming and sweetening half-hour, in the society of one “who knew.” It was not alone that, as one who had been born, and had lived out her girlhood in the Middle States, her range of ideas and sympathies was not limited by the circle of hills binding Springfield into a close corporation. Her great, warm heart took in the homesick stranger that I was, for many a month after transplantation, and gave me a corner of my very own. She was a safe, as well as an appreciative listener, and gave me many a hint respecting my new environment that wrought out good to me. Her fine sense of humor was another bond that drew us together. The snug sitting-room, looking upon the quiet street, up which the shadows gathered slowly on summer evenings, and where the sleigh-bells jingled shrilly in the early winter twilight, echoed to bursts of laughter better befitting a pair of school-girls than two matrons who were both on the shady side of fifty. I was in the earthly Jerusalem, with my son, when the gates of the Celestial City opened to receive her faithful, loving spirit. I am sure that, as Bunyan affirmed when another travel-worn pilgrim entered into rest, “All the bells of the city rang for joy.”

In April, 1884, our eldest daughter became the wife of James Frederick Herrick, one of the _Republican’s_ editorial staff. We left her in Springfield when, in the same year, we returned to the Middle States to take up our abode for the next twelve years in Brooklyn. We could not have left her in safer, tenderer keeping. A brother-editor said of him once that he “had a heart of fire in a case of ice.” The simile did not do justice to the gentle courtesy and dignity that lent a touch of old-school courtliness to manner and address. In all the intimate association of the next ten years, I never saw in him an act, or heard a word that approximated unkindness or incivility. I wrote him down then, as I do now, as in all respects, the thorough gentleman in what makes the much-abused word a badge of honor. His ideals were high and pure; his life, private and professional, above reproach.

“The stuff martyrs and heroes are made of,” said one who knew him well and long.

He would have died for the truth; he would have laid down his life with a smile for his wife and children. Such harmonious blending of strength and sweetness as were found in the life of this man—modest to a fault, and resolute to a proverb—I have never seen in another.

“_I have fought the good fight_” is the wording of his epitaph. I could have wished to add, “_Of whom the world was not worthy_.”

In 1886 he received an appointment that brought him to New York. There he yielded up a blameless life in 1893. If his last illness were not the direct result of steady, unremitting work, it is yet true that he wrought gallantly after the fatal fever fastened upon him, standing patiently in his lot until prostrated by delirium.

I shall part with reason and memory before I forget that his last thought was of the young wife kneeling at his pillow, and that the dying eyes, in losing their hold upon earth, committed her to me.

XLVI

RETURN TO MIDDLE STATES—THE HOLY LAND—MY FRIENDS THE MISSIONARIES—TWO CONSULS IN JERUSALEM

IN the sketch of my husband’s life-work, written by a faithful co-laborer in the vineyard which is the world, and appended to this story, his reasons for returning to the Middle States are briefly given. As I near the latter chapters of my record, I am hampered by the necessity of treating cautiously of persons and incidents too near the present day to be spoken of with the freedom time made justifiable in earlier reminiscences. Those twelve years in the City of Churches were crowded with events of more or less moment. They were busy, and not unhappy years. Our home-group, reduced to four by the marriage of our eldest daughter, was made still smaller by the marriage of her sister on March 5, 1889, to Frederic Van de Water, of Brooklyn. The choice was wise, and the union has been one of rare blessedness.

“In-laws” have no terrors in our circle. No sinister significance attaches to the term “mother-in-law.” The adopted sons were loyal and loving to the parents of their wives. Not a cloud darkens the memory of our intercourse. The only obstacle to Belle’s marriage was thus stated in whimsical vexation by her father:

“It is hard that, when there are said to be fifteen hundred proper names in the English language, my girls must select men who have the same. It leads to no end of confusion!”

Our boy, now grown into an athletic six-footer, was graduated from Columbia University in 1893. We three had lived in great peace and contentment during his college course. We talk often, and wistfully, of those four years of church-work, social duties, literary tasks, and academic studies, which filled hands and heads. We spent our winters in town. Sunnybank grew to be more and more a home in the summer months. It was like a return to the time when our own babies filled house and verandas with merry prattle, and our hearts made music; for there were, at the date I name, four boys to repeat the history for the proud grandparents. But for the great sorrow that had broken up Christine’s happy home in February, and brought her back to us with her two boys, and the birth, a fortnight thereafter, of Belle’s second boy, the years slipped by brightly, without other signal event until “Bert’s” graduation at the June Commencement. There was, for me, one notable exception to the gentle flow.

It was, I think, in mid-June, that I had a letter from the proprietor of the _Christian Herald_, a religious paper of wide circulation, asking me to write a serial that should run through six months’ issues of that periodical. Just at that time my mind was working upon a projected story (published afterward in book-form under the caption _The Royal Road_), and this seemed a promising medium for circulating it among the classes I wished to reach. Accordingly, I called at the _Christian Herald_ office to discuss the plan. My brief and satisfactory interview with the managing editor over, I arose to go when he invited me to step into the adjoining room, where the proprietor would like to speak with me for a minute. I was courteously received, and final arrangements for the publication of the serial were made. I was again on the point of departure, when the proprietor directed my attention to a new and handsome map of the city of Jerusalem, spread out upon his desk, inquiring, in an offhand way:

“Have you ever visited the Holy Land?”

“Never,” I replied, adding involuntarily, “It has been one of my dearest dreams that I might go some day.”

“It would be a very easy matter for you to fulfil the wish,” in the same easy, unpremeditated tone.

“Easy?” I repeated. “Yes; in my dreams!”

“In the flesh, and in reality. Will you sit down for a moment, please?”

He proceeded then, in less time than it will take me to write it, to unfold a plan in which I soon saw, although he did not say it, that the serial story, my call, and the map of Jerusalem, conspicuously displayed on his desk, were so many stages of a carefully concerted scheme. He wanted me to go to Syria, with the express purpose of investigating the condition of the women of that land, and getting an insight into their domestic life, and at the same time incidentally gleaning material for sketches of historical localities—in short, to gather material for such “familiar talks” as I had held with American women upon household and social topics. These were to be supplied to his paper, week by week. His provision for travelling expenses would include those of my husband, or any other escort I might select. The sum he named as remuneration for the work was handsome, but this circumstance made a slight impression upon me at the time. Our dialogue ended in my promise to take the matter into consideration, and to let him have my decision in a day or two. I hope he never guessed at the whirl of emotions lying back of a sober face and calm demeanor.

I recollect walking out into the bustling streets as if I trod upon air, my head ringing as if nerves were taut harpstrings, my heart throbbing tumultuously. I scarcely knew where I was, or whither I was going. Something, somewhere—it seemed in the upper ether, yet so near that I heard words and music—was singing rapturously:

“Jerusalem the Golden!
Methinks each flower that blows,
And every bird a-singing
Of that sweet secret knows.
I know not what the flowers
May feel, or singers see,
But all these summer raptures
Are prophecies of thee!”

It was my favorite hymn, but it was nothing in me that sang it then.

“One of my dearest dreams!”—ever since, as a child, I had fed a perfervid imagination upon Bible stories, and chanted David’s psalms aloud in the Virginia woods, to tunes of my own making. One of them broke into the jubilant _Jerusalem the Golden_ pealing in the ether overhead:

“My feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem!”

Was I, then, so near the fulfilment of the heavenly dream?

* * * * *

We sailed for the Holy City in September—my big boy and I. Doctor Terhune could not go, and we had always promised that our son should have a foreign trip when his university work was done. The opportunity was auspicious.

Each of us told as much of the story of the memorable seven months abroad as we were willing the public should read—I, in the letters published first in the _Christian Herald_, subsequently in book-form under the title, _The Home of the Bible_; Bert, in a smaller volume, _Syria from the Saddle_, a breezy chronicle of a young man’s impressions of what he saw and heard while in Syria. I considered it then, and I think it now, a remarkable book, coming, as it did, from the pen of a boy of twenty-one. He celebrated his majority in the desert-places between Damascus and Jerusalem.

Two or three incidents, eventful forever to us, may be mentioned briefly in this personal narrative.

I am not a believer in dreams. I do attach importance to “coincidences,” holding some that have fallen into my life in reverence the more sincere because I cannot explain them away.

One night in Paris, where we spent a fortnight on the way to Syria _via_ Egypt, I had a long and distressing dream of carrying a poor ailing baby along dark streets and over fences and fields. My arms ached under the weight of the limp body; my heart and ears ached with the piteous wailing of the sufferer, for whom I could do nothing. I awoke in the morning, utterly worn out in nerve, and depressed unreasonably in spirit. That forenoon I wrote my daughter:

“It was an ugly, gruesome dream. Your aunt Myrtle would
see in it an omen of evil. She says that a death in the
family has always followed her dream of the sick baby she
cannot put out of her arms. It is an old superstition. You
may recollect that Charlotte Brontë alludes to it in _Jane
Eyre_. I have so such dreads. Yet I find myself wishing
that I had not had that ‘visitation.’ It has left a very
unpleasant impression on my mind—a sort of bad taste in my
mental mouth. I am thankful that it came to me, and not to
Myrtle.”

My sister had been ill before we left home, but was convalescent when we sailed, and a letter from her husband awaited us in Paris, conveying the cheerful assurance of her confirmed improvement in health and strength, and bidding me have no further anxiety on her account.

It was, therefore, a terrible shock when a letter, forwarded from place to place, overtook us in Northern Syria, informing us that my dear little “sister-daughter,” as she loved to call herself, had died on the night of November 3, 1893—the very night through which the “gruesome” dream had pursued me from midnight until dawn. Christine wrote in reply:

“When we read your letter of that date, Belle’s eyes met
mine in silent, awesome questioning. Merely a coincidence?
Perhaps, but strange!”

I can add no other comment.

My second eventful incident hinges upon a short severe illness that prostrated me, the third day after we landed in Beirut from the steamer we had taken at Port Saïd. I had already made acquaintance with President Bliss and some of the professors in the American College, crowning one of the heights of the beautiful town, and I sent at once for Doctor Schauffler, whom I had known slightly in Springfield, Massachusetts.

On the fourth day of my illness I asked him, plaintively:

“Do you know there is not a woman-servant in this hotel? The person who ‘does’ my room has a long white beard and wears a skull-cap. Bert calls the photograph he has made of the nondescript: ‘_Le femme de chambre!_’ It is very funny—and rather dreadful!”

“The beloved physician” eyed me in thoughtful compassion.

“We are so used to that sort of thing here that we rarely think of it as out of the way. No decent woman would take a position in a house where she must work with men. She would lose caste and reputation, forthwith. Hence, ‘_le femme de chambre_.’ I can see that it must be intensely disagreeable to you.”

There the matter dropped. I was still in bed when, at four o’clock that afternoon, he paid his second visit. He wasted no time in apology or solicitation. His carriage was at the door, packed with cushions. I must be taken out of bed, rolled up in rugs and shawls, carried down-stairs by my son and my dragoman, deposited in the carriage and driven up to his house.

“Where there are women-servants,” he added, laughingly, “and where a cordial American welcome awaits you. Doctor and Mrs. Webster, of Haifa, are visiting us, and you will be well looked after. And Mrs. Bliss is coming over to drink afternoon tea with you. So, we have no time to lose.”

That was the beginning of ten days of such luxurious rest and continuous petting as I had never expected to find out of my native land and my own home. I rallied fast under the new conditions of invalidism. In two days, I left my bed and lay, for most of the forenoon and all the latter part of the day, upon a luxurious lounge in the square central hall, from which doors led on all sides to the other parts of the house. The ceilings were twenty feet above me; the casements opened down to the tiled floors; palms, and other tall plants rounded the corners of the hall, and vases of cut flowers filled the cooled air with fragrance. As I lay, I could see trees laden with oranges and tangerines in the gardens below; hedges of cactus and geraniums, the latter in the fulness of scarlet bloom, intersecting the grounds of the college and the neighboring dwellings. The colony of President and professors was one united family, and they took me—sick, and a stranger—into the heart of the household. I recall, with pride, that not a day passed that did not bring me a call from Doctor Bliss, the genial and honored head of the noble institution, while Mrs. Bliss’s neighborly attentions were maternally tender. I had not been at the hotel in the lower town for an hour before she appeared, laden with flowers and an offering of “American apples, such as one cannot buy in the East.” The next day, and for every day following, before Doctor Schauffler carried me off with benevolent violence, she sent to me home-made bread, having heard (as was true) that the hotel bread was generally sour.

I looked forward with especial pleasure to the afternoon-tea hour. The gathering about my lounge would have graced any _salon_ where wits do congregate. The silver-haired President never failed to put in an appearance; Doctor Post, the distinguished senior of the medical professors, and his charming daughter, afterward my cicerone in the visits I paid to Syrian women in their own homes; Doctor and Mrs. Eddy, whose daughter was just then surprising the social world of Constantinople by taking her degree in medicine, and with honor; the Jessup brothers and their families, known to all readers of church and charitable literature by their achievements in the mission-field; Doctor and Mrs. Porter, in whose house we had celebrated Thanksgiving Day the evening succeeding our arrival in Beirut, singing, at the close of the joyous festivities, “My country, ’tis of thee,” with all the might of our lungs, and with hearts aglow with patriotism distance and expatriation could not abate—these, with a group of younger professors, tutors, and winsome girls, were the ministering genii that buoyed me speedily back to robust health.

They gave me a concert, a night or two before our parting. The light in the great hall was a pleasant _chiaro-oscuro_, the music-room opening out of it being brilliantly illuminated for the performers upon piano, violin, violoncello, guitar, and flute. From my sofa I had a full view of them all, and through one long window a moon, but four days old, looked at us through the orange-trees.

Is it strange that the chapter in my _Home of the Bible_, headed “_My Friends the Missionaries_,” was penned with grateful memories too tender for speech?

We had in Jerusalem another true, hearty, and affectionate home-welcome. Dr. Selah Merrill, the well-known archæologist and Oriental scholar, had then been United States Consul at Jerusalem for nine years. The change of administration in Washington had put in his place Rev. Edwin Wallace, and we found both consuls still in residence upon our arrival. It was a happy combination for us. The consuls and their wives were settled in the one good hotel in the city—the “Grand New”—to which our incomparable dragoman, David Jamal, conducted us. We fraternized at sight. Doctor Merrill and his successor were upon most amicable terms, the senior and late incumbent doing all in his power to lessen the labors of the novice. The fatherly kindness of one, and the gentle deference of the junior, were beautiful to behold. We two travellers shared the advantages enjoyed by Mr. Wallace in his first visits to memorable places in the new home, of which he has written eloquently in his book—_Jerusalem the Holy_. I shall always esteem as one of the rarest bits of good-fortune which befell us in our wanderings in storied lands, that Doctor Merrill was emphatically our “guide, philosopher, and friend,” during our stay in Southern Syria. He, it was, who made out our itinerary when he could not conduct us personally, as he did in our expeditions in and about Jerusalem.

I reckon the four, who made the City of the Great King home to us, among the friends to whom my obligations are not to be described in words. And what royally “good times” we had together! Had it been in the power of Mrs. Merrill and Mrs. Wallace to spare me every possible inconvenience of tent-life and Eastern transit, I should have been lapped in luxury throughout our tour of village and desert.

Of these I have written elsewhere, and at length.

XLVII

LUCERNE—GOOD SAMARITANS AND AN ENGLISHMAN—A LECTURE
TOUR—OHIOAN HOSPITALITY—MR. AND MRS. McKINLEY

OUR homeward journey was performed in a delicious, leisurely fashion. We had worked hard for three months, collecting material for our prospective books. Once and again, when we would fain have had heart and imagination free to take in, at their full value, associations connected with, and emotions excited by, this or that sacred spot—did we remind ourselves of the plaint of the poet, who could never give himself up to the enjoyment of nature, because he saw, stamped upon sea and sky, mountain and river, in huge capitals—“MATERIAL.” Neither of us meant to write up Egypt, Rome, Florence, Switzerland, and the British Isles. With very much the joyous sense of relief with which children scamper home, when school is out, we roamed and lingered to our hearts’ content for the ten weeks that were left of our vacation. We fell in with congenial travelling companions in Egypt, joining parties for the run through Greece and Lower Italy. In Florence, we were reunited to friends with whom we had crossed the ocean, and did not part from them until, in Lucerne, they were summoned to Paris, while we planned a stay of some days in romantic regions endeared to us by former experiences, when the “Boy” of _Loitering in Pleasant Paths_ was too young to appreciate the grandeur of mountain passes, snow-capped heights, azure lakes, and historic cantons.

Anticipation received a cruel blow in the beautiful lakeside city in which we had passed the heart of a memorable summer, fifteen years before. My son was stricken down with appendicitis in Lucerne, and I knew not a human creature beside himself in all Switzerland! By rare good-fortune, I recalled the name of a physician with whom my husband had become acquainted in our former stay here, and sent for him at once. He had retired from the active duties of his profession, resigning his practice to his son, who was, I learned, at the head of the hospital in Lucerne.

To my infinite relief, he informed me that there would be no need of an operation unless more serious symptoms should intervene. I subjoin the addenda to the verdict for the benefit of those whom it may concern:

“You Americans are too fond of the knife! It is not always necessary to cut out an inflamed appendix. In my hospital we have had four hundred cases of appendicitis within the last ten years, and have operated just forty times! The patients recovered without the use of the knife.”

If I had ever leaned, never so slightly, to misanthropic judgment of my fellow-mortals, I must have been shamed out of them by the incidents of the next fortnight of cruel anxiety, and what would have been unutterable loneliness but for the exceeding and abounding charity of the strangers by whom I was surrounded.

“It is my opinion,” pronounced the patient, when, on Easter morning, his chamber was fragrant with flowers and brightened by cards and messages of cheer and sympathy—“my decided and well-grounded conviction—that this Canton is peopled by the posterity of the Good Samaritan. Even the innkeeper has taken a hand in the mission to the traveller on the Jericho Road!”

The last remark was drawn out by the opening of a great box of violets, richly purple, and so freshly gathered that the odor floated into the air, like clouds of incense, with the lifting of the cover.

And, as a sudden thought struck him: “Have the blasted Britishers spoken yet?”

“No! Their conversation is confined to their own party.”

I had brought the like report every day for a week. “The blasted Britishers,” for whom he had no milder name, were a young man, his wife, and sister, who were at the end of my table and my nearest neighbors. The hotel was very full. A fair sprinkling of Americans, a few English, and a mixture of French, Swiss, Germans, and Italians made up a crowd that changed daily in some of its features. From the proprietor down to the porter, there was not an employé or official connected with the house who did not inquire, whenever I showed myself in hall or _salle à manger_, “how the young gentleman was getting on?” and express the hope of his early recovery. The entire working-staff of the Hotel de Cygne was at our feet, and the guests in the house were assiduous in offers of assistance and assurances of sympathy. Strangers inquired across the table as to the patient’s condition, and if there were any way in which they could be of service. The “B. B.’s”—as the object of this kindly solicitude contemptuously abbreviated the appellation—held aloof, apparently ignorant of my existence, much less of the cause of inquiry and response. They chatted together pleasantly, in subdued, refined tones betokening the gentle-folk they were, but, for all the sign they gave of consciousness of the existence of the afflicted Americans, they might have been—to quote again from the indignant youth above-stairs—“priest and Levite, rolled into one mass of incarnate selfishness.”

So matters went on until next to the last day we spent in Lucerne. My patient was on his feet in his room, and had been down-stairs twice to drive for an hour, and test his strength for the journey to Paris, which he was impatient to begin. I had heard that there was a sleeping-car—a “_wagon-au-lit_,” as the Swiss put it—upon one train each day. This I wished to take, if possible, and to break the journey by stopping overnight at least once, in the transit of fifteen hours that separated us from the French capital. It so chanced that the talk of the “B. B.’s” at luncheon that day turned upon this train, and, forgetful, for the moment, of their discourteous reserve, I addressed the man of the party with—“Pardon me! but can you tell me at what hour that train leaves Lucerne, and when it reaches Basle?”

“With great pleasure!” turning an eager face upon me. “But may I ask, first, how your son is to-day? We have inquired constantly of the proprietor, and of the doctor, when we could see him, how he was getting on. We were delighted to hear that he is improving, etc., etc., etcetera”—while I was getting my breath, and rallying my fluttered wits. With this preamble, he proceeded to tell me all he knew of trains that were likely to be of service, volunteering to make direct inquiries at the station that afternoon, and begging to know in what way he could forward my purpose.

When I could escape, I carried a bewildered face and soul up to the convalescent.

Then it was that I made the remark I quoted in a former chapter, apropos of New England “incommunicableness”:

“The ice is broken, and there is warm water under it!”

We had not finished discussing the idiosyncrasies of Old and New England when, half an hour later, there came a gentle tap at the door. I opened it, and nearly swooned with an access of amazement when I saw the young Englishman.

He had a paper in his hand, and began without preface:

“I have made so bold as to look up the trains, don’t you know? And—oh, I say”—breaking off as he espied the figure on the lounge through the half-opened door—“mayn’t I come in and see him? We are both young men, you know!”

He was at the sofa by this time, and shaking hands with the occupant. “Awfully glad to see you are doing so well! Oh, by Jove!” interrupting himself anew, with the frank boyishness that had marked his entrance. “I believe you are taller than I!”

He surveyed the recumbent figure with undisguised admiration.

“Six feet, two-and-a-half, gymnasium measure!” rejoined the other, laughing.

It was impossible to resist the cordial _bonhommie_ of the self-invited guest.

“And I six, three!” complacently. “But a fellow looks longer when he is on his back. May I sit down?” drawing up a chair for me, and one for himself. “And would it tire you to talk a bit about routes and so on? Do you think you are really fit for the jaunt?”

The “bit” of talk lasted an hour, and the invalid brightened with every minute. The “Britisher” was an army man, at home on leave, after ten years in India. He had travelled far and used all his senses while _en route_. He was eloquent in praise of India, and so diligently was the time improved by both the young men that, in leaving, the elder exacted a promise that, when the other should visit India, he would apply to him—the “B. B.”—for letters of introduction to “some fellows” who might be of use to him. He gave us his card, lest he might not see us again. It bore the name of a fashionable London hotel, at which he “hoped to see” his new acquaintance, since he was going to London within the month. He did see us again, calling on the morrow to ask if there were anything he could do to facilitate our departure. He brought, also, the compliments and good wishes of his wife and sister for our safe journey. The schedule of travel he had arranged for us was so carefully drawn up that a fool could not err therein.

We never saw or heard from him again. It was not convenient for Bert to call during the brief stay we made in London, on the very eve of sailing for home. And we have never yet been to India. The “B. B.” seemed not to be able to conceive the possibility that any one who could get to that end of the earth could refrain from going.

I have seen enough of the English since to comprehend that this was not a phenomenal illustration of native reserve, that waits for the initiative from the other party to the meeting, and, like the traveller in the fable of the contest between the wind and sun, throws away the cloak of strangerhood as soon as the first step is taken by another. I have heard other anecdotes descriptive of a characteristic which belies the depth and warmth of the underlying heart, but none that bring it more prominently into view. It is strange—and interesting—to us of a more emotional race, to see the sudden leap of the unsealed fountain.

During the summer and autumn succeeding our return to America, I utilized much of the “material” collected in the East in a series of lectures delivered in seven different States. For two summers preceding my tour abroad, I had, in conjunction with Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster, conducted what we called “Women’s Councils”, in various Summer Schools modelled upon the famous Chautauquan Assemblies. I had hardly settled in the peaceful home-nest when applications from similar organizations began to arrive. Upon former expeditions, my husband, and sometimes our son, and Mrs. Sangster’s nephew, Bert’s classmate and chum, had accompanied us, and when the “Council” adjourned, we made up a jolly party to Mackinac Island (in which beautiful spot I laid the scene of _With the Best Intentions_), to Niagara Falls, the Adirondacks, and divers other summer resorts. Mrs. Sangster had no share in my present lecture engagements, and neither my husband nor son could spare the time to accompany me. In the comparatively secluded and carefully sheltered life of to-day, I marvel at the courage that enabled me to journey for thousands of miles, unattended, and to face audiences that numbered from one to two thousand women, with never a misgiving as to my reception, and perfect security from annoyance. Wherever I went, doors and hearts were opened to me. But once, in a series that comprised twenty towns and villages, was I ever allowed to stay at a hotel, and that was for a single night. The friends made then are cherished to this hour.

Time would fail me and the patience of the reader be exhausted, were I to attempt even a catalogue of the localities in which I talked, as woman to woman, of what I had seen and heard in those seven months of wandering and study. If I had never loved women before, and held in especial and tender regard those of my own country, I must have learned the sweet lesson in the unescorted itineraries from Syracuse, N.Y., to Chicago; from Vermont to Michigan; from Richmond, Va., to Cincinnati. And in all the thousands of miles, and in the intercourse with tens of thousands of people whose faces I had never seen before, I had, in the three lecture seasons in which I took part, not one unkind word—received nothing but kindness, and that continually. Hospitality and brotherly (and sisterly) love have had new and deeper meaning to me, ever since. I permit myself the recital of two “happenings” in Ohio, that have historic interest in consideration of subsequent events.

After fulfilling a delightful engagement at Monona Lake—near Madison, Wisconsin—I set out for Lakeview, Ohio, where I was to hold a Women’s Council for the next week, beginning Monday. This was Saturday noon, and I was to travel all night. Dr. T. De Witt Talmage, whom I had seen at Monona Lake, had told me of a branch road connecting the station, at which I was to leave the main line, early Sunday morning, with Lakeview. I would reach that place, he said, by seven o’clock, and have a quiet Sunday to myself. This was preferable to passing it in Chicago or any other large town. In the Madison station I was so fortunate as to meet Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie and Dr. Francis Maurice Egan, at that time Professor of English Literature in the Georgetown (R. C.) University, and, subsequently, United States Minister to Denmark. Both of these distinguished men had been lecturing at Monona Lake Assembly. The rest of the day passed swiftly and brightly. Mr. Mabie left us in Chicago, where we were detained until midnight, on account of some delay in incoming trains. Doctor Egan, whose spirits never flagged, proposed a walk through the illuminated streets, and a supper together, which “lark” we enjoyed with the zest of two school-children. Then we returned to the waiting train, and bade each other “Good-bye.”

The journey had begun so auspiciously that I alighted from the sleeper in the early dawn, feeling, what the sporting Englishman would call “uncommonly fit,” and with no prevision of what lay before me.

For not a symptom of the promised branch line was to be seen, as far as eye could reach. There were two houses at the terminus of my railway journey. One was the usual station and freight-house; the other, a neat cottage a stone’s-throw away, was, I found, the dwelling of the station-agent. He was the one and only human thing in sight. Beyond lay woods and cultivated fields.

The man was very civil, but positive in the declaration that the branch line connecting with the Assembly grounds was ten miles further on; also, that no trains ran over it on Sunday. As at Monona Lake, admission was denied to the public on that day. Otherwise, the ground would be overrun by the rabble of curious sight-seers. There was no hotel within five miles, and no conveyance to take me to it, or to Lakeview.

The predicament was serious, yet it provoked me to mirth. Doctor Talmage’s directions to alight at this particular point (as he “had done not a week ago”); my cheerful confidence that the day would be as yesterday, if not more abundant in enjoyment; the immediate prospect of starvation and discomfort, since all the accommodations I could command were that one room of the country station—made up a picture at which any woman must laugh—or cry. The station-master looked relieved that I did not weep, or whine. When I laughed, he smiled sympathetically:

“If you will sit here for a few minutes,” leading the way into the room behind us, “I’ll step over and talk to my wife.”

From that moment I had no apprehension of further misadventures.

If I had indulged a fleeting misgiving, it would have been dissipated by the sight of the woman to whom I was introduced when I had accepted the invitation to “step over” to the neat cottage a few rods down the road.

It was a veritable cottage—low-browed and cosey, vine-draped, and simply but comfortably furnished. The mistress met me in the door with a cordial welcome, and took me into her bedroom to wash away the dust of travel and lay off my hat. For I was to breakfast with them, after which her husband would get up the horse and buggy, and she would drive me over to the Assembly grounds. She looked, moved, and spoke like a gentlewoman. Against the background of my late predicament, she wore the guise of a ministering angel. The breakfast was just what she had prepared for her husband. She proved the quality of her breeding there, too, in not lisping a syllable of apology. None was required for a meal so well-cooked and served, but few women would have let the occasion pass of informing the stranger within their gates how much better they might have done had they been notified of the coming of “company.” On the road she told me that she had a season-ticket for the Summer School, and that she had attended the sessions regularly during the week that had passed since it opened. She was a pretty little body, becomingly attired, and intelligent beyond her apparent station. I was to learn more in time of the minds and manners of the average Ohio woman and man, and to be moved to wondering admiration thereby. The road, level as a floor for most of the way, lay between fields, orchards and vineyards so well cultivated that they recalled the husbandry of older lands. My companion was _au fait_ to the agricultural interests of her native State, and descanted upon the resources of the region with modest complacency. The weather was delicious, the drive a pleasure. Not until we were in sight of the lake, on the shores of which the camp was located, did she suggest the possible difficulty of gaining admission to the grounds. She had her ticket, which would pass her on Sunday, as on week-days. Perhaps I had one? I said, “No,” frankly. Were the rules very strict? She was “afraid they were.” It was evident that she had wholesome respect for the regulation barring out unlicensed intruders. My credentials, in the form of letters and contract, were in the trunk the station-master had engaged to send over on Monday. Up to this moment I was an anonymous wayfarer to my hosts, and I did not care to owe their hospitality to any prestige that might attach to an advertised name. So I said we would postpone uneasiness until I was actually refused admittance by the gate-keeper. When he halted us, my companion produced her passport, and I offered, as warrant of my eligibility, to send for Doctor Lewis, the superintendent of the Assembly, to vouch for me. He gave me a searching glance, and stood back to let us pass.

I recognized my guardian angel in my audience on Monday, and made it my business and pleasure to seek her out at the conclusion of the lecture.

“We made up our minds last night, as we were talking it over, who you were,” she remarked, quietly. “I had my list of the speakers, and you were set down for to-day. I wished, then, that I had guessed the truth before.”

I did not echo the wish. My first taste of Ohio hospitality would have lost the fine flavor that lingers in my memory, like the aroma of old Falernian wine. A duchess of high degree might have taken lessons in breeding and Christian charity from the station-keeper’s wife.

During the week spent at Lakeview I had an opportunity, which I prize now beyond expression, of meeting Mr. McKinley, then the Governor of Ohio. He passed a day at the principal hotel of the place with his wife, and visited the Assembly. I was invited, with other visitors, to dine with him, and afterward to drive into the country with himself and Mrs. McKinley.

“The future President of the United States!” a friend had said to me when I told her of the projected drive.

“I don’t think so,” was my answer. “But a good man and an honest politician.”

As he lifted his invalid wife into the carriage, a packet of letters was handed to me.

In taking his place on the front seat he begged me to open them:

“Home letters should never be kept waiting.”

“I will avail myself of your kind permission so far as to look into one,” I answered. “It is the daily bulletin from my husband. A glance at the first paragraph will tell me how matters are at home.”

“A daily bulletin!” repeated Mr. McKinley, as I refolded the epistle after the satisfactory glance.

“Yes—and we have been married nearly forty years!”

“A commendable example—” he began, when his wife caught him up:

“Which he does not need! He never fails to write to me every day when he is away; but when he was in Washington, some years ago, and I was not well enough to go with him, he telegraphed every morning to know how I was, besides writing a long letter to me in the afternoon.”

Laughingly putting the remark aside, he leaned forward to direct my attention to a row of hills on the horizon, and to talk of certain historical associations connected with that part of the State. She resumed the topic, awhile later, descanting in a low tone upon his unwearied regard for her health, his tender solicitude, his skill as a nurse, and similar themes, drawn on by my unfeigned interest in the story, until he checked her, with the same light laugh:

“Ida, my dear! you are making Mrs. Terhune lose the finest points in the landscape we brought her out to admire.”

“Permit me to remind you that there are moral beauties better worth my attention,” retorted I.

He lifted his hat, with a bright look that went from my face to dwell upon that of the fragile woman opposite him, with affectionate appreciation, and full confidence that I would comprehend the feeling that led her to praise him—a flashing smile, I despair of describing as it deserves. It transfigured his face into beauty I can never forget. In all my thoughts of the man who became the idol of his compatriots, dying, like a martyr-hero, with a plea for mercy for the insane assassin upon his lips, I recur to that incident in my brief personal acquaintanceship with him, as a revelation of what was purest and sweetest in a nature singularly strong and gentle.

In relating the little by-play to my dear friend, Mrs. Waite, the widow of the Chief-Justice, then living in Washington, I said that it was a pity to see a man in Mr. McKinley’s exalted and responsible position tied to the arm-chair of a hopeless invalid, who could contribute nothing to his usefulness in any relation of life.

“He owes more to her than the public will ever suspect,” was the reply. “We knew him from a boy, and watched his early struggles upward. His wife was his guiding star, his right hand. She was, then, a woman of unusual personal and mental gifts, more ambitious for him than he was for himself. My husband often said that she was Mr. McKinley’s inspiration. Those who have never known her except as the fragile, nerveless creature she is now, cannot imagine what she was before the deaths of her children and her terrible illness left her the wreck you see. But _he_ does not forget what she was, and what she did for him.”

I treasured the tribute gratefully, and I never failed to quote it when I heard—as was frequent during Mr. McKinley’s administration—contemptuous criticism of the helpless, sickly woman—the poor shade of the First Lady of the Land—whose demands upon his time and care were unremittent and heavy. He was held up to the world by his eulogists as a Model Husband, a Knight of To-day, whose devotion never wavered. As my now sainted mentor said, few of the admiring multitude guessed at his debt of gratitude and at his chivalrous remembrance of the same.

XLVIII

THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN—ABROAD AGAIN—HEALING AND HEALTH—IDYLLIC WINTER IN FLORENCE