There were also Edwin P. Whipple, the essayist, and Walt Whitman, who was chosen one year for the commencement poet. He appeared on the platform wearing a flannel shirt, square-cut neck, disclosing a hirsute covering that would have done credit to a grizzly bear; the rest of his attire all right. Joaquin Miller was another genius and original.
Another visitor was James T. Fields of Boston, the popular publisher, poet, author, lecturer, friend, and inimitable raconteur, who was always one of my best friends.
When Mr. and Mrs. Fields were invited to Hanover, he and his beautiful wife were always guests at our home. Their first visit to us was an epoch for me. I worked hard the morning before they were to arrive, sweeping, dusting, polishing silver, and especially brightening the large, brass andirons in father's library. I usually scoured with rotten stone and oil, but on this great occasion, adopting a receipt which I had happened to see in a newspaper, I tried vinegar and powdered pumice-stone. The result at first was fine.
I had barely time after all this to place flowers about the house and dress, and then to drive in our old carryall, with our older horse, to the station at Norwich, just across the Connecticut River, to meet the distinguished pair and escort them to our house. As I heard the train approaching, and the shrill whistle, I got nervous, and my hands trembled. How would they know me? And what had I better say? My aged and spavined horse was called by father "Rosinante" for Don Quixote's bony steed, also "Blind Guide" and "Heathen Philosopher." He looked it—and my shabby carryall! But the train was snorting for a stop, and the two guests soon came easily to my vehicle, and Mr. Fields seemed to know me. Both shook hands most cordially and were soon in the back seat, full of pleasant chat and the first exciting ordeal was over. At tea table Mr. and Mrs. Fields sat on either side of father, and the stories told were different from any I had ever heard. I found when the meal was over I had not taken a mouthful. Next we all went to the College Church for the lecture, and on coming home we had an evening lunch. All ate heartily but me. I ventured to tell one story, when Mr. Fields clapped his hands and said, "Delightful." That was food to me! I went to bed half starved, and only took enough breakfast to sustain life. Before they left I had written down and committed to memory every anecdote he had given. They have never been printed until now, and you may be sure they are just as my hero told them. My only grief was the appearance of my andirons. I invited our guests to the open fire with pride, and the brass was covered with black and green—not a gleam of shine.
Often Mr. Fields's jokes were on himself—as the opinion of a man in the car seat just beyond him, as they happened to be passing Mr. Fields's residence on the Massachusetts coast. The house was pointed out on "Thunderbolt Hill" and his companion said, "How is he as a lecturer?"
"Well," was the response, "he ain't Gough by a d——d sight."
How comically he told of a country druggist's clerk to whom he put the query, "What is the most popular pill just now?" And the quick answer, "Schenk's—they do say the Craowned Heads is all atakin' of 'em!"
Or the request for his funniest lecture for the benefit of a hearse in a rural hamlet!
His experience in a little village where he and Mrs. Fields wanted to find a boarding-house: The lady of the house demurred; she had "got pretty tired of boarders," but at last capitulated with, "Well, I'll let you come in if you'll do your own stretching." This proved to mean no waitress at the table.
The morning after their arrival, he went out for a long walk in the mountain air, and returning was accosted by his host: "I see you are quite a predestinarian." As he was resting on one of the wooden chairs, the man said: "I got those chairs for piazzary purposes," and enlarged on the trouble of getting good help in haying time: "Why, my neighbour, Jake Stebbins, had a boy in his gang named Henry Ward Beecher Gooley. He was so dreadful pious that on extra hot mornings he'd call 'em all together at eleven o'clock and ask 'em to join in singing, 'Lord, Dismiss us with Thy Blessing.'"
All these anecdotes were told to me by Mr. Fields and I intend to give only those memories which are my own.
Mr. Fields was wonderfully kind to budding authors. Professor Brown sent him, without my knowledge, my two-column appreciation of dear Tom Hood, after his memorials were written by his son and daughter. And before many weeks came a box of his newest books for me, with a little note on finest paper and wide margin, "hoping that your friendship may always be continued towards our house."
I cannot speak of Mr. Fields and fail to pay my tribute of loving admiration to his wife, Annie Fields. When I first met that lady in her home at 148 Charles Street, she was so exquisitely dainty, refined, spirituelle, and beautiful, I felt, as I expressed it, "square-toed and common." She was sincerely cordial to all who were invited to that sacred shrine; she was the perfect hostess and housekeeper, the ever-busy philanthropist, a classic poet, a strong writer of prose when eager to aid some needed reform. Never before had I seen such a rare combination of the esthetic and practical, and she shone wherever placed. Once when she was with us, I went up to her room to see if I could help her as she was leaving. She was seated on the floor, pulling straps tightly round some steamer rugs and a rainy day coat, and she explained she always attended to such "little things." As one wrote of her, after her death, she made the most of herself, but she made more of her husband. Together they went forward, side by side, to the last, comrades and true lovers.
Two of all the wonderful literary treasures in their drawing-room produced a great impression on me, one a caricature of Thackeray's face done by himself with no mercy shown to his flattened, broken nose. A lady said to him: "There is only one thing about you I could never get over, your nose." "No wonder, madam, there is no bridge to it." The other was an invitation to supper in Charles Lamb's own writing, and at the bottom of the page, "Puns at nine."
Two famous story-tellers of the old-fashioned type were Doctor Dixi Crosby of Hanover, and his son "Ben," who made a great name for himself in New York City as a surgeon, and also as a brilliant after-dinner speaker. Doctor Crosby's preference was for the long-drawn-out style, as this example, which I heard him tell several times, shows:
A man gave a lecture in a New England town which failed to elicit much applause and this troubled him. As he left early next morning on the top of the stage-coach, he interviewed the driver, who seemed not anxious to talk. "Did you hear much said about my lecture last night? Do you think it pleased the audience?"
"Oh, I guess they were well enough satisfied; some were anyway."
"Were there any who expressed dissatisfaction?"
"I would not pry into it, stranger; there wasn't much said against it anyhow."
"Now you have aroused my curiosity. I must beg you to let me know. Who criticized it, and what did they say? It might help me to hear it."
"Well, Squire Jones was the man; he does not say much one way or other. But I'll tell you he always gets the gist of it."
"And what was his verdict?"
"If you must know, Squire Jones he said, said he, he thought 'twas—awful shaller."
Doctor Ben's Goffstown Muster was a quicker tempo and had a better climax. 'Twas the great occasion of the annual military reviews. He graphically described boys driving colts hardly broken; mothers nursing babies, very squally; girls and their beaux sitting in the best wagon holding hands and staring about (as Warner said to me, "Young love in the country is a solemn thing"); the booths for sale of gingerbread, peanuts, cider, candies, and popcorn; the marshal of the day dashing here and there on his prancing steed. All was excitement, great crowds, and the blare of the band. Suddenly an aged pair, seemingly skeletons, so bony and wan were they, were seen tottering toward the fence, where they at last stopped. They had come from the direction of the graveyard. The marshal rushed forward calling out, "Go back, go back; this is not the general resurrection, it is only the Goffstown Muster."
Doctor Ben Crosby was one of the most admirable mimics ever known and without a suspicion of ill-nature. Sometimes he would call on us representing another acquaintance, who had just left, so perfectly that the gravest and stiffest were in danger of hysterics. This power his daughter