I write you a very short note this morning, because I am going down to hear Sumnerius lecture in the Law School, on Ambassadors, Consuls, Peace & War, and other matters of International Law.
Write me soon—as soon as you can; and say that you are coming to Cambridge erelong. Life is short. We meet not often; and I am most sincerely,
Henry W. Longfellow.
My mother has described in her Reminiscences the wonderful wedding-tour in Europe. In Rome, her eldest daughter, Julia Romana, was born. She fancied she saw, in the baby’s radiant little face, a reflection of the beautiful forms and faces she had so earnestly contemplated before the child’s coming. Other people saw it there in after-years. The exaltation of her mother’s spirit deeply influenced the mind and character of sister Julia, “the first-born daughter of a hero’s heart.” She was so unworldly that she did not know what worldliness was. Her lovely face and rapt upward look have, fortunately, been preserved by the pencil of our uncle, Luther Terry.
After a year and a half in Europe my parents returned to America. The European travel had been by post, in their own carriage. The tour had been expensive and economy was for a time necessary. My mother accordingly did some clerical work, thus earning the money for my baby-clothes.
I soon evinced a practical turn of mind, very different from that of my sister. The tendency to economy with which the family have sometimes reproached me is due, as I believe, to pre-natal influences. Perhaps it is also an inheritance from French ancestors!
II
STORIES TOLD US BY OUR PARENTS
The Alarming Three Bears of the Howe Coat-of-arms.—Brutality at the Old Boston Latin School.—Boyish Mischief.—Papa’s Church.—Grandmother Cutler Rebukes Wemyss, the Biographer of Washington and Marion.—Grandfather Ward, His Liberality and His Stern Calvinism.
SOME one has said that it is hard to live under the shadow of a great name. It has been my great privilege and happiness to live, not under the shadow, but in the light of two honored names, those of my father and mother. They were honored and beloved because of their own love for and service to their fellow-men.
My father was nearly eighteen years older than my mother. He had had the responsibility and care of his young blind pupils for ten years before his marriage. Hence he was well fitted to take an active part in our training, especially as he dearly loved children. The absence in Europe, for more than a year, of my mother and the two younger children, Harry and Laura, brought Julia and myself under his care when we were respectively five and six years old. We thus early formed the habit of close companionship with him, to which, as the elder, we had special claim. Indeed, we all followed him about to such a degree that he once exclaimed jestingly, “Why, if I went and sat in the barn I believe you children would all follow me!”
The housekeeper who was with us in these early years would sometimes say, “You do not know what a good father you have.” Of course we did not. We knew that “Papa” made us his companions whenever he could possibly do so. We knew that as “a good physician” he bound up our small wounds and cared for us when we were sick. We knew that if we did wrong we must expect his firm yet gentle rebuke. Did he not tell me about a naughty little devil I had swallowed, bidding me open my mouth so that he could get hold of its tail and pull it out? Lessons of thrift and generosity he early inculcated. We received a penny for every horseshoe and for every pound of old iron we picked up about the place.
He constantly sent, by our hands, gifts of the delicious fruit of the garden to our schoolmates and to the blind children.
When our mother played the most delightful tunes for us to dance, Papa would join in the revels, occasionally pleading “a bone in his leg” as an excuse for stopping. Together they planned and carried out all sorts of schemes for our amusement and that of our little friends.
When, at a child’s party in midwinter, fireworks suddenly appeared outside the parlor window, the great kindness of our parents in doing so much for our amusement began to dawn upon my childish mind. Indeed, the Howe juvenile parties were thought very delightful by others besides ourselves.
Our parents told us stories of their youth, in which we were greatly interested. My father must have been a very small boy when he was alarmed by the Howe coat of arms—three bears with their tongues out. I fancy he came across this vision in the attic and that it was banished there by Grandfather Howe, who was a true Democrat.
Father also told us that the family was supposed to be related to that of Lord Howe. I find the same statement made in Farmer’s genealogy of the descendants of “John Howe of Watertown freeman 1640, son of John Howe of Hodinhull Warwickshire.”
Anecdotes of his school-days showed that my father, despite his feelings in the presence of the three bears, was a very courageous boy. At Latin School the master whipped him for some small fault, but could not succeed in his amiable intention of making the child cry, “though he whipped my hand almost to jelly.” His Federalist schoolmates were as brutal as their master. Because Sam Howe, almost the only Democrat in school, refused to abandon his principles, they threw him down-stairs.
Grandfather Howe lost a great deal of money by the failure of the United States government to pay him for the ropes and cordage which he, as a patriotic Democrat, supplied to them in large quantities during the War of 1812. Hence, when his son went to college, young Sam Howe helped to pay his way by teaching school in vacation. The country lads, some of whom were bigger than he, thought they could get the better of the new schoolmaster. He restored order by the simple but sometimes necessary process of knocking down the ringleader. The handsome young collegian found more difficulty in managing the girls!
He must have been very young when he assured his sister that the pump had a very agreeable taste on a frosty morning. The confiding girl followed his suggestion, but found it difficult to remove her tongue from the cold iron.
Among his many pranks at college, the most original was a nocturnal visit to a fellow-collegian who had a store of good things in his room. “Sam” Howe entered the window as a ghost and carried off a turkey. When the unfortunate owner of the feast waked up and looked out of the window, he saw a dim white figure rising in the air. Later on, the bones of the bird neatly picked were laid in front of his door. The boy was greatly worried and fully convinced that some supernatural being had visited his room. The affair so preyed on his mind that his fellow-students finally explained the joke.
Strange to say, my father did not have much patience with his son when brother Harry displayed at Harvard the same kind of mischievous ingenuity. They had both inherited this quality from Grandfather Howe if we may judge by the following story.
Having promised to pay Sammy a penny for every rat he caught, the old gentleman surreptitiously withdrew the rodents from the trap. But Sammy was quite equal to the occasion. He parried by making the same animal serve for several mornings, until his father exclaimed, “Sammy, that rat begins to smell!”
Grandfather Howe was very fond of building, a taste inherited by his descendants. When there was a question of his erecting a house on her property, his second wife said to him, “But your children would never permit it.” The old gentleman’s wavering resolve at once became fixed. He had no notion of listening to dictation from his sons and daughters. So he built the house, which, of course, became the property of our step-grandmother and went ultimately to her heirs, instead of to his own descendants, the Howes.
My father always cherished the memory of his own mother, Patty Gridley, who was a very beautiful woman, of a lovely and sympathetic nature.
He liked to see his daughters sitting at their needlework. “It reminds me of my mother,” he would say. He could not bear to see bread wasted, because of her early teachings of thrift. On the top of his father’s house, there had been a cask or vat into which the lees of wine were