The Story Of A Pioneer By Anna Howard Shaw And Elizabeth Jordan

I started to assure him vehemently that I never had. Then, as if Time had thrown a picture on a screen before me, I saw myself as a little girl preach- ing alone in the forest, as I had so often preached to a congregation of listening trees. I qualified my answer. “Never,” I said, “to human beings.” Dr. Peck smiled again. “Well,” he told me, “the door is open. Enter or not, as you wish.” He left the house, but I remained to discuss his overwhelming proposition with Miss Foot. A sud- den sobering thought had come to me. “But,” I exclaimed, “I’ve never been converted. How can I preach to any one?” We both had the old-time idea of conversion, which now seems so mistaken. We thought one had to struggle with sin and with the Lord until at last the heart opened, doubts were dispersed, and the light poured in. Miss Foot could only advise me to put the matter before the Lord, to wrestle and to pray; and thereafter, for hours at a time, she worked and prayed with me, alternately urging, pleading, instructing, and sending up petitions in my behalf. Our last session was a dramatic one, which took up the entire night. Long before it was over we were both worn out; but toward morning, either from exhaustion of body or exaltation of soul, I seemed to see the light, and it made me very happy. With all my heart I wanted to preach, and I believed that now at last I had my call. The following day we sent word to Dr. Peck that I would preach the ser- mon at Ashton as he had asked, but we urged him to say nothing of the matter for the present, and Miss Foot and I also kept the secret locked in our breasts. I knew only too well what view my family and my friends would take of such a step and of me. To them it would mean nothing short of personal dis- grace and a blotted page in the Shaw record. I had six weeks in which to prepare my sermon, and I gave it most of my waking hours as well as those in which I should have been asleep. I took for my text: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” It was not until three days before I preached the sermon that I found courage to confide my purpose to my sister Mary, and if I had confessed my inten- tion to commit a capital crime she could not have been more disturbed. We two had always been very close, and the death of Eleanor, to whom we were both devoted, had drawn us even nearer to each other. Now Mary’s tears and prayers wrung my heart and shook my resolution. But, after all, she was asking me to give up my whole future, to close my ears to my call, and I felt that I could not do it. My decision caused an estrangement between us which lasted for years. On the day preceding the delivery of my sermon I left for Ashton on the afternoon train; and in the same car, but as far away from me as she could get, Mary sat alone and wept throughout the journey. She was going to my mother, but she did not speak to me; and I, for my part, facing both alienation from her and the ordeal before me, found my one comfort in Lucy Foot’s presence and understanding sympathy. There was no church in Ashton, so I preached my sermon in its one little school-house, which was filled with a curious crowd, eager to look at and hear the girl who was defying all conventions by getting out of the pew and into the pulpit. There was much whispering and suppressed excitement before I began, but when I gave out my text silence fell upon the room, and from that moment until I had finished my hearers listened quietly. A kerosene- lamp stood on a stand at my elbow, and as I preached I trembled so violently that the oil shook in its glass globe; but I finished without breaking down, and at the end Dr. Peck, who had his own reasons for nervousness, handsomely assured me that my first sermon was better than his maiden effort had been. It was evidently not a failure, for the next day he invited me to follow him around in his circuit, which included thirty-six appointments; he wished me to preach in each of the thirty-six places, as it was de- sirable to let the various ministers hear and know me before I applied for my license as a local preacher. The sermon also had another result, less gratify- ing. It brought out, on the following morning, the first notice of me ever printed in a newspaper. This was instigated by my brother-in-law, and it was brief but pointed. It read: A young girl named Anna Shaw, seventeen years old,[1] preached at Ashton yesterday. Her real friends deprecate the course she is pursuing. [1] A misstatement by the brother-in-law. Dr. Shaw was at this time twenty-three years old.–E. J. The little notice had something of the effect of a lighted match applied to gunpowder. An ex- plosion of public sentiment followed it, the entire community arose in consternation, and I became a bone of contention over which friends and strangers alike wrangled until they wore themselves out. The members of my family, meeting in solemn council, sent for me, and I responded. They had a proposition to make, and they lost no time in put- ting it before me. If I gave up my preaching they would send me to college and pay for my entire course. They suggested Ann Arbor, and Ann Arbor tempted me sorely; but to descend from the pulpit I had at last entered–the pulpit I had visualized in all my childish dreams–was not to be considered. We had a long evening together, and it was a very unhappy one. At the end of it I was given twenty- four hours in which to decide whether I would choose my people and college, or my pulpit and the arctic loneliness of a life that held no family-circle. It did not require twenty-four hours of reflection to convince me that I must go my solitary way. That year I preached thirty-six times, at each of the presiding elder’s appointments; and the follow- ing spring, at the annual Methodist Conference of our district, held at Big Rapids, my name was pre- sented to the assembled ministers as that of a can- didate for a license to preach. There was unusual interest in the result, and my father was among those who came to the Conference to see the vote taken. During these Conferences a minister voted affirma- tively on a question by holding up his hand, and negatively by failing to do so. When the question of my license came up the majority of the ministers voted by raising both hands, and in the pleasant excitement which followed my father slipped away. Those who saw him told me he looked pleased; but he sent me no message showing a change of view- point, and the gulf between the family and its black sheep remained unbridged. Though the warmth of Mary’s love for me had become a memory, the warmth of her hearthstone was still offered me. I accepted it, perforce, and we lived together like shadows of what we had been. Two friends alone of all I had made stood by me without qualification –Miss Foot and Clara Osborn, the latter my “chum” at Big Rapids and a dweller in my heart to this day. In the mean time my preaching had not inter- fered with my studies. I was working day and night, but life was very difficult; for among my school- mates, too, there were doubts and much head-shaking over this choice of a career. I needed the sound of friendly voices, for I was very lonely; and suddenly, when the pressure from all sides was strongest and I was going down physically under it, a voice was raised that I had never dared to dream would speak for me. Mary A. Livermore came to Big Rapids, and as she was then at the height of her career, the entire countryside poured in to hear her. Far back in the crowded hall I sat alone and listened to her, thrilled by the lecture and tremulous with the hope of meeting the lecturer. When she had finished speaking I joined the throng that surged forward from the body of the hall, and as I reached her and felt the grasp of her friendly hand I had a sudden conviction that the meeting was an epoch in my life. I was right. Some one in the circle around us told her that I wanted to preach, and that I was meeting tremendous opposition. She was interested at once. She looked at me with quickening sympathy, and then, suddenly putting an arm around me, drew me close to her side. “My dear,” she said, quietly, “if you want to preach, go on and preach. Don’t let anybody stop you. No matter what people say, don’t let them stop you!” For a moment I was too overcome to answer her. These were almost my first encouraging words, and the morning stars singing together could not have made sweeter music for my ears. Before I could recover a woman within hearing spoke up. “Oh, Mrs. Livermore,” she exclaimed, “don’t say that to her! We’re all trying to stop her. Her peo- ple are wretched over the whole thing. And don’t you see how ill she is? She has one foot in the grave and the other almost there!” Mrs. Livermore turned upon me a long and deeply thoughtful look. “Yes,” she said at last, “I see she has. But it is better that she should die doing the thing she wants to do than that she should die because she can’t do it.” Her words were a tonic which restored my voice. “So they think I’m going to die!” I cried. “Well, I’m not! I’m going to live and preach!” I have always felt since then that without the inspiration of Mrs. Livermore’s encouragement I might not have continued my fight. Her sanction was a shield, however, from which the criticisms of the world fell back. Fate’s more friendly interest in my affairs that year was shown by the fact that she sent Mrs. Livermore into my life before I had met Anna Dickinson. Miss Dickinson came to us toward spring and lectured on Joan of Arc. Never before or since have I been more deeply moved by a speaker. When she had finished her address I made my happy way to the front of the hall with the others who wished to meet the distinguished guest. It was our local manager who introduced me, and he said, “This is our Anna Shaw. She is going to be a lecturer, too.” I looked up at the brilliant Miss Dickinson with the trustfulness of youth in my eyes. I remem- bered Mrs. Livermore and I thought all great wom- en were like her, but I was now to experience a bitter disillusionment. Miss Dickinson barely touched the tips of my fingers as she looked indifferently past the side of my face. “Ah,” she said, icily, and turned away. In later years I learned how impossible it is for a public speaker to leave a gracious impression on every life that for a moment touches her own; but I have never ceased to be thankful that I met Mrs. Livermore before I met Miss Dickinson at the crisis in my career. In the autumn of 1873 I entered Albion College, in Albion, Michigan. I was twenty-five years of age, but I looked much younger–probably not more than eighteen to the casual glance. Though I had made every effort to save money, I had not been successful, for my expenses constantly outran my little income, and my position as preacher made it necessary for me to have a suitable wardrobe. When the time came to enter college I had exactly eighteen dollars in the world, and I started for Albion with this amount in my purse and without the slightest notion of how I was to add to it. The money problem so pressed upon me, in fact, that when I reached my destination at midnight and dis- covered that it would cost fifty cents to ride from the station to the college, I saved that amount by walking the entire distance on the railroad tracks, while my imagination busied itself pleasantly with pictures of the engine that might be thundering upon me in the rear. I had chosen Albion because Miss Foot had been educated there, and I was encouraged by an incident that happened the morning after my arrival. I was on the campus, walking toward the main building, when I saw a big copper penny lying on the ground, and, on picking it up, I discovered that it bore the year of my birth. That seemed a good omen, and it was emphatically underlined by the finding of two exactly similar pennies within a week. Though there have been days since then when I was sorely tempted to spend them, I have those three pennies still, and I confess to a certain comfort in their possession! As I had not completed my high-school course, my first days at Albion were spent in strenuous prep- aration for the entrance examinations; and one morn- ing, as I was crossing the campus with a History of the United States tucked coyly under my arm, I met the president of the college, Dr. Josclyn. He stopped for a word of greeting, during which I be- trayed the fact that I had never studied United States history. Dr. Josclyn at once invited me into his office with, I am quite sure, the purpose of ex- plaining as kindly as he could that my preparation for college was insufficient. As an opening to the subject he began to talk of history, and we talked and talked on, while unheeded hours were born and died. We discussed the history of the United States, the governments of the world, the causes which led to the influence of one nation on another, the philo- sophical basis of the different national movements westward, and the like. It was the longest and by far the most interesting talk I have ever had with a highly educated man, and during it I could actually feel my brain expand. When I rose to go President Josclyn stopped me. “I have something to give you,” he said, and he wrote a few words on a slip of paper and handed the slip to me. When, on reaching the dormitory, I opened it, I found that the president had passed me in the history of the entire college course! This, moreover, was not the only pleasant result of our interview, for within a few weeks President and Mrs. Josclyn, whose daughter had recently died, invited me to board with them, and I made my home with them during my first year at Albion. My triumph in history was followed by the swift and chastening discovery that I was behind my as- sociates in several other branches. Owing to my father’s early help, I was well up in mathematics, but I had much to learn of philosophy and the languages, and to these I devoted many midnight candles. Naturally, I soon plunged into speaking, and my first public speech at college was a defense of Xan- tippe. I have always felt that the poor lady was greatly abused, and that Socrates deserved all he received from her, and more. I was glad to put myself on record as her champion, and my fellow- students must soon have felt that my admiration for Xantippe was based on similarities of tempera- ment, for within a few months I was leading the first college revolt against the authority of the men students. Albion was a coeducational institution, and the brightest jewels in its crown were its three literary societies–the first composed of men alone, the sec- ond of women alone, and the third of men and women together. Each of the societies made friend- ly advances to new students, and for some time I hesitated on the brink of the new joys they offered, uncertain which to choose. A representative of the mixed society, who was putting its claims before me, unconsciously helped me to make up my mind. “Women,” he pompously assured me, “need to be associated with men, because they don’t know how to manage meetings.” On the instant the needle of decision swung around to the women’s society and remained there, fixed. “If they don’t,” I told the pompous young man, “it’s high time they learned. I shall join the women, and we’ll master the art.” I did join the women’s society, and I had not been a member very long before I discovered that when there was an advantage of any kind to be secured the men invariably got it. While I was brooding somberly upon this wrong an opportunity came to make a formal and effective protest against the men’s high-handed methods. The Quinquennial re- union of all the societies was about to be held, and the special feature of this festivity was always an oration. The simple method of selecting the orator which had formerly prevailed had been for the young men to decide upon the speaker and then an- nounce his name to the women, who humbly con- firmed it. On this occasion, however, when the name came in to us, I sent a message to our brother society to the effect that we, too, intended to make a nomination and to send in a name. At such unprecedented behavior the entire stu- dent body arose in excitement, which, among the girls, was combined with equal parts of exhilaration and awe. The men refused to consider our nominee, and as a friendly compromise we suggested that we have a joint meeting of all the societies and elect the speaker at this gathering; but this plan also the men at first refused, giving in only after weeks of argument, during which no one had time for the calmer pleasures of study. When the joint meeting was finally held, nothing was accomplished; we girls had one more member than the boys had, and we promptly re-elected our candidate, who was as promptly declined by the boys. Two of our girls were engaged to two of the boys, and it was secretly planned by our brother society that during a second joint meeting these two men should take the girls out for a drive and then slip back to vote, leaving the girls at some point sufficiently remote from col- lege. We discovered the plot, however, in time to thwart it, and at last, when nothing but the un- precedented tie-up had been discussed for months, the boys suddenly gave up their candidate and nominated me for orator. This was not at all what I wanted, and I immedi- ately declined to serve. We girls then nominated the young man who had been first choice of our brother society, but he haughtily refused to accept the compliment. The reunion was only a fortnight away, and the programme had not been printed, so now the president took the situation in hand and peremptorily ordered me to accept the nomination or be suspended. This was a wholly unexpected boomerang. I had wished to make a good fight for equal rights for the girls, and to impress the boys with the fact of our existence as a society; but I had not desired to set the entire student body by the ears nor to be forced to prepare and deliver an oration at the eleventh hour. Moreover, I had no suitable gown to wear on so important an occasion. One of my classmates, however, secretly wrote to my sister, describing my blushing honors and ex- plaining my need, and my family rallied to the call. My father bought the material, and my mother and Mary paid for the making of the gown. It was a white alpaca creation, trimmed with satin, and the consciousness that it was extremely becoming sus- tained me greatly during the mental agony of pre- paring and delivering my oration. To my family that oration was the redeeming episode of my early career. For the moment it almost made them for- get my crime of preaching. My original fund of eighteen dollars was now supplemented by the proceeds of a series of lectures I gave on temperance. The temperance women were not yet organized, but they had their speakers, and I was occasionally paid five dollars to hold forth for an hour or two in the little country school-houses of our region. As a licensed preacher I had no tuition fees to pay at college; but my board, in the home of the president and his wife, was costing me four dollars a week, and this was the limit of my expenses, as I did my own laundry-work. During my first college year the amount I paid for amuse- ment was exactly fifty cents; that went for a lec- ture. The mental strain of the whole experience was rather severe, for I never knew how much I would be able to earn; and I was beginning to feel the effects of this when Christmas came and brought with it a gift of ninety-two dollars, which Miss Foot had collected among my Big Rapids friends. That, with what I could earn, carried me through the year. The following spring our brother James, who was now living in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, invited my sister Mary and me to spend the summer with him, and Mary and I finally dug a grave for our little hatchet and went East together with something of our old-time joy in each other’s so- ciety. We reached St. Johnsbury one Saturday, and within an hour of our arrival learned that my brother had arranged for me to preach in a local church the following day. That threatened to spoil the visit for Mary and even to disinter the hatchet! At first she positively refused to go to hear me, but after a few hours of reflection she announced gloom- ily that if she did not go I would not have my hair arranged properly or get my hat on straight. Moved by this conviction, she joined the family parade to the church, and later, in the sacristy, she pulled me about and pinned me up to her heart’s content. Then, reluctantly, she went into the church and heard me preach. She offered no tributes after our return to the house, but her protests ceased from that time, and we gave each other the love and understanding which had marked our girlhood days. The change made me very happy; for Mary was the salt of the earth, and next only to my longing for my mother, I had longed for her in the years of our estrangement. Every Sunday that summer I preached in or near St. Johnsbury, and toward autumn we had a big meeting which the ministers of all the surrounding churches attended. I was asked to preach the ser- mon–a high compliment–and I chose that impor- tant day to make a mistake in quoting a passage from Scripture. I asked, “Can the Ethiopian change his spots or the leopard his skin?” I realized at once that I had transposed the words, and no doubt a look of horror dawned in my eyes; but I went on without correcting myself and without the slightest pause. Later, one of the ministers congratulated me on this presence of mind. “If you had corrected yourself,” he said, “all the young people would have been giggling yet over the spotted nigger. Keep to your rule of going right ahead!” At the end of the summer the various churches in which I had preached gave me a beautiful gold watch and one hundred dollars in money, and with an exceedingly light heart I went back to college to begin my second year of work. From that time life was less complex. I had enough temperance-work and preaching in the country school-houses and churches to pay my col- lege expenses, and, now that my financial anxieties were relieved, my health steadily improved. Sev- eral times I preached to the Indians, and these occasions were among the most interesting of my experiences. The squaws invariably brought their babies with them, but they had a simple and effective method of relieving themselves of the care of the infants as soon as they reached the church. The papooses, who were strapped to their boards, were hung like a garment on the back wall of the building by a hole in the top of the board, which projected above their heads. Each papoose usually had a bit of fat pork tied to the end of a string fastened to its wrist, and with these sources of nourishment the infants occupied themselves pleasantly while the sermon was in progress. Frequently the pork slipped down the throat of the papoose, but the struggle of the child and the jerking of its hands in the strangulation that followed pulled the piece safely out again. As I faced the congregation I also faced the papooses, to whom the indifferent backs of their mothers were presented; it seemed to me there was never a time when some papoose was not choking, but no matter how much excitement or discomfort was going on among the babies, not one squaw turned her head to look back at them. In that assemblage the emotions were not allowed to interrupt the calm intellectual enjoyment of the sermon. My most dramatic experience during this period occurred in the summer of 1874, when I went to a Northern lumber-camp to preach in the pulpit of a minister who was away on his honeymoon. The stage took me within twenty-two miles of my desti- nation, to a place called Seberwing. To my dismay, however, when I arrived at Seberwing, Saturday evening, I found that the rest of the journey lay through a dense woods, and that I could reach my pulpit in time the next morning only by having some one drive me through the woods that night. It was not a pleasant prospect, for I had heard appalling tales of the stockades in this region and of the women who were kept prisoners there. But to miss the engagement was not to be thought of, and when, after I had made several vain efforts to find a driver, a man appeared in a two-seated wagon and offered to take me to my destination, I felt that I had to go with him, though I did not like his appearance. He was a huge, muscular person, with a protruding jaw and a singularly evasive eye; but I reflected that his forbidding expression might be due, in part at least, to the prospect of the long night drive through the woods, to which possibly he objected as much as I did. It was already growing dark when we started, and within a few moments we were out of the little settlement and entering the woods. With me I had a revolver I had long since learned to use, but which I very rarely carried. I had hesitated to bring it now–had even left home without it; and then, im- pelled by some impulse I never afterward ceased to bless, had returned for it and dropped it into my hand-bag. I sat on the back seat of the wagon, directly behind the driver, and for a time, as we entered the darkening woods, his great shoulders blotted out all perspective as he drove on in stolid silence. Then, little by little, they disappeared like a rapidly fading negative. The woods were filled with Norway pines, hemlocks, spruce, and tamaracks-great, somber trees that must have shut out the light even on the brightest days. To-night the heavens held no lamps aloft to guide us, and soon the darkness folded around us like a garment. I could see neither the driver nor his horses. I could hear only the sibilant whisper of the trees and the creak of our slow wheels in the rough forest road. Suddenly the driver began to talk, and at first I was glad to hear the reassuring human tones, for the experience had begun to seem like a bad dream. I replied readily, and at once regretted that I had done so, for the man’s choice of topics was most unpleasant. He began to tell me stories of the stockades–grim stories with horrible details, re- peated so fully and with such gusto that I soon realized he was deliberately affronting my ears. I checked him and told him I could not listen to such talk. He replied with a series of oaths and shocking vulgarities, stopping his horses that he might turn and fling the words into my face. He ended by snarling that I must think him a fool to imagine he did not know the kind of woman I was. What was I doing in that rough country, he demanded, and why was I alone with him in those black woods at night? Though my heart missed a beat just then, I tried to answer him calmly. “You know perfectly well who I am,” I reminded him. “And you understand that I am making this journey to-night because I am to preach to-morrow morning and there is no other way to keep my appointment.” He uttered a laugh which was a most unpleasant sound. “Well,” he said, coolly, “I’m damned if I’ll take you. I’ve got you here, and I’m going to keep you here!” I slipped my hand into the satchel in my lap, and it touched my revolver. No touch of human fingers ever brought such comfort. With a deep breath of thanksgiving I drew it out and cocked it, and as I did so he recognized the sudden click. “Here! What have you got there?” he snapped. “I have a revolver,” I replied, as steadily as I could. “And it is cocked and aimed straight at your back. Now drive on. If you stop again, or speak, I’ll shoot you.” For an instant or two he blustered. “By God,” he cried, “you wouldn’t dare.” “Wouldn’t I?” I asked. “Try me by speaking just once more.” Even as I spoke I felt my hair rise on my scalp with the horror of the moment, which seemed worse than any nightmare a woman could experience. But the man was conquered by the knowledge of the waiting, willing weapon just behind him. He laid his whip savagely on the backs of his horses and they responded with a leap that almost knocked me out of the wagon. The rest of the night was a black terror I shall never forget. He did not speak again, nor stop, but I dared not relax my caution for an instant. Hour after hour crawled toward day, and still I sat in the unpierced darkness, the revolver ready. I knew he was inwardly raging, and that at any instant he might make a sudden jump and try to get the revolver away from me. I decided that at his slightest movement I must shoot. But dawn came at last, and just as its bluish light touched the dark tips of the pines we drove up to the log hotel in the settlement that was our destination. Here my driver spoke. “Get down,” he said, gruffly. “This is the place.” I sat still. Even yet I dared not trust him. Moreover, I was so stiff after my vigil that I was not sure I could move. “You get down,” I directed, “and wake up the landlord. Bring him out here.” He sullenly obeyed and aroused the hotel-owner, and when the latter appeared I climbed out of the wagon with some effort but without explanation. That morning I preached in my friend’s pulpit as I had promised to do, and the rough building was packed to its doors with lumbermen who had come in from the neighboring camp. Their appearance caused great surprise, as they had never attended a service before. They formed a most picturesque congregation, for they all wore brilliant lumber-camp clothing–blue or red shirts with yellow scarfs twisted around their waists, and gay-colored jackets and logging-caps. There were forty or fifty of them, and when we took up our collection they responded with much liberality and cheerful shouts to one another. “Put in fifty cents!” they yelled across the church. “Give her a dollar!” The collection was the largest that had been taken up in the history of the settlement, but I soon learned that it was not the spiritual comfort I offered which had appealed to the lumber-men. My driver of the night before, who was one of their number, had told his pals of his experience, and the whole camp had poured into town to see the woman minister who carried a revolver. “Her sermon?” said one of them to my landlord, after the meeting. “Huh! I dunno what she preached. But, say, don’t make no mistake about one thing: the little preacher has sure got grit!” IV THE WOLF AT THE DOOR When I returned to Albion College in the autumn of 1875 I brought with me a problem which tormented me during my waking hours and chattered on my pillow at night. Should I devote two more years of my vanishing youth to the com- pletion of my college course, or, instead, go at once to Boston University, enter upon my theological studies, take my degree, and be about my Father’s business? I was now twenty-seven years old, and I had been a licensed preacher for three years. My reputation in the Northwest was growing, and by sermons and lectures I could certainly earn enough to pay the expenses of the full college course. On the other hand, Boston was a new world. There I would be alone and practically penniless, and the oppor- tunities for work might be limited. Quite possibly in my final two years at Albion I could even save enough money to make the experience in Boston less difficult, and the clear common sense I had inherited from my mother reminded me that in this course lay wisdom. Possibly it was some in- heritance from my visionary father which made me, at the end of three months, waive these sage reflections, pack my few possessions, and start for Boston, where I entered the theological school of the university in February, 1876. It was an instance of stepping off a solid plank and into space; and though there is exhilaration in the sensation, as I discovered then and at later crises in life when I did the same thing, there was also an amount of subsequent discomfort for which even my lively imagination had not prepared me. I went through some grim months in Boston– months during which I learned what it was to go to bed cold and hungry, to wake up cold and hungry, and to have no knowledge of how long these con- ditions might continue. But not more than once or twice during the struggle there, and then only for an hour or two in the physical and mental depression attending malnutrition, did I regret coming. At that period of my life I believed that the Lord had my small personal affairs very much on His mind. If I starved and froze it was His test of my worthi- ness for the ministry, and if He had really chosen me for one of His servants, He would see me through. The faith that sustained me then has still a place in my life, and existence without it would be an infinitely more dreary affair than it is. But I admit that I now call upon the Lord less often and less imperatively than I did before the stern years taught me my unimportance in the great scheme of things. My class at the theological school was composed of forty-two young men and my unworthy self, and before I had been a member of it an hour I realized that women theologians paid heavily for the privilege of being women. The young men of my class who were licensed preachers were given free accommo- dations in the dormitory, and their board, at a club formed for their assistance, cost each of them only one dollar and twenty-five cents a week. For me no such kindly provision was made. I was not allowed a place in the dormitory, but instead was given two dollars a week to pay the rent of a room outside. Neither was I admitted to the economical comforts of the club, but fed myself according to my income, a plan which worked admirably when there was an income, but left an obvious void when there was not. With characteristic optimism, however, I hired a little attic room on Tremont Street and established myself therein. In lieu of a window the room offered a pale skylight to the February storms, and there was neither heat in it nor running water; but its possession gave me a pleasant sense of proprietorship, and the whole experience seemed a high adventure. I at once sought opportunities to preach and lecture, but these were even rarer than firelight and food. In Albion I had been practically the only licensed preacher available for substitute and special work. In Boston University’s three theological classes there were a hundred men, each snatching eagerly at the slightest possibility of employment; and when, despite this competition, I received and responded to an invitation to preach, I never knew whether I was to be paid for my services in cash or in compliments. If, by a happy chance, the compensation came in cash, the amount was rarely more than five dollars, and never more than ten. There was no help in sight from my family, whose early opposition to my career as a minister had hotly flamed forth again when I started East. I lived, therefore, on milk and crackers, and for weeks at a time my hunger was never wholly satis- fied. In my home in the wilderness I had often heard the wolves prowling around our door at night. Now, in Boston, I heard them even at high noon. There is a special and almost indescribable de- pression attending such conditions. No one who has not experienced the combination of continued cold, hunger, and loneliness in a great, strange, indifferent city can realize how it undermines the victim’s nerves and even tears at the moral fiber. The self-humiliation I experienced was also intense. I had worked my way in the Northwest; why could I not work my way in Boston? Was there, per- haps, some lack in me and in my courage? Again and again these questions rose in my mind and poisoned my self-confidence. The one comfort I had in those black days was the knowledge that no one suspected the depth of the abyss in which I dwelt. We were all struggling; to the indifferent glance–and all glances were indifferent–my struggle was no worse than that of my classmates whose rooms and frugal meals were given them. After a few months of this existence I was almost ready to believe that the Lord’s work for me lay outside of the ministry, and while this fear was gripping me a serious crisis came in my financial affairs. The day dawned when I had not a cent, nor any prospect of earning one. My stock of provisions consisted of a box of biscuit, and my courage was flowing from me like blood from an opened vein. Then came one of the quick turns of the wheel of chance which make for optimism. Late in the afternoon I was asked to do a week of revival work with a minister in a local church, and when I accepted his invitation I mentally resolved to let that week decide my fate. My shoes had burst open at the sides; for lack of car-fare I had to walk to and from the scene of my meetings, though I had barely strength for the effort. If my week of work brought me enough to buy a pair of cheap shoes and feed me for a few days I would, I decided, continue my theological course. If it did not, I would give up the fight. Never have I worked harder or better than during those seven days, when I put into the effort not only my heart and soul, but the last flame of my dying vitality, We had a rousing revival–one of the good old-time affairs when the mourners’ benches were constantly filled and the air resounded with alleluias. The excitement and our success, mildly aided by the box of biscuit, sustained me through the week, and not until the last night did I realize how much of me had gone into this final desperate charge of mine. Then, the service over and the people departed, I sank, weak and trembling, into a chair, trying to pull myself together before hearing my fate in the good-night words of the minister I had assisted. When he came to me and began to com- pliment me on the work I had done, I could not rise. I sat still and listened with downcast eyes, afraid to lift them lest he read in them something of my need and panic in this moment when my whole future seemed at stake. At first his words rolled around the empty church as if they were trying to get away from me, but at last I began to catch them. I was, it seemed, a most desirable helper. It had been a privilege and a pleasure to be associated with me. Beyond doubt, I would go far in my career. He heartily wished that he could reward me adequately. I deserved fifty dollars. My tired heart fluttered at this. Probably my empty stomach fluttered, too; but in the next moment something seemed to catch my throat and stop my breath. For it appeared that, notwith- standing the enthusiasm and the spiritual uplift of the week, the collections had been very disap- pointing and the expenses unusually heavy. He could not give me fifty dollars. He could not give me anything at all. He thanked me warmly and wished me good night. I managed to answer him and to get to my feet, but that journey down the aisle from my chair to the church door was the longest journey I have ever made. During it I felt not only the heart-sick disappointment of the moment, but the cumulative unhappiness of the years to come. I was friend- less, penniless, and starving, but it was not of these conditions that I thought then. The one over- whelming fact was that I had been weighed and found wanting. I was not worthy. I stumbled along, passing blindly a woman who stood on the street near the church entrance. She stopped me, timidly, and held out her hand. Then suddenly she put her arms around me and wept. She was an old lady, and I did not know her, but it seemed fitting that she should cry just then, as it would have seemed fitting to me if at that black moment all the people on the earth had broken into sudden wailing. “Oh, Miss Shaw,” she said, “I’m the happiest woman in the world, and I owe my happiness to you. To-night you have converted my grandson. He’s all I have left, but he has been a wild boy, and I’ve prayed over him for years. Hereafter he is going to lead a different life. He has just given me his promise on his knees.” Her hand fumbled in her purse. “I am a poor woman,” she went on, “but I have enough, and I want to make you a little present. I know how hard life is for you young students.” She pressed a bill into my fingers. “It’s very little,” she said, humbly; “it is only five dollars.” I laughed, and in that exultant moment I seemed to hear life laughing with me. With the passing of the bill from her hand to mine existence had become a new experience, wonderful and beautiful. “It’s the biggest gift I have ever had,” I told her. “This little bill is big enough to carry my future on its back!” I had a good meal that night, and I bought the shoes the next morning. Infinitely more sustaining than the food, however, was the conviction that the Lord was with me and had given me a sign of His approval. The experience was the turning- point of my theological career. When the money was gone I succeeded in obtaining more work from time to time–and though the grind was still cruelly hard, I never again lost hope. The theological school was on Bromfield Street, and we students climbed three flights of stairs to reach our class-rooms. Through lack of proper food I had become too weak to ascend these stairs without sitting down once or twice to rest, and within a month after my experience with the appreciative grandmother I was discovered during one of these resting periods by Mrs. Barrett, the superintendent of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, which had offices in our building. She stopped, looked me over, and then invited me into her room, where she asked me if I felt ill. I assured her that I did not. She asked a great many additional questions and, little by little, under the womanly sympathy of them, my reserve broke down and she finally got at the truth, which until that hour I had succeeded in concealing. She let me leave without much com- ment, but the next day she again invited me into her office and came directly to the purpose of the interview. “Miss Shaw,” she said, “I have been talking to a friend of mine about you, and she would like to make a bargain with you. She thinks you are work- ing too hard. She will pay you three dollars and a half a week for the rest of this school year if you will promise to give up your preaching. She wants you to rest, study, and take care of your health.” I asked the name of my unknown friend, but Mrs. Barrett said that was to remain a secret. She had been given a check for seventy-eight dollars, and from this, she explained, my allowance would be paid in weekly instalments. I took the money very gratefully, and a few years later I returned the amount to the Missionary Society; but I never learned the identity of my benefactor. Her three dollars and a half a week, added to the weekly two dollars I was allowed for room rent, at once solved the problem of living; and now that meal-hours had a meaning in my life, my health improved and my horizon brightened. I spent most of my evenings in study, and my Sundays in the churches of Phil- lips Brooks and James Freeman Clark, my favorite ministers. Also, I joined the university’s praying- band of students, and took part in the missionary- work among the women of the streets. I had never forgotten my early friend in Lawrence, the beautiful “mysterious lady” who had loved me as a child, and, in memory of her, I set earnestly about the effort to help unfortunates of her class. I went into the homes of these women, followed them to the streets and the dance-halls, talked to them, prayed with them, and made friends among them. Some of them I was able to help, but many were beyond help; and I soon learned that the effective work in that field is the work which is done for women before, not after, they have fallen. During my vacation in the summer of 1876 I went to Cape Cod and earned my expenses by substituting in local pulpits. Here, at East Dennis, I formed the friendship which brought me at once the greatest happiness and the deepest sorrow of that period of my life. My new friend was a widow whose name was Persis Addy, and she was also the daughter of Captain Prince Crowell, then the most prominent man in the Cape Cod community–a bank president, a railroad director, and a citizen of wealth, as wealth was rated in those days. When I returned to the theological school in the autumn Mrs. Addy came to Boston with me, and from that time until her death, two years later, we lived together. She was immensely interested in my work, and the friendly part she took in it diverted her mind from the be- reavement over which she had brooded for years, while to me her coming opened windows into a new world. I was no longer lonely; and though in my life with her I paid my way to the extent of my small income, she gave me my first experience of an existence in which comfort and culture, recreation, and leisurely reading were cheerful commonplaces. For the first time I had some one to come home to, some one to confide in, some one to talk to, listen to, and love. We read together and went to con- certs together; and it was during this winter that I attended my first theatrical performance. The star was Mary Anderson, in “Pygmalion and Galatea,” and play and player charmed me so utterly that I saw them every night that week, sitting high in the gallery and enjoying to the utmost the unfolding of this new delight. It was so glowing a pleasure that I longed to make some return to the giver of it; but not until many years afterward, when I met Ma- dame Navarro in London, was I able to tell her what the experience had been and to thank her for it. I did not long enjoy the glimpses into my new world, for soon, and most tragically, it was closed to me. In the spring following our first Boston winter together Mrs. Addy and I went to Hingham, Massachusetts, where I had been appointed tempo- rary pastor of the Methodist Church. There Mrs. Addy was taken ill, and as she grew steadily worse we returned to Boston to live near the best availa- ble physicians, who for months theorized over her malady without being able to diagnose it. At last her father, Captain Crowell, sent to Paris for Dr. Brown-Sequard, then the most distinguished special- ist of his day, and Dr. Brown-Sequard, when he arrived and examined his patient, discovered that she had a tumor on the brain. She had had a great shock in her life–the tragic death of her husband at sea during their wedding tour around the world– and it was believed that her disease dated from that time. Nothing could be done for her, and she failed daily during our second year together, and died in March, 1878, just before I finished my theological course and while I was still temporary pastor of the church at Hingham. Every moment I could take from my parish and my studies I spent with her, and those were sorrowful months. In her poor, tortured brain the idea formed that I, not she, was the sick person in our family of two, and when we were at home together she insisted that I must lie down and let her nurse me; then for hours she brooded over me, trying to relieve the agony she believed I was experiencing. When at last she was at peace her father and I took her home to Cape Cod and laid her in the graveyard of the little church where we had met at the beginning of our brief and beautiful friendship; and the subsequent loneliness I felt was far greater than any I had ever suffered in the past, for now I had learned the meaning of com- panionship. Three months after Mrs. Addy’s death I grad- uated. She had planned to take me abroad, and during our first winter together we had spent count- less hours talking and dreaming of our European wanderings. When she found that she must die she made her will and left me fifteen hundred dollars for the visit to Europe, insisting that I must carry out the plan we had made; and during her conscious periods she constantly talked of this and made me promise that I would go. After her death it seemed to me that to go without her was impossible. Every- thing of beauty I looked upon would hold memories of her, keeping fresh my sorrow and emphasizing my loneliness; but it was her last expressed desire that I should go, and I went. First, however, I had graduated–clad in a brand- new black silk gown, and with five dollars in my pocket, which I kept there during the graduation exercises. I felt a special satisfaction in the pos- session of that money, for, notwithstanding the handicap of being a woman, I was said to be the only member of my class who had worked during the entire course, graduated free from debt, and had a new outfit as well as a few dollars in cash. I graduated without any special honors. Pos- sibly I might have won some if I had made the effort, but my graduation year, as I have just explained, had been very difficult. As it was, I was merely a good average student, feeling my isolation as the only woman in my class, but certainly not spurring on my men associates by the display of any brilliant gifts. Naturally, I missed a great deal of class fellowship and class support, and throughout my entire course I rarely entered my class-room with- out the abysmal conviction that I was not really wanted there. But some of the men were good- humoredly cordial, and several of them are among my friends to-day. Between myself and my family there still existed the breach I had created when I began to preach. With the exception of Mary and James, my people openly regarded me, during my theological course, as a dweller in outer darkness, and even my mother’s love was clouded by what she felt to be my deliberate and persistent flouting of her wishes. Toward the end of my university experience, how- ever, an incident occurred which apparently changed my mother’s viewpoint. She was now living with my sister Mary, in Big Rapids, Michigan, and, on the occasion of one of my rare and brief visits to them I was invited to preach in the local church. Here, for the first time, my mother heard me. Dutifully escorted by one of my brothers, she at- tended church that morning in a state of shivering nervousness. I do not know what she expected me to do or say, but toward the end of the sermon it became clear that I had not justified her fears. The look of intense apprehension left her eyes, her features relaxed into placidity, and later in the day she paid me the highest compliment I had yet re- ceived from a member of my family. “I liked the sermon very much,” she peacefully told my brother. “Anna didn’t say anything about hell, or about anything else!” When we laughed at this handsome tribute, she hastened to qualify it. “What I mean,” she explained, “is that Anna didn’t say anything objectionable in the pulpit!” And with this recognition I was content. Between the death of my friend and my departure for Europe I buried myself in the work of the uni- versity and of my little church; and as if in answer to the call of my need, Mary E. Livermore, who had given me the first professional encouragement I had ever received, re-entered my life. Her husband, like myself, was pastor of a church in Hingham, and whenever his finances grew low, or there was need of a fund for some special purpose–conditions that usually exist in a small church–his brilliant wife came to his assistance and raised the money, while her husband retired modestly to the background and regarded her with adoring eyes. On one of these occasions, I remember, when she entered the pulpit to preach her sermon, she dropped her bon- net and coat on an unoccupied chair. A little later there was need of this chair, and Mr. Livermore, who sat under the pulpit, leaned forward, picked up the garments, and, without the least trace of self- consciousness, held them in his lap throughout the sermon. One of the members of the church, who appeared to be irritated by the incident, later spoke of it to him and added, sardonically, “How does it feel to be merely Mrs. Livermore’s husband’?” In reply Mr. Livermore flashed on him one of his charming smiles. “Why, I’m very proud of it,” he said, with the utmost cheerfulness. “You see, I’m the only man in the world who has that dis- tinction.” They were a charming couple, the Livermores, and they deserved far more than they received from a world to which they gave so freely and so richly. To me, as to others, they were more than kind; and I never recall them without a deep feeling of grati- tude and an equally deep sense of loss in their passing. It was during this period, also, that I met Frances E. Willard. There was a great Moody revival in progress in Boston, and Miss Willard was the right- hand assistant of Mr. Moody. To her that revival must have been marked with a star, for during it she met for the first time Miss Anna Gordon, who became her life-long friend and her biographer. The meetings also laid the foundation of our friend- ship, and for many years Miss Willard and I were closely associated in work and affection. On the second or third night of the revival, dur- ing one of the “mixed meetings,” attended by both women and men, Mr. Moody invited those who were willing to talk to sinners to come to the front. I went down the aisle with others, and found a seat near Miss Willard, to whom I was then introduced by some one who knew us both. I wore my hair short in those days, and I had a little fur cap on my head. Though I had been preaching for several years, I looked absurdly young–far too young, it soon became evident, to interest Mr. Moody. He was already moving about among the men and women who had responded to his invitation, and one by one he invited them to speak, passing me each time until at last I was left alone. Then he took pity on me and came to my side to whisper kindly that I had misunderstood his invitation. He did not want young girls to talk to his people, he said, but mature women with worldly experi- ence. He advised me to go home to my mother, adding, to soften the blow, that some time in the future when there were young girls at the meeting I could come and talk to them. I made no explanations to him, but started to leave, and Miss Willard, who saw me departing, fol- lowed and stopped me. She asked why I was going, and I told her that Mr. Moody had sent me home to grow. Frances Willard had a keen sense of humor, and she enjoyed the joke so thoroughly that she finally convinced me it was amusing, though at first the humor of it had escaped me. She took me back to Mr. Moody and explained the situation to him, and he apologized and put me to work. He said he had thought I was about sixteen. After that I occasionally helped him in the intervals of my other work. The time had come to follow Mrs. Addy’s wishes and go to Europe, and I sailed in the month of June following my graduation, and traveled for three months with a party of tourists under the direction of Eben Tourgee, of the Boston Conservatory of Music. We landed in Glasgow, and from there went to England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, France, and last of all to Italy. Our company in- cluded many clergymen and a never-to-be-forgotten widow whose light-hearted attitude toward the mem- ory of her departed spouse furnished the comedy of our first voyage. It became a pet diversion to ask her if her husband still lived, for she always answered the question in the same mournful words, and with the same manner of irrepressible gaiety. “Oh no!” she would chirp. “My dear departed has been in our Heavenly Father’s house for the past eight years!” At its best, the vacation without my friend was tragically incomplete, and only a few of its incidents stand out with clearness across the forty-six years that have passed since then. One morning, I re- member, I preached an impromptu sermon in the Castle of Heidelberg before a large gathering; and a little later, in Genoa, I preached a very different sermon to a wholly different congregation. There was a gospel-ship in the harbor, and one Saturday the pastor of it came ashore to ask if some American clergyman in our party would preach on his ship the next morning. He was an old-time, orthodox Presbyterian, and from the tips of his broad-soled shoes to the severe part in the hair above his sancti- monious brow he looked the type. I was not pres- sent when he called at our hotel, and my absence gave my fellow-clergymen an opportunity to play a joke on the gentleman from the gospel-ship. They assured him that “Dr. Shaw” would preach for him, and the pastor returned to his post greatly pleased. When they told me of his invitation, however, they did not add that they had neglected to tell him Dr. Shaw was a woman, and I was greatly elated by the compliment I thought had been paid me. Our entire party of thirty went out to the gospel- ship the next morning, and when the pastor came to meet us, lank and forbidding, his austere lips vainly trying to curve into a smile of welcome, they intro- duced me to him as the minister who was to deliver the sermon. He had just taken my hand; he dropped it as if it had burned his own. For a mo- ment he had no words to meet the crisis. Then he stuttered something to the effect that the situation was impossible that his men would not listen to a woman, that they would mob her, that it would be blasphemous for a woman to preach. My asso- ciates, who had so light-heartedly let me in for this unpleasant experience, now realized that they must see me through it. They persuaded him to allow me to preach the sermon. With deep reluctance the pastor finally accepted me and the situation; but when the moment came to introduce me, he devoted most of his time to heartfelt apologies for my presence. He explained to the sailors that I was a woman, and fervidly assured them that he himself was not responsible for my appearance there. With every word he ut- tered he put a brick in the wall he was building be- tween me and the crew, until at last I felt that I could never get past it. I was very unhappy, very lonely, very homesick; and suddenly the thought came to me that these men, notwithstanding their sullen eyes and forbidding faces, might be lonely and homesick, too. I decided to talk to them as a woman and not as a minister, and I came down from the pulpit and faced them on their own level, look- ing them over and mentally selecting the hardest specimens of the lot as the special objects of my appeal. One old fellow, who looked like a pirate with his red-rimmed eyes, weather-beaten skin, and fimbriated face, grinned up at me in such sardonic challenge that I walked directly in front of him and began to speak. I said: “My friends, I hope you will forget everything Dr. Blank has just said. It is true that I am a minister, and that I came here to preach. But now I do not intend to preach–only to have a friendly talk, on a text which is not in the Bible. I am very far from home, and I feel as homesick as some of you men look. So my text is, Blessed are the home- sick, for they shall go home.’ ” In my summers at Cape Cod I had learned some- thing about sailors. I knew that in the inprepos- sessing congregation before me there were many boys who had run away from home, and men who had left home because of family troubles. I talked to the young men first, to those who had forgotten their mothers and thought their mothers had for- gotten them, and I told of my experiences with waiting, heavy-hearted mothers who had sons at sea. Some heads went down at that, and here and there I saw a boy gulp, but the old fellow I was par- ticularly anxious to move still grinned up at me like a malicious monkey. Then I talked of the sailor’s wife, and of her double burden of homemaking and anxiety, and soon I could pick out some of the hus- bands by their softened faces. But still my old man grinned and squinted. Last of all I described the whalers who were absent from home for years, and who came back to find their children and their grandchildren waiting for them. I told how I had seen them, in our New England coast towns, covered, as a ship is covered with barnacles, by grandchildren who rode on their shoulders and sat astride of their necks as they walked down the village streets. And now at last the sneer left my old man’s loose lips. He had grandchildren somewhere. He twisted un- easily in his seat, coughed, and finally took out a big red handkerchief and wiped his eyes. The episode encouraged me. “When I came here,” I added, “I intended to preach a sermon on `The Heavenly Vision.’ Now I want to give you a glimpse of that in addition to the vision we have had of home.” I ended with a bit of the sermon and a prayer, and when I raised my head the old man of the sar- donic grin was standing before me. “Missus,” he said in a husky whisper, “I’d like to shake your hand.” I took his hard old fist, and then, seeing that many of the other sailors were beginning to move hospitably but shyly toward me, I said: “I would like to shake hands with every man here.” At the words they surged forward, and the affair became a reception, during which I shook hands with every sailor of my congregation. The next day my hand was swollen out of shape, for the sailors had gripped it as if they were hauling on a hawser; but the experience was worth the discomfort. The best moment of the morning came, however, when the pastor of the ship faced me, goggle-eyed and mar- veling. “I wouldn’t have believed it,” was all he could say. “I thought the men would mob you.” “Why should they mob me?” I wanted to know. “Why,” he stammered, “because the thing is so –so–unnatural.” “Well,” I said, “if it is unnatural for women to talk to men, we have been living in an unnatural world for a long time. Moreover, if it is unnatural, why did Jesus send a woman out as the first preach- er?” He waived a discussion of that question by invit- ing us all to his cabin to drink wine with him–and as we were “total abstainers,” it seemed as un- natural to us to have him offer us wine as a woman’s preaching had seemed to him. The next European incident on which memory throws a high-light was our audience with Pope Leo XIII. As there were several distinguished Americans in our party, a private audience was ar- ranged for us, and for days before the time appointed we nervously rehearsed the etiquette of the oc- casion. When we reached the Vatican we were marched between rows of Swiss Guards to the Throne Room, only to learn there that we were to be received in the Tapestry Room. Here we found a very impressive assemblage of cardinals and Vatican officials, and while we were still lost in the beauty of the picture they made against the room’s superb background, the approach of the Pope was announced. Every one immediately knelt, except a few persons who tried to show their democracy by standing; but I am sure that even these individuals felt a thrill when the slight, exquisite figure appeared at the door and gave us a general benediction. Then the Pope passed slowly down the line, offering his hand to each of us, and radiating a charm so gracious and so human that few failed to respond to the appeal of his engaging personality. There was nothing fleshly about Leo XIII. His body was so frail, so wraithlike, that one almost expected to see through it the magnificent tapestries on the walls. But from the moment he appeared every eye clung to him, every thought was concentrated upon him. This effect I think he would have produced even if he had come among us unrecognized, for through the thin shell that housed it shone the steady flame of a wonderful spirit. I had previously remarked to my friends that kissing the Pope’s ring after so many other lips had touched it did not appeal to me as hygienic, and that I intended to kiss his hand instead. When my op- portunity came I kept my word; but after I had kissed the venerable hand I remained kneeling for an instant with bowed head, a little aghast at my daring. The gentle Father thought, however, that I was waiting for a special blessing. He gave it to me gravely and passed on, and I devoted the next few hours to ungodly crowing over the associ- ates who had received no such individual atten- tion. In Venice we attended the great fete celebrating the first visit of King Humbert and Queen Mar- gherita. It was also the first time Venice had en- tertained a queen since the Italian union, and the sea-queen of the Adriatic outdid herself in the gor- geousness and the beauty of her preparations. The Grand Canal was like a flowing rainbow, reflecting the brilliant decorations on every side, and at night the moonlight, the music, the chiming church-bells, the colored lanterns, the gay voices, the lapping waters against the sides of countless gondolas made the experience seem like a dream of a new and un- believably beautiful world. Forty thousand per- sons were gathered in the Square of St. Mark and in front of the Palace, and I recall a pretty incident in which the gracious Queen and a little street urchin figured. The small, ragged boy had crept as close to the royal balcony as he dared, and then, unobserved, had climbed up one of its pillars. At the moment when a sudden hush had fallen on the crowd this infant, overcome by patriotism and a glimpse of the royal lady on the balcony above him, suddenly piped up shrilly in the silence. “ Long live the Queen!” he cried. “Long live the Queen!” The gracious Margherita heard the childish voice, and, amused and interested, leaned over the bal- cony to see where it came from. What she saw doubtless touched the mother-heart in her. She caught the eye of the tattered urchin clinging to the pillar, and radiantly smiled on him. Then, prob- ably thinking that the King was absorbing the at- tention of the great assemblage, she indulged in a little diversion. Leaning far forward, she kissed the tip of her lace handkerchief and swept it caressingly across the boy’s brown cheek, smiling down at him as unconsciously as if she and the enraptured young- ster were alone together in the world. The next instant she had straightened up and flushed, for the watchful crowd had seen the episode and was wild with enthusiasm. For ten minutes the people cheered the Queen without ceasing, and for the next few days they talked of little but the spontaneous, girlish action which had delighted them all. One more sentimental record, and I shall have reached another mile-stone. As I have said, my friend Mrs. Addy left me in her will fifteen hundred dollars for my visit to Europe, and before I sailed her father, who was one of the best friends I have ever had, made a characteristically kind proposition in connection with the little fund. Instead of giving me the money, he gave me two railroad bonds, one for one thousand dollars, the other for five hundred dollars, and each drawing seven per cent. interest. He suggested that I deposit these bonds in the bank of which he was president, and borrow from the bank the money to go abroad. Then, when I re- turned and went into my new parish, I could use some of my salary every month toward repaying the loan. These monthly payments, he explained, could be as small as I wished, but each month the interest on the amount I paid would cease. I glad- ly took his advice and borrowed seven hundred dollars. After I returned from Europe I repaid the loan in monthly instalments, and eventually got my bonds, which I still own. They will mature in 1916. I have had one hundred and five dollars a year from them, in interest, ever since I received them in 1878 –more than twice as much interest as their face value–and every time I have gone abroad I have used this interest toward paying my passage. Thus my friend has had a share in each of the many visits I have made to Europe, and in all of them her memory has been vividly with me. With my return from Europe my real career as a minister began. The year in the pulpit at Hing- ham had been merely tentative, and though I had succeeded in building up the church membership to four times what it had been when I took charge, I was not reappointed. I had paid off a small church debt, and had had the building repaired, painted, and carpeted. Now that it was out of its difficulties it offered some advantages to the occupant of its pul- pit, and of these my successor, a man, received the benefit. I, however, had small ground for com- plaint, for I was at once offered and accepted the pastorate of a church at East Dennis, Cape Cod. Here I went in October, 1878, and here I spent seven of the most interesting years of my life. V SHEPHERD OF A DIVIDED FLOCK On my return from Europe, as I have said, I took up immediately and most buoyantly the work of my new parish. My previous occupation of various pulpits, whether long or short, had always been in the role of a substitute. Now, for the first time, I had a church of my own, and was to stand or fall by the record made in it. The ink was barely dry on my diploma from the Boston Theological School, and, as it happened, the little church to which I was called was in the hands of two warring factions, whose battles furnished the most fervid interest of the Cape Cod community. But my in- experience disturbed me not at all, and I was bliss- fully ignorant of the division in the congregation. So I entered my new field as trustfully as a child enters a garden; and though I was in trouble from the beginning, and resigned three times in startling succession, I ended by remaining seven years. My appointment did not cause even a lull in the warfare among my parishioners. Before I had crossed the threshold of my church I was made to realize that I was shepherd of a divided flock. Exactly what had caused the original breach I never learned; but it had widened with time, until it seemed that no peacemaker could build a bridge large enough to span it. As soon as I arrived in East Dennis each faction tried to pour into my ears its bitter criticisms of the other, but I made and consistently followed the safe rule of refusing to listen to either side, I announced publicly that I would hear no verbal charges whatever, but that if my two flocks would state their troubles in writing I would call a board meeting to discuss and pass upon them. This they both resolutely refused to do (it was apparently the first time they had ever agreed on any point); and as I steadily declined to listen to complaints, they devised an original method of putting them before me. During the regular Thursday-night prayer-meet- ing, held about two weeks after my arrival, and at which, of course, I presided, they voiced their diffi- culties in public prayer, loudly and urgently calling upon the Lord to pardon such and such a liar, men- tioning the gentleman by name, and such and such a slanderer, whose name was also submitted. By the time the prayers were ended there were few un- tarnished reputations in the congregation, and I knew, perforce, what both sides had to say. The following Thursday night they did the same thing, filling their prayers with intimate and sur- prising details of one another’s history, and I en- dured the situation solely because I did not know how to meet it. I was still young, and my theo- logical course had set no guide-posts on roads as new as these. To interfere with souls in their com- munion with God seemed impossible; to let them continue to utter personal attacks in church, under cover of prayer, was equally impossible. Any course I could follow seemed to lead away from my new parish, yet both duty and pride made prompt action neces- sary. By the time we gathered for the third prayer- meeting I had decided what to do, and before the services began I rose and addressed my erring chil- dren. I explained that the character of the prayers at our recent meetings was making us the laughing- stock of the community, that unbelievers were ridiculing our religion, and that the discipline of the church was being wrecked; and I ended with these words, each of which I had carefully weighed: “Now one of two things must happen. Either you will stop this kind of praying, or you will re- main away from our meetings. We will hold prayer- meetings on another night, and I shall refuse ad- mission to any among you who bring personal criti- cisms into your public prayers.” As I had expected it to do, the announcement created an immediate uproar. Both factions sprang to their feet, trying to talk at once. The storm raged until I dismissed the congregation, telling the members that their conduct was an insult to the Lord, and that I would not listen to either their protests or their prayers. They went unwillingly, but they went; and the excitement the next day raised the sick from their beds to talk of it, and swept the length and breadth of Cape Cod. The following Sunday the little church held the largest attendance in its history. Seemingly, every man and woman in town had come to hear what more I would say about the trouble, but I ignored the whole matter. I preached the sermon I had pre- pared, the subject of which was as remote from church quarrels as our atmosphere was remote from peace, and my congregation dispersed with expres- sions of such artless disappointment that it was all I could do to preserve a dignified gravity. That night, however, the war was brought into my camp. At the evening meeting the leader of one of the factions rose to his feet with the obvious pur- pose of starting trouble. He was a retired sea-cap- tain, of the ruthless type that knocks a man down with a belaying-pin, and he made his attack on me in a characteristically “straight from the shoulder” fashion. He began with the proposition that my morning sermon had been “entirely contrary to the Scriptures,” and for ten minutes he quoted and mis- quoted me, hammering in his points. I let him go on without interruption. Then he added: “And this gal comes to this church and under- takes to tell us how we shall pray. That’s a high- handed measure, and I, for one, ain’t goin’ to stand it. I want to say right here that I shall pray as I like, when I like, and where I like. I have prayed in this heavenly way for fifty years before that gal was born, and she can’t dictate to me now!” By this time the whole congregation was aroused, and cries of “Sit down!” “Sit down!” came from every side of the church. It was a hard moment, but I was able to rise with some show of dignity. I was hurt through and through, but my fighting blood was stirring. “No,” I said, “Captain Sears has the floor. Let him say now all he wishes to say, for it is the last time he will ever speak at one of our meetings.” Captain Sears, whose exertions had already made him apoplectic, turned a darker purple. “What’s that?” he shouted. “What d’ye mean?” “I mean,” I replied, “that I do not intend to allow you or anybody else to interfere with my meetings. You are a sea-captain. What would you do to me if I came on board your ship and started a mutiny in your crew, or tried to give you orders?” Captain Sears did not reply. He stood still, with his legs far apart and braced, as he always stood when talking, but his eyes shifted a little. I answered my own question. “You would put me ashore or in irons,” I re- minded him. “Now, Captain Sears, I intend to put you ashore. I am the master of this ship. I have set my course, and I mean to follow it. If you rebel, either you will get out or I will. But until the board asks for my resignation, I am in command.” As it happened, I had put my ultimatum in the one form the old man could understand. He sat down without a word and stared at me. We sang the Doxology, and I dismissed the meeting. Again we had omitted prayers. The next day Captain Sears sent me a letter recalling his subscription tow- ard the support of the church; and for weeks he remained away from our services, returning under conditions I will mention later. Even at the time, however, his attack helped rather than hurt me. At the regular meeting the following Thursday night no personal criticisms were included in the prayers, and eventually we had peace. But many battles were lost and won before that happy day arrived. Captain Sears’s vacant place among us was promptly taken by another captain in East Dennis, whose name was also Sears. A few days after my encounter with the first captain I met the second on the street. He had never come to church, and I stopped and invited him to do so. He replied with simple candor. “I ain’t comin’,” he told me. “There ain’t no gal that can teach me nothin’.” “Perhaps you are wrong, Captain Sears,” I re- plied. “I might teach you something.” “What?” demanded the captain, with chilling distrust. “Oh,” I said, cheerfully, “let us say tolerance, for one thing.” “Humph!” muttered the old man. “The Lord don’t want none of your tolerance, and neither do I.” I laughed. “He doesn’t object to tolerance,” I said. “Come to church. You can talk, too; and the Lord will listen to us both.” To my surprise, the captain came the following Sunday, and during the seven years I remained in the church he was one of my strongest supporters and friends. I needed friends, for my second battle was not slow in following my first. There was, in- deed, barely time between in which to care for the wounded. We had in East Dennis what was known as the “Free Religious Group,” and when some of the members of my congregation were not wrangling among themselves, they were usually locking horns with this group. For years, I was told, one of the prime diversions of the “Free Religious” faction was to have a dance in our town hall on the night when we were using it for our annual church fair. The rules of the church positively prohibited danc- ing, so the worldly group took peculiar pleasure in attending the fair, and during the evening in getting up a dance and whirling about among us, to the horror of our members. Then they spent the re- mainder of the year boasting of the achievement. It came to my ears that they had decided to follow this pleasing programme at our Christmas church celebration, so I called the church trustees together and put the situation to them. “We must either enforce our discipline,” I said, “or give it up. Personally I do not object to danc- ing, but, as the church has ruled against it, I intend to uphold the church. To allow these people to make us ridiculous year after year is impossible. Let us either tell them that they may dance or that they may not dance; but whatever we tell them, let us make them obey our ruling.” The trustees were shocked at the mere suggestion of letting them dance. “Very well,” I ended. “Then they shall not dance. That is understood.” Captain Crowell, the father of my dead friend Mrs. Addy, and himself my best man friend, was a strong supporter of the Free Religious Group. When its members raced to him with the news that I had said they could not dance at the church’s Christmas party, Captain Crowell laughed good- humoredly and told them to dance as much as they pleased, cheerfully adding that he would get them out of any trouble they got into. Knowing my friendship for him, and that I even owed my church appointment to him, the Free Religious people were certain that I would never take issue with him on dancing or on any other point. They made all their preparations for the dance, therefore, with entire confidence, and boasted that the affair would be the gayest they had ever arranged. My people began to look at me with sympathy, and for a time I felt very sorry for myself. It seemed sufficiently clear that “the gal” was to have more trouble. On the night of the party things went badly from the first. There was an evident intention among the worst of the Free Religious Group to embarrass us at every turn. We opened the exercises with the Lord’s Prayer, which this element loudly applauded. A live kitten was hung high on the Christmas tree, where it squalled mournfully beyond reach of rescue, and the young men of the outside group threw cake at one another across the hall. Finally tiring of these innocent diversions, they began to prepare for their dance, and I protested. The spokesman of the group waved me to one side. “Captain Crowell said we could,” he remarked, airily. “Captain Crowell,” I replied, “has no authority whatever in this matter. The church trustees have decided that you cannot dance here, and I intend to enforce their ruling.” It was interesting to observe how rapidly the men of my congregation disappeared from that hall. Like shadows they crept along the walls and vanished through the doors. But the preparations for the dance went merrily on. I walked to the middle of the room and raised my voice. I was always listened to, for my hearers always had the hope, usually realized, that I was about to get into more trouble. “You are determined to dance,” I began. “I cannot keep you from doing so. But I can and will make you regret that you have done so. The law of the State of Massachusetts is very definite in re- gard to religious meetings and religious gatherings. This hall was engaged and paid for by the Wesleyan Methodist Church, of which I am pastor, and we have full control of it to-night. Every man and woman who interrupts our exercises by attempting to dance, or by creating a disturbance of any kind, will be arrested to-morrow morning.” Surprise at first, then consternation, swept through the ranks of the Free Religious Group. They denied the existence of such a law as I had mentioned, and I promptly read it aloud to them. The leaders went off into a corner and consulted. By this time not one man in my parish was left in the hall. As a result of the consultation in the corner, a committee of the would-be dancers came to me and suggested a compromise. “Will you agree to arrest the men only?” they wanted to know. “No,” I declared. “On the contrary, I shall have the women arrested first! For the women ought to be standing with me now in the support of law and order, instead of siding with the hoodlum element you represent.” That settled it. No girl or woman dared to go on the dancing-floor, and no man cared to revolve merrily by himself. A whisper went round, how- ever, that the dance would begin when I had left. When the clock struck twelve, at which hour, ac- cording to the town rule, the hall had to be closed, I was the last person to leave it. Then I locked the door myself, and carried the key away with me. There had been no Free Religious dance that night. On the following Sunday morning the attendance at my church broke all previous records. Every seat was occupied and every aisle was filled. Men and women came from surrounding towns, and strange horses were tied to all the fences in East Dennis. Every person in that church was looking for excitement, and this time my congregation got what it expected. Before I began my sermon I read my resignation, to take effect at the discretion of the trustees. Then, as it was presumably my last chance to tell the people and the place what I thought of them, I spent an hour and a half in fer- vidly doing so. In my study of English I had ac- quired a fairly large vocabulary. I think I used it all that morning–certainly I tried to. If ever an erring congregation and community saw themselves as they really were, mine did on that occasion. I was heartsick, discouraged, and full of resentment and indignation, which until then had been pent up. Under the arraignment my people writhed and squirmed. I ended: “What I am saying hurts you, but in your hearts you know you deserve every word of it. It is high time you saw yourselves as you are–a disgrace to the religion you profess and to the community you live in.” I was not sure the congregation would let me finish, but it did. My hearers seemed torn by conflicting sentiments, in which anger and curios- ity led opposing sides. Many of them left the church in a white fury, but others–more than I had expected–remained to speak to me and assure me of their sympathy. Once on the streets, different groups formed and mingled, and all day the little town rocked with arguments for and against “the gal.” Night brought another surprisingly large attend- ance. I expected more trouble, and I faced it with difficulty, for I was very tired. Just as I took my place in the pulpit, Captain Sears entered the church and walked down the aisle–the Captain Sears who had left us at my invitation some weeks before and had not since attended a church service. I was sure he was there to make another attack on me while I was down, and, expecting the worst, I wearily gave him his opportunity. The big old fel- low stood up, braced himself on legs far apart, as if he were standing on a slippery deck during a high sea, and gave the congregation its biggest surprise of the year. He said he had come to make a confession. He had been angry with “the gal” in the past, as they all knew. But he had heard about the sermon she had preached that morning, and this time she was right. It was high time quarreling and backbiting were stopped. They had been going on too long, and no good could come of them. Moreover, in all the years he had been a member of that congre- gation he had never until now seen the pulpit oc- cupied by a minister with enough backbone to up- hold the discipline of the church. “I’ve come here to say I’m with the gal,” he ended. “Put me down for my original subscription and ten dollars extra!” So we had the old man back again. He was a tower of strength, and he stood by me faithfully until he died. The trustees would not accept my resignation (indeed, they refused to consider it at all), and the congregation, when it had thought things over, apparently decided that there might be worse things in the pulpit than “the gal.” It was even known to brag of what it called my “spunk,” and perhaps it was this quality, rather than any other, which I most needed in that particular parish at that time. As for me, when the fight was over I dropped it from my mind, and it had not entered my thoughts for years, until I began to summon these memories. At the end of my first six months in East Dennis I was asked to take on, also, the temporary charge of the Congregational Church at Dennis, two miles and a half away. I agreed to do this until a per- manent pastor could be found, on condition that I should preach at Dennis on Sunday afternoons, using

title: “The Story Of A Pioneer By Anna Howard Shaw And Elizabeth Jordan " ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-23” author: “Barbara Arehart”

They cut a path through tangled underwood Of old traditions, out to broader ways. They lived to here their work called brave and good, But oh! the thorns before the crown of bays. The world gives lashes to its Pioneers Until the goal is reached–then deafening cheers. Adapted by ANNA HOWARD SHAW. CONTENTS I. FIRST MEMORIES II. IN THE WILDERNESS III. HIGH-SCHOOL AND COLLEGE DAYS IV. THE WOLF AT THE DOOR V. SHEPHERD OF A DIVIDED FLOCK VI. CAPE COD MEMORIES VII. THE GREAT CAUSE VIII. DRAMA IN THE LECTURE FIELD IX. “AUNT SUSAN” X. THE PASSING OF “AUNT SUSAN” XI. THE WIDENING SUFFRAGE STREAM XII. BUILDING A HOME XIII. PRESIDENT OF “THE NATIONAL” XIV. RECENT CAMPAIGNS XV. CONVENTION INCIDENTS XVI. COUNCIL EPISODES XVII. VALE! ILLUSTRATIONS REVEREND ANNA HOWARD SHAW IN HER PULPIT ROBES LOCH-AN-EILAN CASTLE DR SHAW’S MOTHER, NICOLAS SHAW, AT SEVENTEEN ALNWICK CASTLE DR. SHAW AT THIRTY-TWO DR. SHAW AT FIFTY DR. SHAW AND “HER BABY”–THE DAUGHTER OF RACHEL FOSTER AVERY DR. SHAW’S MOTHER AT EIGHTY DR. SHAW’S FATHER AT EIGHTY DR. SHAW’S SISTER MARY, WHO DIED IN 1883 LUCY E. ANTHONY, DR. SHAW S FRIEND AND “AUNT SUSAN’S” FAVORITE NIECE THE WOOD ROAD NEAR DR. SHAW’S CAPE COD HOME, THE HAVEN DR. SHAW’S COTTAGE, THE HAVEN, AT WIANNO, CAPE COD–THE FIRST HOME SHE BUILT GATE ENTRANCE TO DR. SHAW’S HOME AT MOYLAN THE SECOND HOUSE THAT DR. SHAW BUILT SUSAN B. ANTHONY MISS MARY GARRETT, THE LIFE-LONG FRIEND OF MISS THOMAS MISS M. CAREY THOMAS, PRESIDENT OF BRYN MAWR COLLEGE ELIZABETH CADY STANTON CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT LUCY STONE MARY A. LIVERMORE FOUR PIONEERS IN THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT FIREPLACE IN THE LIVING-ROOM, SHOWING AUNT SUSAN’S” CHAIR HALLWAY IN DR. SHAW’S HOME AT MOYLAN DR. SHAW’S HOME (ALNWICK LODGE) AND HER TWO OAKS THE VERANDA AT ALNWICK LODGE SACCAWAGEA ALNWICK LODGE, DR. SHAW’S HOME THE ROCK-BORDERED BROOK WHICH DR. SHAW LOVES THE STORY OF A PIONEER FIRST MEMORIES My father’s ancestors were the Shaws of Rothiemurchus, in Scotland, and the ruins of their castle may still be seen on the island of Loch-an-Eilan, in the northern Highlands. It was never the picturesque castle of song and story, this home of the fighting Shaws, but an austere fortress, probably built in Roman times; and even to-day the crumbling walls which alone are left of it show traces of the relentless assaults upon them. Of these the last and the most successful were made in the seventeenth century by the Grants and Rob Roy; and it was into the hands of the Grants that the Shaw fortress finally fell, about 1700, after almost a hundred years of ceaseless warfare. It gives me no pleasure to read the grisly details of their struggles, but I confess to a certain satisfac- tion in the knowledge that my ancestors made a good showing in the defense of what was theirs. Beyond doubt they were brave fighters and strong men. There were other sides to their natures, however, which the high lights of history throw up less appealingly. As an instance, we have in the family chronicles the blood-stained page of Allen Shaw, the oldest son of the last Lady Shaw who lived in the fortress. It appears that when the father of this young man died, about 1560, his mother married again, to the intense disapproval of her son. For some time after the marriage he made no open revolt against the new-comer in the domestic circle; but finally, on the pretext that his dog had been attacked by his stepfather, he forced a quarrel with the older man and the two fought a duel with swords, after which the vic- torious Allen showed a sad lack of chivalry. He not only killed his stepfather, but he cut off that gentleman’s head and bore it to his mother in her bed- chamber–an action which was considered, even in that tolerant age, to be carrying filial resentment too far. Probably Allen regretted it. Certainly he paid a high penalty for it, and his clan suffered with him. He was outlawed and fled, only to be hunted down for months, and finally captured and executed by one of the Grants, who, in further virtuous disap- proval of Allen’s act, seized and held the Shaw stronghold. The other Shaws of the clan fought long and ably for its recovery, but though they were helped by their kinsmen, the Mackintoshes, and though good Scotch blood dyed the gray walls of the fortress for many generations, the castle never again came into the hands of the Shaws. It still entails certain obligations for the Grants, however, and one of these is to give the King of England a snowball whenever he visits Loch-an-Eilan! As the years passed the Shaw clan scattered. Many Shaws are still to be found in the Mackintosh country and throughout southern Scotland. Others went to England, and it was from this latter branch that my father sprang. His name was Thomas Shaw, and he was the younger son of a gentleman–a word which in those days seemed to define a man who devoted his time largely to gambling and horse- racing. My grandfather, like his father before him, was true to the traditions of his time and class. Quite naturally and simply he squandered all he had, and died abruptly, leaving his wife and two sons penniless. They were not, however, a helpless band. They, too, had their traditions, handed down by the fighting Shaws. Peter, the older son, became a soldier, and died bravely in the Crimean War. My father, through some outside influence, turned his attention to trade, learning to stain and emboss wall- paper by hand, and developing this work until he became the recognized expert in his field. Indeed, he progressed until he himself checked his rise by inventing a machine that made his handwork un- necessary. His employer at once claimed and utilized this invention, to which, by the laws of those days, he was entitled, and thus the corner- stone on which my father had expected to build a fortune proved the rock on which his career was wrecked. But that was years later, in America, and many other things had happened first. For one, he had temporarily dropped his trade and gone into the flour-and-grain business; and, for another, he had married my mother. She was the daughter of a Scotch couple who had come to England and settled in Alnwick, in Northumberland County. Her father, James Stott, was the driver of the royal-mail stage between Alnwick and New- castle, and his accidental death while he was still a young man left my grandmother and her eight children almost destitute. She was immediately given a position in the castle of the Duke of Nor- thumberland, and her sons were educated in the duke’s school, while her daughters were entered in the school of the duchess. My thoughts dwell lovingly on this grandmother, Nicolas Grant Stott, for she was a remarkable woman, with a dauntless soul and progressive ideas far in advance of her time. She was one of the first Unitarians in England, and years before any thought of woman suffrage entered the minds of her country- women she refused to pay tithes to the support of the Church of England–an action which precipitated a long-drawn-out conflict between her and the law. In those days it was customary to assess tithes on every pane of glass in a window, and a portion of the money thus collected went to the support of the Church. Year after year my intrepid grandmother refused to pay these assessments, and year after year she sat pensively upon her door-step, watching articles of her furniture being sold for money to pay her tithes. It must have been an impressive picture, and it was one with which the community became thoroughly familiar, as the determined old lady never won her fight and never abandoned it. She had at least the comfort of public sympathy, for she was by far the most popular woman in the country- side. Her neighbors admired her courage; perhaps they appreciated still more what she did for them, for she spent all her leisure in the homes of the very poor, mending their clothing and teaching them to sew. Also, she left behind her a path of cleanliness as definite as the line of foam that follows a ship; for it soon became known among her protegees that Nicolas Stott was as much opposed to dirt as she was to the payment of tithes. She kept her children in the schools of the duke and duchess until they had completed the entire course open to them. A hundred times, and among many new scenes and strange people, I have heard my mother describe her own experiences as a pupil. All the children of the dependents of the castle were expected to leave school at fourteen years of age. During their course they were not allowed to study geography, because, in the sage opinion of their elders, knowledge of foreign lands might make them dis- contented and inclined to wander. Neither was com- position encouraged–that might lead to the writing of love-notes! But they were permitted to absorb all the reading and arithmetic their little brains could hold, while the art of sewing was not only encouraged, but proficiency in it was stimulated by the award of prizes. My mother, being a rather pre- cocious young person, graduated at thirteen and carried off the first prize. The garment she made was a linen chemise for the duchess, and the little needlewoman had embroidered on it, with her own hair, the august lady’s coat of arms. The offering must have been appreciated, for my mother’s story always ended with the same words, uttered with the same air of gentle pride, “And the duchess gave me with her own hands my Bible and my mug of beer!” She never saw anything amusing in this association of gifts, and I always stood behind her when she told the incident, that she might not see the disrespectful mirth it aroused in me. My father and mother met in Alnwick, and were married in February, 1835. Ten years after his marriage father was forced into bankruptcy by the passage of the corn law, and to meet the obliga- tions attending his failure he and my mother sold practically everything they possessed–their home, even their furniture. Their little sons, who were away at school, were brought home, and the family expenses were cut down to the barest margin; but all these sacrifices paid only part of the debts. My mother, finding that her early gift had a market value, took in sewing. Father went to work on a small salary, and both my parents saved every penny they could lay aside, with the desperate determination to pay their remaining debts. It was a long struggle and a painful one, but they finally won it. Before they had done so, however, and during their bleakest days, their baby died, and my mother, like her mother before her, paid the penalty of being outside the fold of the Church of England. She, too, was a Unitarian, and her baby, therefore, could not be laid in any consecrated burial-ground in her neighborhood. She had either to bury it in the Potter’s Field, with criminals, suicides, and paupers, or to take it by stage-coach to Alnwick, twenty miles away, and leave it in the little Unitarian church- yard where, after her strenuous life, Nicolas Stott now lay in peace. She made the dreary journey alone, with the dear burden across her lap. In 1846, my parents went to London. There they did not linger long, for the big, indifferent city had nothing to offer them. They moved to New- castle-on-Tyne, and here I was born, on the four- teenth day of February, in 1847. Three boys and two girls had preceded me in the family circle, and when I was two years old my younger sister came. We were little better off in Newcastle than in London, and now my father began to dream the great dream of those days. He would go to America. Surely, he felt, in that land of infinite promise all would be well with him and his. He waited for the final payment of his debts and for my younger sister’s birth. Then he bade us good-by and sailed away to make an American home for us; and in the spring of 1851 my mother followed him with her six children, starting from Liverpool in a sailing- vessel, the John Jacob Westervelt. I was then little more than four years old, and the first vivid memory I have is that of being on ship- board and having a mighty wave roll over me. I was lying on what seemed to be an enormous red box under a hatchway, and the water poured from above, almost drowning me. This was the beginning of a storm which raged for days, and I still have of it a confused memory, a sort of nightmare, in which strange horrors figure, and which to this day haunts me at intervals when I am on the sea. The thing that stands out most strongly during that period is the white face of my mother, ill in her berth. We were with five hundred emigrants on the lowest deck of the ship but one, and as the storm grew wilder an unreasoning terror filled our fellow-pas- sengers. Too ill to protect her helpless brood, my mother saw us carried away from her for hours at a time, on the crests of waves of panic that sometimes approached her and sometimes receded, as they swept through the black hole in which we found our- selves when the hatches were nailed down. No mad- house, I am sure, could throw more hideous pictures on the screen of life than those which met our childish eyes during the appalling three days of the storm. Our one comfort was the knowledge that our mother was not afraid. She was desperately ill, but when we were able to reach her, to cling close to her for a blessed interval, she was still the sure refuge she had always been. On the second day the masts went down, and on the third day the disabled ship, which now had sprung a leak and was rolling helplessly in the trough of the sea, was rescued by another ship and towed back to Queenstown, the nearest port. The passengers, relieved of their anxieties, went from their extreme of fear to an equal extreme of drunken celebration. They laughed, sang, and danced, but when we reached the shore many of them returned to the homes they had left, declaring that they had had enough of the ocean. We, however, remained on the ship until she was repaired, and then sailed on her again. We were too poor to return home; indeed, we had no home to which we could return. We were even too poor to live ashore. But we made some penny excursions in the little boats that plied back and forth, and to us children at least the weeks of waiting were not without interest. Among other places we visited Spike Island, where the convicts were, and for hours we watched the dreary shuttle of labor swing back and forth as the convicts car- ried pails of water from one side of the island, only to empty them into the sea at the other side. It was merely “busy work,” to keep them occupied at hard labor; but even then I must have felt some dim sense of the irony of it, for I have remembered it vividly all these years. Our second voyage on the John Jacob Westervelt was a very different experience from the first. By day a glorious sun shone overhead; by night we had the moon and stars, as well as the racing waves we never wearied of watching. For some reason, prob- ably because of my intense admiration for them, which I showed with unmaidenly frankness, I be- came the special pet of the sailors. They taught me to sing their songs as they hauled on their ropes, and I recall, as if I had learned it yesterday, one pleasing ditty: Haul on the bow-line, Kitty is my darling, Haul on the bow-line, The bow-line–HAUL! When I sang “haul” all the sailors pulled their hardest, and I had an exhilarating sense of sharing in their labors. As a return for my service of song the men kept my little apron full of ship sugar– very black stuff and probably very bad for me; but I ate an astonishing amount of it during that voy- age, and, so far as I remember, felt no ill effects. The next thing I recall is being seriously scalded. I was at the foot of a ladder up which a sailor was carrying a great pot of hot coffee. He slipped, and the boiling liquid poured down on me. I must have had some bad days after that, for I was ter- ribly burned, but they are mercifully vague. My next vivid impression is of seeing land, which we sighted at sunset, and I remember very distinctly just how it looked. It has never looked the same since. The western sky was a mass of crimson and gold clouds, which took on the shapes of strange and beautiful things. To me it seemed that we were entering heaven. I remember also the doctors com- ing on board to examine us, and I can still see a line of big Irishmen standing very straight and holding out their tongues for inspection. To a little girl only four years old their huge, open mouths looked appalling. On landing a grievous disappointment awaited us; my father did not meet us. He was in New Bedford, Massachusetts, nursing his grief and pre- paring to return to England, for he had been told that the John Jacob Westervelt had been lost at sea with every soul on board. One of the missionaries who met the ship took us under his wing and con- ducted us to a little hotel, where we remained until father had received his incredible news and rushed to New York. He could hardly believe that we were really restored to him; and even now, through the mists of more than half a century, I can still see the expression in his wet eyes as he picked me up and tossed me into the air. I can see, too, the toys he brought me–a little saw and a hatchet, which became the dearest treas- ures of my childish days. They were fatidical gifts, that saw and hatchet; in the years ahead of me I was to use tools as well as my brothers did, as I proved when I helped to build our frontier home. We went to New Bedford with father, who had found work there at his old trade; and here I laid the foundations of my first childhood friendship, not with another child, but with my next-door neighbor, a ship-builder. Morning after morning this man swung me on his big shoulder and took me to his shipyard, where my hatchet and saw had vio- lent exercise as I imitated the workers around me. Discovering that my tiny petticoats were in my way, my new friend had a little boy’s suit made for me; and thus emancipated, at this tender age, I worked unwearyingly at his side all day long and day after day. No doubt it was due to him that I did not casually saw off a few of my toes and fingers. Cer- tainly I smashed them often enough with blows of my dull but active hatchet. I was very, very busy; and I have always maintained that I began to earn my share of the family’s living at the age of five– for in return for the delights of my society, which seemed never to pall upon him, my new friend al- lowed my brothers to carry home from the ship- yard all the wood my mother could use. We remained in New Bedford less than a year, for in the spring of 1852 my father made another change, taking his family to Lawrence, Massa- chusetts, where we lived until 1859. The years in Lawrence were interesting and formative ones. At the tender age of nine and ten I became interested in the Abolition movement. We were Unitarians, and General Oliver and many of the prominent citi- zens of Lawrence belonged to the Unitarian Church. We knew Robert Shaw, who led the first negro regi- ment, and Judge Storrow, one of the leading New England judges of his time, as well as the Cabots and George A. Walton, who was the author of Walton’s Arithmetic and head of the Lawrence schools. Outbursts of war talk thrilled me, and occasionally I had a little adventure of my own, as when one day, in visiting our cellar, I heard a noise in the coal-bin. I investigated and discovered a negro woman concealed there. I had been reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as well as listening to the conversation of my elders, so I was vastly stirred over the negro question. I raced up-stairs in a condition of awe-struck and quivering excitement, which my mother promptly suppressed by sending me to bed. No doubt she questioned my youthful discretion, for she almost convinced me that I had seen nothing at all–almost, but not quite; and she wisely kept me close to her for several days, until the escaped slave my father was hiding was safely out of the house and away. Discovery of this seri- ous offense might have borne grave results for him. It was in Lawrence, too, that I received and spent my first twenty-five cents. I used an entire day in doing this, and the occasion was one of the most delightful and memorable of my life. It was the Fourth of July, and I was dressed in white and rode in a procession. My sister Mary, who also graced the procession, had also been given twenty-five cents; and during the parade, when, for obvious reasons, we were unable to break ranks and spend our wealth, the consciousness of it lay heavily upon us. When we finally began our shopping the first place we visited was a candy store, and I recall dis- tinctly that we forced the weary proprietor to take down and show us every jar in the place before we spent one penny. The first banana I ever ate was purchased that day, and I hesitated over it a long time. Its cost was five cents, and in view of that large expenditure, the eating of the fruit, I was afraid, would be too brief a joy. I bought it, how- ever, and the experience developed into a tragedy, for, not knowing enough to peel the banana, I bit through skin and pulp alike, as if I were eating an apple, and then burst into ears of disappointment. The beautiful conduct of my sister Mary shines down through the years. She, wise child, had taken no chances with the unknown; but now, moved by my despair, she bought half of my banana, and we divided the fruit, the loss, and the lesson. Fate, moreover, had another turn of the screw for us, for, after Mary had taken a bite of it, we gave what was left of the banana to a boy who stood near us and who knew how to eat it; and not even the large amount of candy in our sticky hands enabled us to regard with calmness the subsequent happiness of that little boy. Another experience with fruit in Lawrence illus- trates the ideas of my mother and the character of the training she gave her children. Our neighbors, the Cabots, were one day giving a great garden party, and my sister was helping to pick strawberries for the occasion. When I was going home from school I passed the berry-patches and stopped to speak to my sister, who at once presented me with two straw- berries. She said Mrs. Cabot had told her to eat all she wanted, but that she would eat two less than she wanted and give those two to me. To my mind, the suggestion was generous and proper; in my life strawberries were rare. I ate one berry, and then, overcome by an ambition to be generous also, took the other berry home to my mother, tell- ing her how I had got it. To my chagrin, mother was deeply shocked. She told me that the trans- action was all wrong, and she made me take back the berry and explain the matter to Mrs. Cabot. By the time I reached that generous lady the berry was the worse for its journey, and so was I. I was only nine years old and very sensitive. It was clear to me that I could hardly live through the humilia- tion of the confession, and it was indeed a bitter experience the worst, I think, in my young life, though Mrs. Cabot was both sympathetic and understanding. She kissed me, and sent a quart of strawberries to my mother; but for a long time afterward I could not meet her kind eyes, for I be- lieved that in her heart she thought me a thief. My second friendship, and one which had a strong influence on my after-life, was formed in Lawrence. I was not more than ten years old when I met this new friend, but the memory of her in after-years, and the impression she had made on my susceptible young mind, led me first into the ministry, next into medicine, and finally into suffrage-work. Living next door to us, on Prospect Hill, was a beautiful and mysterious woman. All we children knew of her was that she was a vivid and romantic figure, who seemed to have no friends and of whom our elders spoke in whispers or not at all. To me she was a princess in a fairy-tale, for she rode a white horse and wore a blue velvet riding-habit with a blue velvet hat and a picturesquely drooping white plume. I soon learned at what hours she went forth to ride, and I used to hover around our gate for the joy of seeing her mount and gallop away. I realized that there was something unusual about her house, and I had an idea that the prince was waiting for her somewhere in the far distance, and that for the time at least she had escaped the ogre in the castle she left behind. I was wrong about the prince, but right about the ogre. It was only when my unhappy lady left her castle that she was free. Very soon she noticed me. Possibly she saw the adoration in my childish eyes. She began to nod and smile at me, and then to speak to me, but at first I was almost afraid to answer her. There were stories now among the children that the house was haunted, and that by night a ghost walked there and in the grounds. I felt an extraordinary interest in the ghost, and I spent hours peering through our picket fence, trying to catch a glimpse of it; but I hesitated to be on terms of neighborly intimacy with one who dwelt with ghosts. One day the mysterious lady bent and kissed me. Then, straightening up, she looked at me queerly and said: “Go and tell your mother I did that.” There was something very compelling in her manner. I knew at once that I must tell my mother what she had done, and I ran into our house and did so. While my mother was considering the problem the situation presented, for she knew the character of the house next door, a note was handed in to her– a very pathetic little note from my mysterious lady, asking my mother to let me come and see her. Long afterward mother showed it to me. It ended with the words: “She will see no one but me. No harm shall come to her. Trust me.” That night my parents talked the matter over and decided to let me go. Probably they felt that the slave next door was as much to be pitied as the es- caped-negro slaves they so often harbored in our home. I made my visit, which was the first of many, and a strange friendship began and developed be- tween the woman of the town and the little girl she loved. Some of those visits I remember as vividly as if I had made them yesterday. There was never the slightest suggestion during any of them of things I should not see or hear, for while I was with her my hostess became a child again, and we played together like children. She had wonderful toys for me, and pictures and books; but the thing I loved best of all and played with for hours was a little stuffed hen which she told me had been her dearest treasure when she was a child at home. She had also a stuffed puppy, and she once mentioned that those two things alone were left of her life as a little girl. Besides the toys and books and pic- tures, she gave me ice-cream and cake, and told me fairy-tales. She had a wonderful understanding of what a child likes. There were half a dozen women in the house with her, but I saw none of them nor any of the men who came. Once, when we had become very good friends indeed and my early shyness had departed, I found courage to ask her where the ghost was– the ghost that haunted her house. I can still see the look in her eyes as they met mine. She told me the ghost lived in her heart, and that she did not like to talk about it, and that we must not speak of it again. After that I never mentioned it, but I was more deeply interested than ever, for a ghost that lived in a heart was a new kind of ghost to me at that time, though I have met many of them since then. During all our intercourse my mother never entered the house next door, nor did my mysterious lady enter our home; but she con- stantly sent my mother secret gifts for the poor and the sick of the neighborhood, and she was always the first to offer help for those who were in trouble. Many years afterward mother told me she was the most generous woman she had ever known, and that she had a rarely beautiful nature. Our depart- ure for Michigan broke up the friendship, but I have never forgotten her; and whenever, in my later work as minister, physician, and suffragist, I have been able to help women of the class to which she belonged, I have mentally offered that help for credit in the tragic ledger of her life, in which the clean and the blotted pages were so strange a contrast. One more incident of Lawrence I must describe before I leave that city behind me, as we left it for ever in 1859. While we were still there a number of Lawrence men decided to go West, and amid great public excitement they departed in a body for Kansas, where they founded the town of Lawrence in that state. I recall distinctly the public interest which attended their going, and the feeling every one seemed to have that they were passing forever out of the civilized world. Their farewells to their friends were eternal; no one expected to see them again, and my small brain grew dizzy as I tried to imagine a place so remote as their destination. It was, I finally decided, at the uttermost ends of the earth, and it seemed quite possible that the brave adventurers who reached it might then drop off into space. Fifty years later I was talking to a Cali- fornia girl who complained lightly of the monotony of a climate where the sun shone and the flowers bloomed all the year around. “But I had a de- lightful change last year,” she added, with anima- tion. “I went East for the winter.” “To New York?” I asked. “No,” corrected the California girl, easily, “to Lawrence, Kansas.” Nothing, I think, has ever made me feel quite so old as that remark. That in my life, not yet, to me at least, a long one, I should see such an arc de- scribed seemed actually oppressive until I realized that, after all, the arc was merely a rainbow of time showing how gloriously realized were the hopes of the Lawrence pioneers. The move to Michigan meant a complete up- heaval in our lives. In Lawrence we had around us the fine flower of New England civilization. We children went to school; our parents, though they were in very humble circumstances, were associated with the leading spirits and the big movements of the day. When we went to Michigan we went to the wilderness, to the wild pioneer life of those times, and we were all old enough to keenly feel the change. My father was one of a number of Englishmen who took up tracts in the northern forests of Michigan, with the old dream of establishing a colony there. None of these men had the least practical knowledge of farming. They were city men or followers of trades which had no connection with farm life. They went straight into the thick timber-land, in- stead of going to the rich and waiting prairies, and they crowned this initial mistake by cutting down the splendid timber instead of letting it stand. Thus bird’s-eye maple and other beautiful woods were used as fire-wood and in the construction of rude cabins, and the greatest asset of the pioneers was ignored. Father preceded us to the Michigan woods, and there, with his oldest son, James, took up a claim. They cleared a space in the wilderness just large enough for a log cabin, and put up the bare walls of the cabin itself. Then father returned to Law- rence and his work, leaving James behind. A few months later (this was in 1859), my mother, my two sisters, Eleanor and Mary, my youngest brother, Henry, eight years of age, and I, then twelve, went to Michigan to work on and hold down the claim while father, for eighteen months longer, stayed on in Lawrence, sending us such remittances as he could. His second and third sons, John and Thomas, re- mained in the East with him. Every detail of our journey through the wilder- ness is clear in my mind. At that time the railroad terminated at Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we covered the remaining distance–about one hundred miles–by wagon, riding through a dense and often trackless forest. My brother James met us at Grand Rapids with what, in those days, was called a lumber-wagon, but which had a horrible resem- blance to a vehicle from the health department. My sisters and I gave it one cold look and turned from it; we were so pained by its appearance that we refused to ride in it through the town. Instead, we started off on foot, trying to look as if we had no association with it, and we climbed into the un- wieldy vehicle only when the city streets were far behind us. Every available inch of space in the wagon was filled with bedding and provisions. As yet we had no furniture; we were to make that for ourselves when we reached our cabin; and there was so little room for us to ride that we children walked by turns, while James, from the beginning of the journey to its end, seven days later, led our weary horses. To my mother, who was never strong, the whole experience must have been a nightmare of suffering and stoical endurance. For us children there were compensations. The expedition took on the char- acter of a high adventure, in which we sometimes had shelter and sometimes failed to find it, some- times were fed, but often went hungry. We forded innumerable streams, the wheels of the heavy wagon sinking so deeply into the stream-beds that we often had to empty our load before we could get them out again. Fallen trees lay across our paths, rivers caused long detours, while again and again we lost our way or were turned aside by impenetrable forest tangles. Our first day’s journey covered less than eight miles, and that night we stopped at a farm-house which was the last bit of civilization we saw. Early the next morning we were off again, making the slow progress due to the rough roads and our heavy load. At night we stopped at a place called Thomas’s Inn, only to be told by the woman who kept it that there was nothing in the house to eat. Her hus- band, she said, had gone “outside” (to Grand Rapids) to get some flour, and had not returned– but she added that we could spend the night, if we chose, and enjoy shelter, if not food. We had provisions in our wagon, so we wearily entered, after my brother had got out some of our pork and opened a barrel of flour. With this help the woman made some biscuits, which were so green that my poor mother could not eat them. She had admitted to us that the one thing she had in the house was saleratus, and she had used this ingredient with an unsparing hand. When the meal was eaten she broke the further news that there were no beds. “The old woman can sleep with me,” she sug- gested, “and the girls can sleep on the floor. The boys will have to go to the barn.” She and her bed were not especially attractive, and mother decided to lie on the floor with us. We had taken our bedding from the wagon, and we slept very well; but though she was usually superior to small annoyances, I think my mother resented being called an “old woman.” She must have felt like one that night, but she was only about forty-eight years of age. At dawn the next morning we resumed our jour- ney, and every day after that we were able to cover the distance demanded by the schedule arranged before we started. This meant that some sort of shelter usually awaited us at night. But one day we knew there would be no houses between the place we left in the morning and that where we were to sleep. The distance was about twenty miles, and when twilight fell we had not made it. In the back of the wagon my mother had a box of little pigs, and during the afternoon these had broken loose and escaped into the woods. We had lost much time in finding them, and we were so exhausted that when we came to a hut made of twigs and boughs we de- cided to camp in it for the night, though we knew nothing about it. My brother had unharnessed the horses, and my mother and sister were cooking dough-god–a mixture of flour, water, and soda, fried in a pan-when two men rode up on horse- back and called my brother to one side. Immedi- ately after the talk which followed James harnessed his horses again and forced us to go on, though by that time darkness had fallen. He told mother, but did not tell us children until long afterward, that a man had been murdered in the hut only the night before. The murderer was still at large in the woods, and the new-comers were members of a posse who were searching for him. My brother needed no urging to put as many miles as he could between us and the sinister spot. In that fashion we made our way to our new home. The last day, like the first, we traveled only eight miles, but we spent the night in a house I shall never forget. It was beautifully clean, and for our eve- ning meal its mistress brought out loaves of bread which were the largest we had ever seen. She cut great slices of this bread for us and spread maple sugar on them, and it seemed to us that never be- fore had anything tasted so good. The next morning we made the last stage of our journey, our hearts filled with the joy of nearing our new home. We all had an idea that we were going to a farm, and we expected some resemblance at least to the prosperous farms we had seen in New England. My mother’s mental picture was, natu- rally, of an English farm. Possibly she had visions of red barns and deep meadows, sunny skies and daisies. What we found awaiting us were the four walls and the roof of a good-sized log-house, stand- ing in a small cleared strip of the wilderness, its doors and windows represented by square holes, its floor also a thing of the future, its whole effect achingly forlorn and desolate. It was late in the afternoon when we drove up to the opening that was its front entrance, and I shall never forget the look my mother turned upon the place. Without a word she crossed its threshold, and, standing very still, looked slowly around her. Then something within her seemed to give way, and she sank upon the ground. She could not realize even then, I think, that this was really the place father had prepared for us, that here he expected us to live. When she finally took it in she buried her face in her hands, and in that way she sat for hours without moving or speaking. For the first time in her life she had for- gotten us; and we, for our part, dared not speak to her. We stood around her in a frightened group, talking to one another in whispers. Our little world had crumbled under our feet. Never before had we seen our mother give way to despair. Night began to fall. The woods became alive with night creatures, and the most harmless made the most noise. The owls began to hoot, and soon we heard the wildcat, whose cry–a screech like that of a lost and panic-stricken child–is one of the most appalling sounds of the forest. Later the wolves added their howls to the uproar, but though darkness came and we children whimpered around her, our mother still sat in her strange lethargy. At last my brother brought the horses close to the cabin and built fires to protect them and us. He was only twenty, but he showed himself a man dur- ing those early pioneer days. While he was picketing the horses and building his protecting fires my mother came to herself, but her face when she raised it was worse than her silence had been. She seemed to have died and to have returned to us from the grave, and I am sure she felt that she had done so. From that moment she took up again the burden of her life, a burden she did not lay down until she passed away; but her face never lost the deep lines those first hours of her pioneer life had cut upon it. That night we slept on boughs spread on the earth inside the cabin walls, and we put blankets before the holes which represented our doors and windows, and kept our watch-fires burning. Soon the other children fell asleep, but there was no sleep for me. I was only twelve years old, but my mind was full of fancies. Behind our blankets, swaying in the night wind, I thought I saw the heads and pushing shoul- ders of animals and heard their padded footfalls. Later years brought familiarity with wild things, and with worse things than they. But to-night that which I most feared was within, not outside of, the cabin. In some way which I did not understand the one sure refuge in our new world had been taken from us. I hardly knew the silent woman who lay near me, tossing from side to side and staring into the darkness; I felt that we had lost our mother. II IN THE WILDERNESS Like most men, my dear father should never have married. Though his nature was one of the sweetest I have ever known, and though he would at any call give his time to or risk his life for others, in practical matters he remained to the end of his days as irresponsible as a child. If his mind turned to practical details at all, it was solely in their bear- ing toward great developments of the future. To him an acorn was not an acorn, but a forest of young oaks. Thus, when he took up his claim of three hundred and sixty acres of land in the wilderness of northern Michigan, and sent my mother and five young chil- dren to live there alone until he could join us eighteen months later, he gave no thought to the manner in which we were to make the struggle and survive the hardships before us. He had furnished us with land and the four walls of a log cabin. Some day, he reasoned, the place would be a fine estate, which his sons would inherit and in the course of time pass on to their sons–always an Englishman’s most iri- descent dream. That for the present we were one hundred miles from a railroad, forty miles from the nearest post-office, and half a dozen miles from any neighbors save Indians, wolves, and wildcats; that we were wholly unlearned in the ways of the woods as well as in the most primitive methods of farming; that we lacked not only every comfort, but even the bare necessities of life; and that we must begin, single-handed and untaught, a struggle for existence in which some of the severest forces of nature would be arrayed against us–these facts had no weight in my father’s mind. Even if he had witnessed my mother’s despair on the night of our arrival in our new home, he would not have understood it. From his viewpoint, he was doing a man’s duty. He was working steadily in Lawrence, and, incidentally, giving much time to the Abolition cause and to other big public movements of his day which had his interest and sympathy. He wrote to us regu- larly and sent us occasional remittances, as well as a generous supply of improving literature for our minds. It remained for us to strengthen our bodies, to meet the conditions in which he had placed us, and to survive if we could. We faced our situation with clear and unalarmed eyes the morning after our arrival. The problem of food, we knew, was at least temporarily solved. We had brought with us enough coffee, pork, and flour to last for several weeks; and the one necessity father had put inside the cabin walls was a great fireplace, made of mud and stones, in which our food could be cooked. The problem of our water-supply was less simple, but my brother James solved it for the time by showing us a creek a long distance from the house; and for months we carried from this creek, in pails, every drop of water we used, save that which we caught in troughs when the rain fell. We held a family council after breakfast, and in this, though I was only twelve, I took an eager and determined part. I loved work–it has always been my favorite form of recreation–and my spirit rose to the opportunities of it which smiled on us from every side. Obviously the first thing to do was to put doors and windows into the yawning holes father had left for them, and to lay a board flooring over the earth inside our cabin walls, and these duties we accomplished before we had occupied our new home a fortnight. There was a small saw-mill nine miles from our cabin, on the spot that is now Big Rapids, and there we bought our lumber. The labor we supplied ourselves, and though we put our hearts into it and the results at the time seemed beautiful to our partial eyes, I am forced to admit, in looking back upon them, that they halted this side of perfection. We began by making three windows and two doors; then, inspired by these achievements, we ambitiously constructed an attic and divided the ground floor with partitions, which gave us four rooms. The general effect was temperamental and sketchy. The boards which formed the floor were never even nailed down; they were fine, wide planks without a knot in them, and they looked so well that we merely fitted them together as closely as we could and lightheartedly let them go at that. Neither did we properly chink the house. Nothing is more comfortable than a log cabin which has been carefully built and finished; but for some reason–probably because there seemed always a more urgent duty calling to us around the corner–we never plastered our house at all. The result was that on many future winter mornings we awoke to find ourselves chastely blanketed by snow, while the only warm spot in our living-room was that directly in front of the fireplace, where great logs burned all day. Even there our faces scorched while our spines slowly congealed, until we learned to revolve before the fire like a bird upon a spit. No doubt we would have worked more thoroughly if my brother James, who was twenty years old and our tower of strength, had remained with us; but when we had been in our new home only a few months he fell and was forced to go East for an operation. He was never able to return to us, and thus my mother, we three young girls, and my youngest brother–Harry, who was only eight years old–made our fight alone until father came to us, more than a year later. Mother was practically an invalid. She had a nervous affection which made it impossible for her to stand without the support of a chair. But she sewed with unusual skill, and it was due to her that our clothes, notwithstanding the strain to which we subjected them, were always in good condition. She sewed for hours every day, and she was able to move about the house, after a fashion, by pushing herself around on a stool which James made for her as soon as we arrived. He also built for her a more comfortable chair with a high back. The division of labor planned at the first council was that mother should do our sewing, and my older sisters, Eleanor and Mary, the housework, which was far from taxing, for of course we lived in the simplest manner. My brothers and I were to do the work out of doors, an arrangement that suited me very well, though at first, owing to our lack of experience, our activities were somewhat curtailed. It was too late in the season for plowing or planting, even if we had possessed anything with which to plow, and, moreover, our so-called “cleared” land was thick with sturdy tree-stumps. Even during the second summer plowing was impossible; we could only plant potatoes and corn, and follow the most primitive method in doing even this. We took an ax, chopped up the sod, put the seed under it, and let the seed grow. The seed did grow, too–in the most gratifying and encouraging manner. Our green corn and potatoes were the best I have ever eaten. But for the present we lacked these luxuries. We had, however, in their place, large quantities of wild fruit–gooseberries, raspberries, and plums –which Harry and I gathered on the banks of our creek. Harry also became an expert fisherman. We had no hooks or lines, but he took wires from our hoop-skirts and made snares at the ends of poles. My part of this work was to stand on a log and frighten the fish out of their holes by making horrible sounds, which I did with impassioned earnestness. When the fish hurried to the surface of the water to investigate the appalling noises they had heard, they were easily snared by our small boy, who was very proud of his ability to contribute in this way to the family table. During our first winter we lived largely on corn- meal, making a little journey of twenty miles to the nearest mill to buy it; but even at that we were better off than our neighbors, for I remember one family in our region who for an entire winter lived solely on coarse-grained yellow turnips, gratefully changing their diet to leeks when these came in the spring. Such furniture as we had we made ourselves. In addition to my mother’s two chairs and the bunks which took the place of beds, James made a settle for the living-room, as well as a table and several stools. At first we had our tree-cutting done for us, but we soon became expert in this gentle art, and I developed such skill that in later years, after father came, I used to stand with him and “heart” a log. On every side, and at every hour of the day, we came up against the relentless limitations of pioneer life. There was not a team of horses in our entire region. The team with which my brother had driven us through the wilderness had been hired at Grand Rapids for that occasion, and, of course, immediately returned. Our lumber was delivered by ox-teams, and the absolutely essential purchases we made “outside” (at the nearest shops, forty miles away) were carried through the forest on the backs of men. Our mail was delivered once a month by a carrier who made the journey in alter- nate stages of horseback riding and canoeing. But we had health, youth, enthusiasm, good appetites, and the wherewithal to satisfy them, and at night in our primitive bunks we sank into abysses of dream- less slumber such as I have never known since. Indeed, looking back upon them, those first months seem to have been a long-drawn-out and glorious picnic, interrupted only by occasional hours of pain or panic, when we were hurt or frightened. Naturally, our two greatest menaces were wild animals and Indians, but as the days passed the first of these lost the early terrors with which we had associated them. We grew indifferent to the sounds that had made our first night a horror to us all– there was even a certain homeliness in them–while we regarded with accustomed, almost blase eyes the various furred creatures of which we caught distant glimpses as they slunk through the forest. Their experience with other settlers had taught them cau- tion; it soon became clear that they were as eager to avoid us as we were to shun them, and by common consent we gave each other ample elbow-room. But the Indians were all around us, and every settler had a collection of hair-raising tales to tell of them. It was generally agreed that they were dangerous only when they were drunk; but as they were drunk whenever they could get whisky, and as whisky was constantly given them in exchange for pelts and game, there was a harrowing doubt in our minds whenever they approached us. In my first encounter with them I was alone in the woods at sunset with my small brother Harry. We were hunting a cow James had bought, and our young eyes were peering eagerly among the trees, on the alert for any moving object. Suddenly, at a little distance, and coming directly toward us, we saw a party of Indians. There were five of them, all men, walking in single file, as noiselessly as ghosts, their moccasined feet causing not even a rustle among the dry leaves that carpeted the woods. All the horrible stories we had heard of Indian cruelty flashed into our minds, and for a moment we were dumb with terror. Then I remembered having been told that the one thing one must not do before them is to show fear. Harry was carrying a rope with which we had expected to lead home our reluctant cow, and I seized one end of it and whispered to him that we would “play horse,” pretending he was driving me. We pranced toward the Indians on feet that felt like lead, and with eyes so glazed by terror that we could see nothing save a line of moving figures; but as we passed them they did not give to our little impersonation of care-free children even the tribute of a side-glance. They were, we realized, headed straight for our home; and after a few mo- ments we doubled on our tracks and, keeping at a safe distance from them among the trees, ran back to warn our mother that they were coming. As it happened, James was away, and mother had to meet her unwelcome guests supported only by her young children. She at once prepared a meal, however, and when they arrived she welcomed them calmly and gave them the best she had. After they had eaten they began to point at and demand ob- jects they fancied in the room–my brother’s pipe, some tobacco, a bowl, and such trifles–and my mother, who was afraid to annoy them by refusal, gave them what they asked. They were quite sober, and though they left without expressing any appreciation of her hospitality, they made her a second visit a few months later, bringing a large quantity of venison and a bag of cranberries as a graceful return. These Indians were Ottawas; and later we became very friendly with them and their tribe, even to the degree of attending one of their dances, which I shall describe later. Our second encounter with Indians was a less agreeable experience. There were seven “Mar- quette warriors” in the next group of callers, and they were all intoxicated. Moreover, they had brought with them several jugs of bad whisky– the raw and craze-provoking product supplied them by the fur-dealers–and it was clear that our cabin was to be the scene of an orgy. Fortunately, my brother James was at home on this occasion, and as the evening grew old and the Indians, grouped together around the fire, became more and more ir- responsible, he devised a plan for our safety. Our attic was finished, and its sole entrance was by a ladder through a trap-door. At James’s whispered command my sister Eleanor slipped up into the attic, and from the back window let down a rope, to which he tied all the weapons we had–his gun and several axes. These Eleanor drew up and con- cealed in one of the bunks. My brother then di- rected that as quietly as possible, and at long in- tervals, one member of the family after another was to slip up the ladder and into the attic, going quite casually, that the Indians might not realize what we were doing. Once there, with the ladder drawn up after us and the trap-door closed, we would be rea- sonably safe, unless our guests decided to burn the cabin. The evening seemed endless, and was certainly nerve-racking. The Indians ate everything in the house, and from my seat in a dim corner I watched them while my sisters waited on them. I can still see the tableau they made in the firelit room and hear the unfamiliar accents of their speech as they talked together. Occasionally one of them would pull a hair from his head, seize his scalping-knife; and cut the hair with it–a most unpleasant sight! When either of my sisters approached them some of the Indians would make gestures, as if capturing and scalping her. Through it all, however, the whisky held their close attention, and it was due to this that we succeeded in reaching the attic unob- served, James coming last of all and drawing the ladder after him. Mother and the children were then put to bed; but through that interminable night James and Eleanor lay flat upon the floor, watching through the cracks between the boards the revels of the drunken Indians, which grew wild- er with every hour that crawled toward sunrise. There was no knowing when they would miss us or how soon their mood might change. At any moment they might make an attack upon us or set fire to the cabin. By dawn, however, their whisky was all gone, and they were in so deep a stupor that, one after the other, the seven fell from their chairs to the floor, where they sprawled un- conscious. When they awoke they left quietly and without trouble of any kind. They seemed a strangely subdued and chastened band; probably they were wretchedly ill after their debauch on the adulterated whisky the traders had given them. That autumn the Ottawa tribe had a great corn celebration, to which we and the other settlers were invited. James and my older sisters attended it, and I went with them, by my own urgent invita- tion. It seemed to me that as I was sharing the work and the perils of our new environment, I might as well share its joys; and I finally succeeded in making my family see the logic of this position. The central feature of the festivity was a huge kettle, many feet in circumference, into which the Indians dropped the most extraordinary variety of food we had ever seen combined. Deer heads went into it whole, as well as every kind of meat and vegetable the members of the tribe could procure. We all ate some of this agreeable mixture, and later, with one another, and even with the Indians, we danced gaily to the music of a tom-tom and a drum. The affair was extremely interesting until the whisky entered and did its unpleasant work. When our hosts be- gan to fall over in the dance and slumber where they lay, and when the squaws began to show the same ill effects of their refreshments, we unostentatiously slipped away. During the winter life offered us few diversions and many hardships. Our creek froze over, and the water problem became a serious one, which we met with increasing difficulty as the temperature steadily fell. We melted snow and ice, and existed through the frozen months, but with an amount of discom- fort which made us unwilling to repeat at least that special phase of our experience. In the spring, therefore, I made a well. Long before this, James had gone, and Harry and I were now the only out- door members of our working-force. Harry was still too small to help with the well; but a young man, who had formed the neighborly habit of rid- ing eighteen miles to call on us, gave me much friendly aid. We located the well with a switch, and when we had dug as far as we could reach with our spades, my assistant descended into the hole and threw the earth up to the edge, from which I in turn removed it. As the well grew deeper we made a half-way shelf, on which I stood, he throw- ing the earth on the shelf, and I shoveling it up from that point. Later, as he descended still farther into the hole we were making, he shoveled the earth into buckets and passed them up to me, I passing them on to my sister, who was now pressed into service. When the excavation was deep enough we made the wall of slabs of wood, roughly joined together. I recall that well with calm content. It was not a thing of beauty, but it was a thoroughly practical well, and it remained the only one we had during the twelve years the family occupied the cabin. During our first year there was no school within ten miles of us, but this lack failed to sadden Harry or me. We had brought with us from Lawrence a box of books, in which, in winter months, when our outdoor work was restricted, we found much comfort. They were the only books in that part of the country, and we read them until we knew them all by heart. Moreover, father sent us regularly the New York Independent, and with this admirable literature, after reading it, we papered our walls. Thus, on stormy days, we could lie on the settle or the floor and read the Independent over again with increased interest and pleasure. Occasionally father sent us the Ledger, but here mother drew a definite line. She had a special dis- like for that periodical, and her severest comment on any woman was that she was the type who would “keep a dog, make saleratus biscuit, and read the New York Ledger in the daytime.” Our modest library also contained several histories of Greece and Rome, which must have been good ones, for years later, when I entered college, I passed my examination in ancient history with no other prep- aration than this reading. There were also a few arithmetics and algebras, a historical novel or two, and the inevitable copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, whose pages I had freely moistened with my tears. When the advantages of public education were finally extended to me, at thirteen, by the opening of a school three miles from our home, I accepted them with growing reluctance. The teacher was a spinster forty-four years of age and the only genuine “old maid” I have ever met who was not a married woman or a man. She was the real thing, and her name, Prudence Duncan, seemed the fitting label for her rigidly uncompromising personality. I graced Prudence’s school for three months, and then left it at her fervid request. I had walked six miles a day through trackless woods and Western blizzards to get what she could give me, but she had little to offer my awakened and critical mind. My reading and my Lawrence school-work had already taught me more than Prudence knew–a fact we both inwardry–admitted and fiercely resented from our different viewpoints. Beyond doubt I was a pert and trying young person. I lost no opportunity to lead Prudence beyond her intellectual depth and leave her there, and Prudence vented her chagrin not alone upon me, but upon my little brother. I became a thorn in her side, and one day, after an especially unpleasant episode in which Harry also figured, she plucked me out, as it were, and cast me for ever from her. From that time I studied at home, where I was a much more valuable economic factor than I had been in school. The second spring after our arrival Harry and I extended our operations by tapping the sugar- bushes, collecting all the sap, and carrying it home in pails slung from our yoke-laden shoulders. To- gether we made one hundred and fifty pounds of sugar and a barrel of syrup, but here again, as al- ways, we worked in primitive ways. To get the sap we chopped a gash in the tree and drove in a spile. Then we dug out a trough to catch the sap. It was no light task to lift these troughs full of sap and empty the sap into buckets, but we did it success- fully, and afterward built fires and boiled it down. By this time we had also cleared some of our ground, and during the spring we were able to plow, dividing the work in a way that seemed fair to us both. These were strenuous occupations for a boy of nine and a girl of thirteen, but, though we were not in- ordinately good children, we never complained; we found them very satisfactory substitutes for more normal bucolic joys. Inevitably, we had our little tragedies. Our cow died, and for an entire winter we went without milk. Our coffee soon gave out, and as a substitute we made and used a mixture of browned peas and burnt rye. In the winter we were always cold, and the water problem, until we had built our well, was ever with us. Father joined us at the end of eighteen months, but though his presence gave us pleasure and moral support, he was not an addition to our executive staff. He brought with him a rocking-chair for mother and a new supply of books, on which I fell as a starving man falls upon food. Father read as eagerly as I, but much more steadily. His mind was always busy with problems, and if, while he was laboring in the field, a new problem presented itself to him, the imperishable curiosity that was in him made him scurry at once to the house to solve it. I have known him to spend a planting season in figuring on the production of a certain number of kernels of corn, instead of planting the corn and raising it. In the winter he was supposed to spend his time clearing land for orchards and the like, but instead he pored over his books and problems day after day and often half the night as well. It soon became known among our neigh- bors, who were rapidly increasing in number, that we had books and that father like to read aloud, and men walked ten miles or more to spend the night with us and listen to his reading. Often, as his fame grew, ten or twelve men would arrive at our cabin on Saturday and remain over Sunday. When my mother once tried to check this influx of guests by mildly pointing out, among other things, the waste of candles represented by frequent all-night readings, every man humbly appeared again on the following Saturday with a candle in each hand. They were not sensitive; and, as they had brought their candles, it seemed fitting to them and to father that we girls should cook for them and supply them with food. Father’s tolerance of idleness in others, however, did not extend to tolerance of idleness in us, and this led to my first rebellion, which occurred when I was fourteen. For once, I had been in the woods all day, buried in my books; and when I returned at night, still in the dream world these books had opened to me, father was awaiting my coming with a brow dark with disapproval. As it happened, mother had felt that day some special need of me, and father reproached me bitterly for being beyond reach–an idler who wasted time while mother labored. He ended a long arraignment by predicting gloomily that with such tendencies I would make nothing of my life. The injustice of the criticism cut deep; I knew I had done and was doing my share for the family, and already, too, I had begun to feel the call of my career. For some reason I wanted to preach–to talk to people, to tell them things. Just why, just what, I did not yet know–but I had begun to preach in the silent woods, to stand up on stumps and address the unresponsive trees, to feel the stir of aspiration within me. When my father had finished all he wished to say, I looked at him and answered, quietly, “Father, some day I am going to college.” I can still see his slight, ironical smile. It drove me to a second prediction. I was young enough to measure success by material results, so I added, recklessly: “And before I die I shall be worth ten thousand dollars!” The amount staggered me even as it dropped from my lips. It was the largest fortune my imagination could conceive, and in my heart I believed that no woman ever had possessed or would possess so much. So far as I knew, too, no woman had gone to college. But now that I had put my secret hopes into words, I was desperately determined to make those hopes come true. After I became a wage- earner I lost my desire to make a fortune, but the college dream grew with the years; and though my college career seemed as remote as the most distant star, I hitched my little wagon to that star and never afterward wholly lost sight of its friendly gleam. When I was fifteen years old I was offered a situa- tion as school-teacher. By this time the com- munity was growing around us with the rapidity characteristic of these Western settlements, and we had nearer neighbors whose children needed instruc- tion. I passed an examination before a school- board consisting of three nervous and self-conscious men whose certificate I still hold, and I at once began my professional career on the modest salary of two dollars a week and my board. The school was four miles from my home, so I “boarded round” with the families of my pupils, staying two weeks in each place, and often walking from three to six miles a day to and from my little log school-house in every kind of weather. During the first year I had about fourteen pupils, of varying ages, sizes, and temperaments, and there was hardly a book in the school-room except those I owned. One little girl, I remember, read from an almanac, while a second used a hymn-book. In winter the school-house was heated by a wood- stove, to which the teacher had to give close personal attention. I could not depend on my pupils to make the fires or carry in the fuel; and it was often necessary to fetch the wood myself, sometimes for long distances through the forest. Again and again, after miles of walking through winter storms, I reached the school-house with my clothing wet through, and in these soaked garments I taught during the day. In “boarding round” I often found myself in one-room cabins, with bunks at the end and the sole partition a sheet or a blanket, behind which I slept with one or two of the children. It was the custom on these occasions for the man of the house to delicately retire to the barn while we women got to bed, and to disappear again in the morning while we dressed. In some places the meals were so badly cooked that I could not eat them, and often the only food my poor little pupils brought to school for their noonday meal was a piece of bread or a bit of raw pork. I earned my two dollars a week that year, but I had to wait for my wages until the dog tax was col- lected in the spring. When the money was thus raised, and the twenty-six dollars for my thirteen weeks of teaching were graciously put into my hands, I went “outside” to the nearest shop and joyously spent almost the entire amount for my first “party dress.” The gown I bought was, I con- sidered, a beautiful creation. In color it was a rich magenta, and the skirt was elaborately braided with black cable-cord. My admiration for it was justi- fied, for it did all a young girl’s eager heart could ask of any gown–it led to my first proposal. The youth who sought my hand was about twenty years old, and by an unhappy chance he was also the least attractive young person in the country- side–the laughing-stock of the neighbors, the butt of his associates. The night he came to offer me his heart there were already two young men at our home calling on my sisters, and we were all sitting around the fire in the living-room when my suitor appeared. His costume, like himself, left much to be desired. He wore a blue flannel shirt and a pair of trousers made of flour-bags. Such trousers were not uncommon in our region, and the boy’s mother, who had made them for him, had thoughtfully selected a nice clean pair of sacks. But on one leg was the name of the firm that made the flour–A. and G. W. Green–and by a charming coincidence A. and G. W. Green happened to be the two young men who were calling on my sisters! On the back of the bags, directly in the rear of the wearer, was the simple legend, “96 pounds”; and the striking effect of the young man’s costume was completed by a bright yellow sash which held his trousers in place. The vision fascinated my sisters and their two guests. They gave it their entire attention, and when the new-comer signified with an eloquent ges- ture that he was calling on me, and beckoned me into an inner room, the quartet arose as one person and followed us to the door. Then, as we inhospit- ably closed the door, they fastened their eyes to the cracks in the living-room wall, that they might miss none of the entertainment. When we were alone my guest and I sat down in facing chairs and in depressed silence. The young man was nervous, and I was both frightened and annoyed. I had heard suppressed giggles on the other side of the wall, and I realized, as my self-centered visitor failed to do, that we were not enjoying the privacy the situation seemed to demand. At last the youth in- formed me that his “dad” had just given him a cabin, a yoke of steers, a cow, and some hens. When this announcement had produced its full effect, he straightened up in his chair and asked, solemnly, “Will ye have me?” An outburst of chortles from the other side of the wall greeted the proposal, but the ardent youth ignored it, if indeed he heard it. With eyes staring straight ahead, he sat rigid, waiting for my answer; and I, anxious only to get rid of him and to end the strain of the moment, said the first thing that came into my head. “I can’t,” I told him. “I’m sorry, but–but–I’m engaged.” He rose quickly, with the effect of a half-closed jack-knife that is suddenly opened, and for an in- stant stood looking down upon me. He was six feet two inches tall, and extremely thin. I am very short, and, as I looked up, his flour-bag trousers seemed to join his yellow sash somewhere near the ceiling of the room. He put both hands into his pockets and slowly delivered his valedictory. “That’s darned dis- appointing to a fellow,” he said, and left the house. After a moment devoted to regaining my maidenly composure I returned to the living-room, where I had the privilege of observing the enjoyment of my sisters and their visitors. Helpless with mirth and with tears of pleasure on their cheeks, the four rocked and shrieked as they recalled the picture my gallant had presented. For some time after that incident I felt a strong distaste for sentiment. Clad royally in the new gown, I attended my first ball in November, going with a party of eight that included my two sisters, another girl, and four young men. The ball was at Big Rapids, which by this time had grown to be a thriving lumber town. It was impossible to get a team of horses or even a yoke of oxen for the journey, so we made a raft and went down the river on that, taking our party dresses with us in trunks. Unfortunately, the raft “hung up” in the stream, and the four young men had to get out into the icy water and work a long time before they could detach it from the rocks. Natu- rally, they were soaked and chilled through, but they all bore the experience with a gay philosophy. When we reached Big Rapids we dressed for the ball, and, as in those days it was customary to change one’s gown again at midnight, I had an op- portunity to burst on the assemblage in two cos- tumes–the second made of bedroom chintz, with a low neck and short sleeves. We danced the “money musk,” and the “Virginia reel,” “hoeing her down” (which means changing partners) in true pioneer style. I never missed a dance at this or any subsequent affair, and I was considered the gayest and the most tireless young person at our parties until I became a Methodist minister and dropped such worldly vanities. The first time I preached in my home region all my former partners came to hear me, and listened with wide, understand- ing, reminiscent smiles which made it very hard for me to keep soberly to my text. In the near future I had reason to regret the ex- travagant expenditure of my first earnings. For my second year of teaching, in the same school, I was to receive five dollars a week and to pay my own board. I selected a place two miles and a half from the school-house, and was promptly asked by my host to pay my board in advance. This, he ex- plained, was due to no lack of faith in me; the money would enable him to go “outside” to work, leaving his family well supplied with provisions. I allowed him to go to the school committee and col- lect my board in advance, at the rate of three dol- lars a week for the season. When I presented myself at my new boarding-place, however, two days later, I found the house nailed up and deserted; the man and his family had departed with my money, and I was left, as my committeemen sympathetically remarked, “high and dry.” There were only two dollars a week coming to me after that, so I walked back and forth between my home and my school, almost four miles, twice a day; and during this en- forced exercise there was ample opportunity to re- flect on the fleeting joy of riches. In the mean time war had been declared. When the news came that Fort Sumter had been fired on, and that Lincoln had called for troops, our men were threshing. There was only one threshing- machine in the region at that time, and it went from place to place, the farmers doing their thresh- ing whenever they could get the machine. I re- member seeing a man ride up on horseback, shout- ing out Lincoln’s demand for troops and explaining that a regiment was being formed at Big Rapids. Before he had finished speaking the men on the ma- chine had leaped to the ground and rushed off to enlist, my brother Jack, who had recently joined us, among them. In ten minutes not one man was left in the field. A few months later my brother Tom enlisted as a bugler–he was a mere boy at the time– and not long after that my father followed the example of his sons and served until the war was ended. He had entered on the twenty-ninth of August, 1862, as an army steward; he came back to us with the rank of lieutenant and assistant surgeon of field and staff. Between those years I was the principal support of our family, and life became a strenuous and tragic affair. For months at a time we had no news from the front. The work in our community, if it was done at all, was done by despairing women whose hearts were with their men. When care had become our constant guest, Death entered our home as well. My sister Eleanor had married, and died in childbirth, leaving her baby to me; and the blackest hours of those black years were the hours that saw her pass- ing. I can see her still, lying in a stupor from which she roused herself at intervals to ask about her child. She insisted that our brother Tom should name the baby, but Tom was fighting for his country, unless he had already preceded Eleanor through the wide portal that was opening before her. I could only tell her that I had written to him; but before the assurance was an hour old she would climb up from the gulf of unconsciousness with infinite effort to ask if we had received his reply. At last, to calm her, I told her it had come, and that Tom had chosen for her little son the name of Arthur. She smiled at this and drew a deep breath; then, still smiling, she passed away. Her baby slipped into her vacant place and almost filled our heavy hearts, but only for a short time; for within a few months after his mother’s death his father married again and took him from me, and it seemed that with his going we had lost all that made life worth while. The problem of living grew harder with every- day. We eked out our little income in every way we could, taking as boarders the workers in the log- ging-camps, making quilts, which we sold, and losing no chance to earn a penny in any legitimate manner. Again my mother did such outside sewing as she could secure, yet with every month of our effort the gulf between our income and our expenses grew wider, and the price of the bare necessities of exis- ence{sic} climbed up and up. The largest amount I could earn at teaching was six dollars a week, and our school year included only two terms of thir- teen weeks each. It was an incessant struggle to keep our land, to pay our taxes, and to live. Cal- ico was selling at fifty cents a yard. Coffee was one dollar a pound. There were no men left to grind our corn, to get in our crops, or to care for our live stock; and all around us we saw our struggle reflected in the lives of our neighbors. At long intervals word came to us of battles in which my father’s regiment–the Tenth Michigan Cavalry Volunteers–or those of my brothers were engaged, and then longer intervals followed in which we heard no news. After Eleanor’s death my brother Tom was wounded, and for months we lived in terror of worse tidings, but he finally recovered. I was walking seven and eight miles a day, and doing extra work before and after school hours, and my health began to fail. Those were years I do not like to look back upon–years in which life had de- generated into a treadmill whose monotony was broken only by the grim messages from the front. My sister Mary married and went to Big Rapids to live. I had no time to dream my dream, but the star of my one purpose still glowed in my dark horizon. It seemed that nothing short of a miracle could lift my feet from their plodding way and set them on the wider path toward which my eyes were turned, but I never lost faith that in some manner the miracle would come to pass. As certainly as I have ever known anything, I KNEW that I was going to college! III HIGH-SCHOOL AND COLLEGE DAYS The end of the Civil War brought freedom to me, too. When peace was declared my father and brothers returned to the claim in the wilderness which we women of the family had labored so des- perately to hold while they were gone. To us, as to others, the final years of the war had brought many changes. My sister Eleanor’s place was empty. Mary, as I have said, had married and gone to live in Big Rapids, and my mother and I were alone with my brother Harry, now a boy of fourteen. After the return of our men it was no longer necessary to de- vote every penny of my earnings to the maintenance of our home. For the first time I could begin to save a portion of my income toward the fulfilment of my college dream, but even yet there was a long, arid stretch ahead of me before the college doors came even distantly into sight. The largest salary I could earn by teaching in our Northern woods was one hundred and fifty-six dollars a year, for two terms of thirteen weeks each; and from this, of course, I had to deduct the cost of my board and clothing–the sole expenditure I allowed myself. The dollars for an education accumulated very, very slowly, until at last, in desperation, weary of seeing the years of my youth rush past, bearing my hopes with them, I took a sudden and radical step. I gave up teaching, left our cabin in the woods, and went to Big Rapids to live with my sister Mary, who had married a successful man and who generously offered me a home. There, I had de- cided, I would learn a trade of some kind, of any kind; it did not greatly matter what it was. The sole essential was that it should be a money-making trade, offering wages which would make it possible to add more rapidly to my savings. In those days, almost fifty years ago, and in a small pioneer town, the fields open to women were few and unfruitful. The needle at once presented itself, but at first I turned with loathing from it. I would have pre- ferred the digging of ditches or the shoveling of coal; but the needle alone persistently pointed out my way, and I was finally forced to take it. Fate, however, as if weary at last of seeing me between her paws, suddenly let me escape. Before I had been working a month at my uncongenial trade Big Rapids was favored by a visit from a Universalist woman minister, the Reverend Marianna Thompson, who came there to preach. Her ser- mon was delivered on Sunday morning, and I was, I think, almost the earliest arrival of the great con- gregation which filled the church. It was a wonder- ful moment when I saw my first woman minister enter her pulpit; and as I listened to her sermon, thrilled to the soul, all my early aspirations to be- come a minister myself stirred in me with cumulative force. After the services I hung for a time on the fringe of the group that surrounded her, and at last, when she was alone and about to leave, I found courage to introduce myself and pour forth the tale of my ambition. Her advice was as prompt as if she had studied my problem for years. “My child,” she said, “give up your foolish idea of learning a trade, and go to school. You can’t do anything until you have an education. Get it, and get it NOW.” Her suggestion was much to my liking, and I paid her the compliment of acting on it promptly, for the next morning I entered the Big Rapids High School, which was also a preparatory school for col- lege. There I would study, I determined, as long as my money held out, and with the optimism of youth I succeeded in confining my imagination to this side of that crisis. My home, thanks to Mary, was assured; the wardrobe I had brought from the woods covered me sufficiently; to one who had walked five and six miles a day for years, walking to school held no discomfort; and as for pleasure, I found it, like a heroine of fiction, in my studies. For the first time life was smiling at me, and with all my young heart I smiled back. The preceptress of the high school was Lucy Foot, a college graduate and a remarkable woman. I had heard much of her sympathy and understand- ing; and on the evening following my first day in school I went to her and repeated the confidences I had reposed in the Reverend Marianna Thompson. My trust in her was justified. She took an immedi- ate interest in me, and proved it at once by putting me into the speaking and debating classes, where I was given every opportunity to hold forth to help- less classmates when the spirit of eloquence moved me. As an aid to public speaking I was taught to “elo- cute,” and I remember in every mournful detail the occasion on which I gave my first recitation. We were having our monthly “public exhibition night,” and the audience included not only my class- mates, but their parents and friends as well. The selection I intended to recite was a poem entitled “No Sects in Heaven,” but when I faced my au- dience I was so appalled by its size and by the sud- den realization of my own temerity that I fainted during the delivery of the first verse. Sympathetic classmates carried me into an anteroom and revived me, after which they naturally assumed that the entertainment I furnished was over for the evening. I, however, felt that if I let that failure stand against me I could never afterward speak in public; and within ten minutes, notwithstanding the protests of my friends, I was back in the hall and beginning my recitation a second time. The audience gave me its eager attention. Possibly it hoped to see me topple off the platform again, but nothing of the sort occurred. I went through the recitation with self-possession and received some friendly applause at the end. Strangely enough, those first sensations of “stage fright” have been experienced, in a lesser de- gree, in connection with each of the thousands of public speeches I have made since that time. I have never again gone so far as to faint in the presence of an audience; but I have invariably walked out on the platform feeling the sinking sen- sation at the pit of the stomach, the weakness of the knees, that I felt in the hour of my debut. Now, however, the nervousness passes after a moment or two. From that night Miss Foot lost no opportunity of putting me into the foreground of our school affairs. I took part in all our debates, recited yards of poe- try to any audience we could attract, and even shone mildly in our amateur theatricals. It was probably owing to all this activity that I attracted the in- terest of the presiding elder of our district–Dr. Peck, a man of progressive ideas. There was at that time a movement on foot to license women to preach in the Methodist Church, and Dr. Peck was ambitious to be the first presiding elder to have a woman ordained for the Methodist ministry. He had urged Miss Foot to be this pioneer, but her ambitions did not turn in that direction. Though she was a very devout Methodist, she had no wish to be the shepherd of a religious flock. She loved her school-work, and asked nothing better than to remain in it. Gently but persistently she directed the attention of Dr. Peck to me, and immediately things began to happen. Without telling me to what it might lead, Miss Foot finally arranged a meeting at her home by in- viting Dr. Peck and me to dinner. Being uncon- scious of any significance in the occasion, I chatted light-heartedly about the large issues of life and probably settled most of them to my personal satis- faction. Dr. Peck drew me out and led me on, listened and smiled. When the evening was over and we rose to go, he turned to me with sudden seriousness: “My quarterly meeting will be held at Ashton,” he remarked, casually. “I would like you to preach the quarterly sermon.” For a moment the earth seemed to slip away from my feet. I stared at him in utter stupefaction. Then slowly I realized that, incredible as it seemed, the man was in earnest. “Why,” I stammered, “I can’t preach a ser- mon!”