Memories and Anecdotes Part 10

We saw curious sights along the way, such as the salmon leaping into a fenced-in pool to deposit their sp.a.w.n; there they could be easily speared, dried, and pitched into wagons as we pitch hay in New England. I saw the Indians stretching the salmon on boards put up in the sun, their color in the sun a brilliant pinkish red.

I saw bears fis.h.i.+ng at the edge of water, really catching fish in their clumsy paws. Other bears were picking strawberries for their cubs. As I watched them strolling away, I thought they might be looking for a stray cow to milk to add flavour to the berries.

We stopped at Wrangel to look at the totem poles, many of which have since been stolen as the Indians did not wish to sell them; our usual method of business with that abused race. Totem poles are genealogical records, and give the history of the family before whose door they stand. No one would quietly take the registered certificates of Revolutionary ancestors searched for with great care from the Colonial Dames or members of the New England Society, and coolly destroy them.

I agree with Charles Lamb who said he didn't want to be like a potato, all that was best of him under ground.

At Sitka the brilliant gardens and the large school for Indian girls were the objects of interest. It is a sad fact that the school which teaches these girls cleanly habits, the practical arts of sewing, and cooking simple but appetizing dishes, has made the girls unwilling to return to their dirty homes and the filthy habits of their parents.

That would be impossible to them. So they are lured to visit the dance halls in Juneau, where they find admirers of a transient sort, but seldom secure an honest husband.

We called at Skagway, and the lady who was known by us told us there was much stress there placed upon the most formal attention to rigid conventionalities, calls made and returned, cards left and received at just the right time, more than is expected in Boston. And yet that town was hardly started, and dirt and disorder and chaos reigned supreme.

A company of unlucky miners came home in our steamer; no place for them to sleep but on deck near the doors of our stateroom, and they ate at one of the tables after three other hungry sets had been satisfied. A few slept on the tables. All the poultry had been killed and eaten. We found the Chinese cooks tried to make tough meat attractive by pink and yellow sauces. We were glad to leave the steamer to try the ups and downs of Seattle.

CHAPTER V

Frances E. Willard--Walt Whitman--Lady Henry Somerset--Mrs. Hannah Whitehall Smith--A Teetotaler for Ten Minutes--Olive Thorne Miller--Hearty Praise for Mrs. Lippincott (Grace Greenwood).

I was looking over some letters from Frances E. Willard last week.

What a powerful, blessed influence was hers!

Such a rare combination of intense earnestness, persistence, and devotion to a "cause" with a gentle, forgiving, compa.s.sionate spirit, and all tempered by perfect self-control.

Visiting in Germantown, Pennsylvania, at the hospitable home of Mrs.

Hannah Whitehall Smith, the Quaker Bible reader and lay evangelist, and writer of cheerful counsel, I found several celebrities among her other guests. Miss Willard and Walt Whitman happened to be present.

Whitman was rude and aggressively combative in his attack on the advocate of temperance, and that without the slightest provocation. He declared that all this total abstinence was absolute rot and of no earthly use, and that he hated the sight of these women who went out of their way to be crusading temperance fanatics.

After this outburst he left the room. Miss Willard never alluded to his fiery criticism, didn't seem to know she had been hit, but chatted on as if nothing unpleasant had occurred.

In half an hour he returned; and with a smiling face made a manly apology, and asked to be forgiven for his too severe remarks. Miss Willard met him more than half-way, with generous cordiality, and they became good friends. And when with the women of the circle again she said: "Now wasn't that just grand in that dear old man? I like him the more for his outspoken honesty and his unwillingness to pain me."

How they laboured with "Walt" to induce him to leave out certain of his poems from the next edition! The wife went to her room to pray that he might yield, and the husband argued. But no use, it was all "art" every word, and not one line would he ever give up. The old poet was supposed to be poor and needy, and an enthusiastic daughter of Mrs. Smith had secured quite a sum at college to provide bed linen and blankets for him in the simple cottage at Camden. Whitman was a great, breezy, florid-faced out-of-doors genius, but we all wished he had been a little less _au naturel_.

To speak once more of Miss Willard, no one enjoyed a really laughable thing more than she did, but I never felt like being a foolish trifler in her presence. Her outlook was so far above mine that I always felt not rebuked, but ashamed of my superficial lightness of manner.

Just one ill.u.s.tration of the unconscious influence of her n.o.ble soul and her convincing words:

Many years ago, at an anniversary of Sorosis in New York, I had half promised the persuasive president (Jennie June) that I would say something. The possibility of being called up for an after-dinner speech! Something brief, terse, sparkling, complimentary, satisfactory, and something to raise a laugh! O, you know this agony!

I had nothing in particular to say; I wanted to be quiet and enjoy the treat. But between each course I tried hard, while apparently listening to my neighbour, to think up something "neat and appropriate."

This coming martyrdom, which increases in horror as you advance with deceptive gayety, from roast to game, and game to ices, is really one of the severest trials of club life.

Miss Willard was one of the honoured guests of the day, and was called on first. When she arose and began to speak, I felt instantly that she had something to say; something that she felt was important we should hear, and how beautifully, how simply it was said! Not a thought of self, not one instant's hesitation for a thought or a word, yet it was evidently unwritten and not committed to memory. Every eye was drawn to her earnest face; every heart was touched. As she sat down, I rose and left the room rather rapidly; and when my name was called and my fizzling fireworks expected, I was walking up Fifth Avenue, thinking about her and her life-work. The whole experience was a revelation. I had never met such a woman. No affectation, nor pedantry, nor mannishness to mar the effect. It was in part the humiliating contrast between her soul-stirring words and my silly little society effort that drove me from the place, but all petty egotism vanished before the wish to be of real use to others with which her earnestness had inspired me.

One lady told me that after hearing her she felt she could go out and be a praying band all by herself. Indeed she was

A n.o.ble woman, true and pure, Who in the little while she stayed, Wrought works that shall endure.

She was asked who she would prefer to write a sketch of her and her work and she honoured me by giving me that great pleasure. The book appeared in 1883, ent.i.tled _Our Famous Women_.

Once when Miss Willard was in Boston with Lady Henry Somerset and Anna Gordon, I was delighted by a letter from Frances saying that Lady Henry wanted to know me and could I lunch with them soon at the Abbottsford. I accepted joyously, but next morning's mail brought this depressing decision: "Dear Kate, we have decided that there will be more meat in going to you. When can we come?" I was hardly settled in my house of the Abandoned Farm. There was no furnace in the house, only two servants with me. And it would be impossible to entertain those friends properly in the dead of the winter, and I nearly ready to leave for a milder clime. So I told them the stern facts and lost a rare treat.

This is the end of Miss Willard's good-bye letter to me when returning to England with Lady Henry:

Hoping to see you on my return, and hereby soliciting an exchange of photographs between you and Lady Henry and me,

I am ever and as ever Yours, FRANCES WILLARD.

While at Mrs. Smith's home in Germantown, both she and Miss Willard urged me to sign a Temperance Pledge that lay on the table in the library. I would have accepted almost anything either of those good friends presented for my attention. So after thinking seriously I signed. But after going to my room I felt sure that I could never keep that pledge. So I ran downstairs and told them to erase my name, which was done without one word of astonishment or reproof from either.

I wish I knew how to describe Hannah Whitehall Smith as she was in her everyday life. Such simple n.o.bility, such tenderness for the tempted, such a love for sinners, such a longing to show them the better way.

She said to me: "If my friends must go to what is called h.e.l.l I want to go with them." When a minister, who was her guest, was greatly roused at her lack of belief in eternal punishment and her infinite patience with those who lacked moral strength, he said: "There are surely some sins your daughters could commit which would make you drive them from your home." "There are no sins my daughters could commit which would not make me hug them more closely in my arms and strive to bring them back." Wherewith he exclaimed bitterly: "Madam, you are a mere mucilaginous mess." She made no reply, but her husband soon sent him word that a carriage would be at the door in one hour to convey him to the train for New York.

"If you do not love the birds, you cannot understand them."

I remember enjoying an article on the catbird several years ago in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and wanting to know more of the woman who had observed a pair of birds so closely, and could make so charming a story of their love-affairs and housekeeping experiences, and thinking that most persons knew next to nothing about birds, their habits, and homes.

Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller, who wrote that bird talk, is now a dear friend of mine, and while spending a day with me lately was kind enough to answer all my questions as to how and where and when she began to study birds. She is not a young woman, is the proud grandmother of seven children; but her bright face crowned with handsome white hair, has that young, alert, happy look that comes with having a satisfying hobby that goes at a lively pace. She said: "I never thought of being anything but a housekeeping mother until I was about thirty-one and my husband lost all his property, and want, or a thousand wants, stared us in the face. Making the children's clothes and my own, and cooking as well, broke down my health, so I bethought me of writing, which I always had a longing to do."

"What did you begin with?"

"Well, pretty poor stuff that no one was anxious to pay for; mostly in essay form expressing my own opinions on various important subjects.

But it didn't go. I was complaining of my bad luck to a plain-spoken woman in charge of a circulating library, and she gave me grand advice. 'No one cares a snap for your opinions. You must tell something that folks want to know.'"

"Did you then take up birds?"

"O no; I went into the library, read some of Harriet Martineau's talks on pottery, and told children how a teacup was made and got one dollar for that. But those pot-boilers were not inspiring, and about ten years later a second woman adviser turned my course into another channel."

"How did that come about?"

"I had a bird-loving friend from the West visiting me, and took her to Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to see our birds. She pointed out several, and so interested me in their lives that from that day I began to study them, especially the wood-thrush and catbird. After I had studied them for two years, I wrote what I had seen. From that time my course has seemed marked out for me, and my whole time has been given to this one theme. I think every woman over forty-five ought to take up a fad; they would be much happier and better off."

"You told me once that three women had each in turn changed your career. Do give me the third."

"Well, after my articles and books had met with favour (I have brought out fifteen books), invitations to lecture or talk about birds kept pouring in. I was talking this over with Marion Harland (Mrs.

Terhune), declaring I could never appear in public, that I should be frightened out of my wits, and that I must decline. My voice would all go, and my heart jump into my mouth. She exclaimed, 'For a sensible woman, you are the biggest fool I ever met!' This set me thinking, and with many misgivings I accepted an invitation."

"And did you nearly expire with stage fright?"

"Never was scared one bit, my dear. All bird-lovers are the nicest kind of folks, either as an audience or in their own homes. I have made most delightful acquaintances lecturing in fifteen different States; am now booked for a tour in the West, lecturing every day and taking cla.s.ses into the fields and woods for actual observation.

Nesting-time is the best time to study the birds, to know them thoroughly."

"Do you speak about dead birds on hats?"