The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1910-10-27
JULIA WARD HOWE.
A Comrades Recollections. By Thomas
Wentworth Higginson.
[Boston Transcript. |


say it had never occurred to her con-
temporaries that she could die.
Having already written more or less
about this dear friend and coworker, and
being called upon to pay some tribute
now to her many-sided life, l must be
excused if in some cases repeat myself.
can truly say that after knowing Mrs.
Howe more than forty years and having
been fellow member or officer in half
dozen clubs with her, | now see in her
not merely the woman of today, but the
woman who went through the education
of wifehood and motherhood, of reformer
and agitator, and who in all these was
trained by the experience of life The
'Salutatory" of her first volume of
poems begins thus:
II was born meath clouded star,
More in shadow than light have grown;
Loving souls are not like trees
That strongest and stateliest shoot alone"
And one of her most attractive poems is
that in which she describes herself as
going out for exercise on a rainy day,
and walking round her house, looking up
each time at the window where her chill
dren are watching with merry eagerness
for the successive glimpses of her. This
is the poem mean:
THE HEARTS ASTRONOMY.
This evening as the twilight fell,
My younger children watched for me;
Like cherubs in the window framed,
saw the smiling group of three.
While round and round the house trudged,
Intent to walk weary mile,
Oft as passed within their range,
The little things would beck and smile.
They watched me, as Astronomers,
Whose business lies in heaven afar,
Await, beside the slanting glass,
The temperance of a star.
Not so, not so, my pretty ones!
Seek stars in yonder cloudless sky,
But mark no steadfast path for me-
A comet dire and strange am |.
And ye, beloved ones, when ye know
What wild erratic natures are,
Pray that the laws of heavenly force
Would hold and guide the Mother star.
In later years | have been in success
sive periods her coadjutor, if in nothing
more than the Boston Authors Club.
Mrs. Howe usually presided and it be-
came one of my duties to sit next to her
while some debate was going on of which
she literally could not hear single word.
No one, however, would have guessed
this, for my task was to give her brief
statements of what was said and at the
end she gave her own view Of the sub
ject in two or three concise sentences as
clearly and neatly as if she had heard the
whole argument; and she never failed to
bring down the house When she was
appointed by the action of the late Rich
ard Watson Glider and Mark Twain to
membership in the American Academy
of Arts and Letters she did not shrink
from acceptance of it and remained its
only woman member up to the day OF
her death.
At the time of her eighty-siXth birth
day, a meeting of the Boston Authors
Club was held and plan was borrowed
from the annual Welsh festival of the
Elstedfodd, at which every bard of that
nation brought four lines of verse to his
chief. So four-lined verses were
brought to Mrs. Howe by many members
of the club. She met the occasion by
this reply in the form of confession:
Yes, I've had a lot of birthdays and I'm grow
ing very old,
That's why they make SO much of me- II once
the truth were told,
And love the shade in summer, and in winte
love the sun,
And Pm just learning how to live, my WIS
dom's just begun.
Don't trouble more to celebrate this natal da,
of mine,
But keep the grasp of fellowship which warm
us more than wine.
Let us thank the lavish hand that gives worl
beauty to our eyes,
And bless the lays that saw US young, AM
years that make us wise.
Mrs. Howe was one of the few who coul(
unite all kinds of friendship in the SAM
life. Having herself the entree of what
ever the fashion of Newport could il
those days afford; entertaining brllllan
or snowy guests from New York, Wash
ington, London or Paris; her doors wer'
equally open at the same time to tn
planest or most modest reformer-a bo
Iitionist, woman suffragst. or Quaker
and this as matter of course Wlthou
struggle.
Nothing can be more frank and charac
teristic than her own narrative OF he
first almost accidental participation IN
woman's suffrage meeting. She ha'
strayed into the hall, still not half con
WINGED, and was rather reluctantly per
suaded to take seat on the platform, al
| though some OF ner peSI lliehuo WEI
there Garrison, Phillips and Jane
Freeman Clarke. her pastor. But Their
was also Lucy Stone, who had long beer
the object of imaginary disapprovai; ant
yet Mrs. Howe, like every one else VIII
had heard Lucy Stones sweet voice TO
the first time, was charmed and half VOL
by it. ''When they requested me t
speak" Mrs. Howe relates. 81 coult
only say, I am with you. have beef
with them ever since, and have neve
seen any reason to 60 back from tn
pledge then given"
1t is to be regretted that Mrs. Howe i
her lifetime gave little prominence to he
prose publications. Her two addresse
on Modern Society" are hardly excelle
in wit, in wisdom, and in anecdote. Mex
to it is her lecture, 'Is Polite Society Pc
lite?". so keen and pungent that it is sal
a young man was once heard inquirin
for Mrs. Howe, after hearing it, in
country town, and when asked his objec
replied that he had put his brother in tn
poorhouse, and now that he had hear
Mrs. Howe, he supposed that the victir