Memories and Anecdotes

My Early Days-Odd Characters in our Village-Distinguished Visitors to Dartmouth-Two Story Tellers of Hanover-A "Beacon Light" and a Master of Synonyms-A Day with Bryant in his Country Home-A Wedding Trip to the White Mountains in 1826 in "A One Hoss Shay"-A Great Career which Began in a Country Store.

I make no excuse for publishing these memories. Realizing that I have been so fortunate as to know an unusual number of distinguished men and women, it gives me pleasure to share this privilege with others.

One summer morning, "long, long ago," a newspaper was sent by my grandmother, Mrs. Ezekiel Webster, to a sister at Concord, New Hampshire, with this item of news pencilled on the margin:

"Born Thursday morning, July 11, 1839, 4.30 A.M., a fine little girl, seven pounds."

I was born in my father's library, and first opened my eyes upon a scenic wall-paper depicting the Bay of Naples; in fact I was born just under Vesuvius-which may account for my occasional eruptions of temper and life-long interest in "Old Time Wall-papers." Later our house was expanded into a college dormitory and has been removed to another site, but Vesuvius is still smoking placidly in the old library.

Mine was a shielded, happy childhood-an only child for six years-and family letters show that I was "always and for ever talking," asking questions, making queer remarks, or allowing free play to a vivid imagination, which my parents thought it wise to restrain. Father felt called upon to write for a child's paper about Caty's Gold Fish, which were only minnows from Mink Brook.

"Caty is sitting on the floor at my feet, chattering as usual, and asking questions." I seem to remember my calling over the banister to an assembled family downstairs, "Muzzer, Muzzer, I dess I dot a fezer," or "Muzzer, come up, I'se dot a headache in my stomach." I certainly can recall my intense admiration for Professor Ira Young, our next door neighbour, and his snowy pow, which I called "pity wite fedders."

As years rolled on, I fear I was pert and audacious. I once touched at supper a blazing hot teapot, which almost blistered my fingers, and I screamed with surprise and pain. Father exclaimed, "Stop that noise, Caty." I replied, "Put your fingers on that teapot-and don't kitikize." And one evening about seven, my usual bedtime, I announced, "I'm going to sit up till eight tonight, and don't you 'spute." I know of many children who have the same habit of questions and sharp retorts. One of my pets, after plying her mother with about forty questions, wound up with, "Mother, how does the devil's darning needle sleep? Does he lie down on a twig or hang, or how?" "I don't know, dear." "Why, mother, it is surprising when you have lived so many years, that you know so little!"

Mr. Higginson told an absurd story of an inquisitive child and wearied mother in the cars passing the various Newtons, near Boston. At last the limit. "Ma, why do they call this West Newton?" "Oh, I suppose for fun." Silence for a few minutes, then, "Ma, what was the fun in calling it West Newton?"

I began Latin at eight years-my first book a yellow paper primer.

I was always interested in chickens, and dosed all the indisposed as:

Dandy Dick

Was very sick,

I gave him red pepper

And soon he was better.

In spring, I remember the humming of our bees around the sawdust, and my craze for flower seeds and a garden of my own.

Father had a phenomenal memory; he could recite in his classroom pages of Scott's novels, which he had not read since early youth. He had no intention of allowing my memory to grow flabby from lack of use. I often repeat a verse he asked me to commit to memory:

In reading authors, when you find

Bright passages that strike your mind,

And which perhaps you may have reason

To think on at another season;

Be not contented with the sight,

But jot them down in black and white;

Such respect is wisely shown

As makes another's thought your own.

Every day at the supper table I had to repeat some poetry or prose and on Sunday a hymn, some of which were rather depressing to a young person, as:

Life is but a winter's day;

A journey to the tomb.

And the vivid description of "Dies Irae":

When shrivelling like a parched scroll

The flaming heavens together roll

And louder yet and yet more dread

Swells the high Trump that wakes the dead.

Great attention was given to my lessons in elocution from the best instructors then known, and I had the privilege of studying with William Russell, one of the first exponents of that art. I can still hear his advice: "Full on the vowels; dwell on the consonants, especially at the close of sentences; keep voice strong for the close of an important sentence or paragraph." Next, I took lessons from Professor Mark Bailey of Yale College; and then in Boston in the classes of Professor Lewis B. Monroe,-a most interesting, practical teacher of distinctness, expression, and the way to direct one's voice to this or that part of a hall. I was given the opportunity also of hearing an occasional lecture by Graham Bell. Later, I used to read aloud to father for four or five hours daily-grand practice-such important books as Lecky's Rationalism, Buckle's Averages, Sir William Hamilton's Metaphysics (not one word of which could I understand), Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, and Spencer, till my head was almost too full of that day's "New Thought."

Judge Salmon P. Chase once warned me, when going downstairs to a dinner party at Edgewood, "For God's sake, Kate, don't quote the Atlantic Monthly tonight!" I realized then what a bore I had been.

What a treat to listen to William M. Evarts chatting with Judge Chase! One evening he affected deep depression. "I have just been beaten twice at 'High Low Jack' by Ben the learned pig. I always wondered why two pipes in liquid measure were called a hogshead; now I know; it was on account of their great capacity." He also told of the donkey's loneliness in his absence, as reported by his little daughter.

I gave my first series of talks at Tilden Seminary at West Lebanon, New Hampshire, only a few miles from Hanover. President Asa D. Smith of Dartmouth came to hear two of them, and after I had given the whole series from Chaucer to Burns, he took them to Appleton & Company, the New York publishers, who were relatives of his, and surprised me by having them printed.

I give an unasked-for opinion by John G. Whittier:

I spent a pleasant hour last evening over the charming little volume, Home Pictures of English Poets, which thou wast kind enough to send me, and which I hope is having a wide circulation as it deserves. Its analysis of character and estimate of literary merit strike me as in the main correct. Its racy, colloquial style, enlivened by anecdote and citation, makes it anything but a dull book. It seems to me admirably adapted to supply a want in hearth and home.

I lectured next in various towns in New Hampshire and Vermont; as St. Johnsbury, where I was invited by Governor Fairbanks; Bath, New Hampshire, asked by Mrs. Johnson, a well-known writer on flowers and horticulture, a very entertaining woman. At one town in Vermont I lectured at the large academy there-not much opportunity for rest in such a building. My room was just off the music room where duets were being executed, and a little further on girls were taking singing lessons, while a noisy little clock-ette on my bureau zigzagged out the rapid ticks. At the evening meal I was expected to be agreeable, also after the lecture to meet and entertain a few friends. When I at last retired that blatant clock made me so nervous that I placed it at first in the bureau drawer, where it sounded if possible louder than ever. Then I rose and put it way back in a closet; no hope; at last I partially dressed and carried it the full length of the long hall, and laid it down to sleep on its side. And I think that depressed it. In the morning, a hasty breakfast, because a dozen or more girls were waiting at the door to ask me to write a "tasty sentiment" before I left, in their autograph albums, with my autograph of course, and "something of your own preferred, but at any rate characteristic."

My trips to those various towns taught me to be more humble, and to admire the women I met, discovering how seriously they had studied, and how they made use of every opportunity. I remember Somersworth, New Hampshire, and Burlington, Vermont. I lectured twice at the Insane Asylum at Concord, New Hampshire, invited by Dr. Bancroft. After giving my "newspaper wits" a former governor of Vermont came up to shake hands with me, saying frankly, "Miss Sanborn, your lecture was just about right for us lunatics." A former resident of Hanover, in a closed cell, greeted me the next morning as I passed, with a torrent of abuse, profanity, and obscenity. She too evidently disliked my lecture. Had an audience of lunatics also at the McLean Insane Asylum, Dr. Coles, Superintendent.

I think I was the first woman ever invited to make an address to farmers on farming. I spoke at Tilton, New Hampshire, to more than three hundred men about woman's day on the farm. Insinuated that women need a few days off the farm. Said a good many other things that were not applauded. Farmers seemed to know nothing of the advantages of co-operation, and that they were as much slaves (to the middlemen) as ever were the negroes in the South. They even tried to escape from me at the noise of a dog-fight outside. I offered to provide a large room for social meetings, to stock it with books of the day, and to send them a lot of magazines and other reading. Not one ever made the slightest response. Now they have all and more than I suggested.

When but seventeen, I was sent for to watch with Professor Shurtleff, really a dying man, and left all alone with him in the lower part of the house; he begged about 2 A.M. to be taken up and placed in a rocking-chair near the little open fire. The light was dim and the effect was very weird. His wig hung on one bedpost, he had lost one eye, and the patch worn over the empty eye socket had been left on the bureau. My anxiety was great lest he should slip from the chair and tip into the fire. I note this to mark the great change since that time. Neighbours are not now expected to care for the sick and dying, but trained nurses are always sought, and most of them are noble heroines in their profession.

Once also I watched with a poor woman who was dying with cancer. I tried it for two nights, but the remark of her sister, as I left utterly worn out, "Some folks seem to get all their good things in this life," deterred me from attempting it again.

Started a school a little later in the ell of our house for my friends among the Hanover children-forty-five scholars in all. Kept it going successfully for two years.

I dislike to tell a story so incredible and so against myself as this. One evening father said, "I am going to my room early tonight, Katie; do not forget to lock the back door." I sat reading until quite late, then retired. About 2.30 A.M., I was startled to hear someone gently open that back door, then take off boots and begin to softly ascend the stairs, which stopped only the width of a narrow hall from my room. I have been told that I said in trembling tones, "You're trying to keep pretty quiet down there." Next moment I was at the head of the stairs; saw a man whom I did not recognize on the last step but one. I struck a heavy blow on his chest, saying, "Go down, sir," and down he tumbled all the way, his boots clanking along by themselves. Then the door opened, my burglar disappeared, and I went down and locked the back door as I had promised father I would. I felt less proud of my physical prowess and real courage when my attention was called to a full account of my assault in the college papers of the day. The young man was not rooming at our house, but coming into town quite late, planned to lodge with a friend there. He threw gravel at this young man's window in the third story to waken him, and failing thought at last he would try the door, and if not locked he would creep up, and disturb no one. But "Miss Sanborn knocked a man all the way downstairs" was duly announced. I then realized my awful mistake, and didn't care to appear on the street for some time except in recitation hours.

The second time I lectured in Burlington, I was delayed nearly half an hour at that dreadful Junction, about which place Professor Edward J. Phelps, afterwards Minister to England, wrote a fierce rhyme to relieve his rage at being compelled to waste so much precious time there. I recall only two revengeful lines:

"I hope in hell his soul may dwell,

Who first invented Essex Junction."

Oh, yes, I do remember his idea that the cemetery near the station contained the bodies of many weary ones who had died just before help came and were shovelled over.

It happened that Mrs. Underwood, wife of the demented governor, who had alluded so truthfully to my lecture, was in the audience, and being gifted with genuine clairvoyant powers, she rose and begged the audience not to disperse, as she could distinctly see me pacing nervously up and down the platform at the Junction in a long sealskin coat and hat trimmed with band of fur. I arrived at last with the sealskin and the hat, proving her correct, and they cheered her as well as myself.

Our little village had its share of eccentric characters, as the old man who was impelled by the edict of the Bible to cut off his right hand as it had "offended him." But lacking surgical facilities, the effort left one hand hanging limp and useless. His long white beard, how truly patriarchal!

Poor insane Sally Duget-a sad story! Her epitaph in our cemetery is pathetic. With all her woe she was quick at repartee. A man once asked her, "Shall you ever marry, Sally?" "Well, yes, if you and I can make a bargain."

Elder Bawker with his difficulties in locomotion.

Rogers, who carried the students' washing home to his wife on Sunday afternoons for a preliminary soak. The minister seeing him thus engaged, stopped him, and inquired:

"Where do you think you will go to if you so constantly desecrate the Holy Sabbath?"

"Guess I'll go right on doing laundry work for the boys."

The aged janitor who, in a brief scare about smallpox, was asked if he had ever had it: "No, but I've had chances."

An old sinner who, being converted, used to serve as a lay evangelist at the district schoolhouse where in winter religious meetings were held. Roguish lads to test him sprinkled red pepper, a lot of it, on the red hot stove. He almost suffocated, but burst out with: "By God, there's enemies to religion in this house! Hist the winders!"

The rubicund butcher of that period (we had no choice) was asked by a long-time patron how he got such a red face. "Cider apple sass." The same patron said, "You have served me pretty well, but cheated me a good deal." "Yes, sir, but you have no idea how much I've cheated you."

Our one milliner, positively brilliant in her remarks, when a lady sent back her bonnet twice on the ground that it was not becoming, said, "Remember you have your face to contend with."

Our only and original gravedigger, manager in general of village affairs.

After the death of a physician, his wife gave a stained-glass window to the Episcopal Church of St. Luke, the beloved physician. She asked Jason if he liked it. He said, "It don't strike me as a particular speaking likeness of Dr. Tom."

To one of the new professors who ventured to make a few suggestions, "Who be yaou anyway?"

He enjoyed buttonholing people he met in our "graveyard" and pointing out where they "must shortly lie."

Our landlord-who that ever saw Horace Frary could forget him? If a mother came to Hanover to see her boy on the 2.30 P.M. train, no meal could be obtained. He would stand at the front door and explain, "Dinner is over long ago." He cared personally for about thirty oil lamps each day, trimmed the wicks with his fingers, and then wiped them on his trousers. Also did the carving standing at the table and cleaning the dull knife on the same right side-so the effect was startling. One day when he had been ill for a short time his wife said: "Dr. Dixi Crosby is coming this way now, I'll call him in." "Don't let him in now," he begged, "why d-- it, I'm sick!"

I must not omit the strictly veracious witness who was sworn to testify how many students were engaged in a noisy night frolic at Norwich. "As fur as I know, there was betwixt six and seven."

"Webb Hall," who today would figure as a "down and out," made many amusing statements. "By the way I look in these ragged clothes, you might take me for a Democrat, but I'm a red hot Republican."

He was obsessed by the notion that he had some trouble with a judge in Concord, New Hampshire. He said fiercely, "I will buy two guns, go to Concord, kill Judge Stanton with one, and shoot myself with the other, or else wait quietly till spring and see what will come of it." A possible precursor of President Wilson's Mexican policy.

He was accused by a woman of milking a cow in her pasture; pleaded guilty, but added, "I left a ten-cent piece on the fence."

An East Hanover man is remembered for his cheek in slyly picking lettuce or parsley in the gardens of the professors and then selling them at the back door to their wives.

And a farmer from Vermont who used to sell tempting vegetables from his large farm. He was so friendly he cordially greeted the ladies who bought from him with a kiss. Grandmother evaded this attention by stating her age, and so was unmolested. The names of his family were arranged in alphabetical order. "Hannah A., give Miss Kate another cup of coffee; Noah B., pass the butter; Emma C., guess you better hand round the riz biscuit."

Life then was a solemn business at Hanover. No dancing; no cards; no theatricals; a yearly concert at commencement, and typhoid fever in the fall. On the Lord's Day some children were not allowed to read the Youth's Companion, or pluck a flower in the garden. But one old working woman rebelled. "I ain't going to have my daughter Frances brought up in no superstitious tragedy." She was far in advance of her age.

I have always delighted in college songs from good voices, whether sung when sitting on the old common fence (now gone) at the "sing out" at the close of the year, or merrily trolling or tra-la-laing along the streets. What a surprise when one glorious moonlight night which showed up the magnificent elms then arching the street before our house-the air was full of fragrance-I was suddenly aroused by several voices adjuring me, a lady of beauty, to awake. I was bewildered-ecstatic. This singing was for me. I listened intently and heard the words of their song:

Sweet is the sound of lute and voice

When borne across the water.

Then two other sweets I could not quite catch, and the last lines sung with fervor:

But sweeter still is the charming voice

Of Professor Sanborn's daughter.

Two more stanzas and each with the refrain:

The prettiest girl on Hanover Plain is

Professor Sanborn's daughter.

Then the last verse:

Hot is the sun whose golden rays

Can reach from heaven to earth,

And hot a tin pan newly scoured

Placed on the blazing hearth,

And hot a boy's ears boxed for doing

That which he hadn't orter,

But hotter still is the love I bear

For Professor Sanborn's daughter.

with chorus as before.

I threw down lovely flowers and timidly thanked them. They applauded, sang a rollicking farewell, and were gone. If I could have removed my heart painlessly, I believe that would have gone out too. They had gone, but the blissful memory! I leaned on the window sill, and the moon with its bounteous mellow radiance filled my room. But listen, hark! Only two doors beyond, the same voices, the same melodious tones, and alas, yes, the same words, every verse and the same chorus-same masculine fervour-but somebody else's daughter.

A breakfast comment: "It's a terrible nuisance this caterwauling in the middle of the night in front of the house!" For once I was silent.

Many distinguished men were invited to Dartmouth as orators at commencement or on special occasions, as Rufus Choate, Edward Everett, John G. Saxe, Wendell Phillips, Charles Dudley Warner, and Dr. Holmes, whom I knew in his Boston study, overlooking the water and the gulls. By the way, he looked so young when arriving at Hanover for a few lectures to the Medical School that he was asked if he had come to join the Freshman class.

There were also Edwin P. Whipple, the essayist, and Walt Whitman, who was chosen one year for the commencement poet. He appeared on the platform wearing a flannel shirt, square-cut neck, disclosing a hirsute covering that would have done credit to a grizzly bear; the rest of his attire all right. Joaquin Miller was another genius and original.

Another visitor was James T. Fields of Boston, the popular publisher, poet, author, lecturer, friend, and inimitable raconteur, who was always one of my best friends.

When Mr. and Mrs. Fields were invited to Hanover, he and his beautiful wife were always guests at our home. Their first visit to us was an epoch for me. I worked hard the morning before they were to arrive, sweeping, dusting, polishing silver, and especially brightening the large, brass andirons in father's library. I usually scoured with rotten stone and oil, but on this great occasion, adopting a receipt which I had happened to see in a newspaper, I tried vinegar and powdered pumice-stone. The result at first was fine.

I had barely time after all this to place flowers about the house and dress, and then to drive in our old carryall, with our older horse, to the station at Norwich, just across the Connecticut River, to meet the distinguished pair and escort them to our house. As I heard the train approaching, and the shrill whistle, I got nervous, and my hands trembled. How would they know me? And what had I better say? My aged and spavined horse was called by father "Rosinante" for Don Quixote's bony steed, also "Blind Guide" and "Heathen Philosopher." He looked it-and my shabby carryall! But the train was snorting for a stop, and the two guests soon came easily to my vehicle, and Mr. Fields seemed to know me. Both shook hands most cordially and were soon in the back seat, full of pleasant chat and the first exciting ordeal was over. At tea table Mr. and Mrs. Fields sat on either side of father, and the stories told were different from any I had ever heard. I found when the meal was over I had not taken a mouthful. Next we all went to the College Church for the lecture, and on coming home we had an evening lunch. All ate heartily but me. I ventured to tell one story, when Mr. Fields clapped his hands and said, "Delightful." That was food to me! I went to bed half starved, and only took enough breakfast to sustain life. Before they left I had written down and committed to memory every anecdote he had given. They have never been printed until now, and you may be sure they are just as my hero told them. My only grief was the appearance of my andirons. I invited our guests to the open fire with pride, and the brass was covered with black and green-not a gleam of shine.

Often Mr. Fields's jokes were on himself-as the opinion of a man in the car seat just beyond him, as they happened to be passing Mr. Fields's residence on the Massachusetts coast. The house was pointed out on "Thunderbolt Hill" and his companion said, "How is he as a lecturer?"

"Well," was the response, "he ain't Gough by a d--d sight."

How comically he told of a country druggist's clerk to whom he put the query, "What is the most popular pill just now?" And the quick answer, "Schenk's-they do say the Craowned Heads is all atakin' of 'em!"

Or the request for his funniest lecture for the benefit of a hearse in a rural hamlet!

His experience in a little village where he and Mrs. Fields wanted to find a boarding-house: The lady of the house demurred; she had "got pretty tired of boarders," but at last capitulated with, "Well, I'll let you come in if you'll do your own stretching." This proved to mean no waitress at the table.

The morning after their arrival, he went out for a long walk in the mountain air, and returning was accosted by his host: "I see you are quite a predestinarian." As he was resting on one of the wooden chairs, the man said: "I got those chairs for piazzary purposes," and enlarged on the trouble of getting good help in haying time: "Why, my neighbour, Jake Stebbins, had a boy in his gang named Henry Ward Beecher Gooley. He was so dreadful pious that on extra hot mornings he'd call 'em all together at eleven o'clock and ask 'em to join in singing, 'Lord, Dismiss us with Thy Blessing.'"

All these anecdotes were told to me by Mr. Fields and I intend to give only those memories which are my own.

Mr. Fields was wonderfully kind to budding authors. Professor Brown sent him, without my knowledge, my two-column appreciation of dear Tom Hood, after his memorials were written by his son and daughter. And before many weeks came a box of his newest books for me, with a little note on finest paper and wide margin, "hoping that your friendship may always be continued towards our house."

I cannot speak of Mr. Fields and fail to pay my tribute of loving admiration to his wife, Annie Fields. When I first met that lady in her home at 148 Charles Street, she was so exquisitely dainty, refined, spirituelle, and beautiful, I felt, as I expressed it, "square-toed and common." She was sincerely cordial to all who were invited to that sacred shrine; she was the perfect hostess and housekeeper, the ever-busy philanthropist, a classic poet, a strong writer of prose when eager to aid some needed reform. Never before had I seen such a rare combination of the esthetic and practical, and she shone wherever placed. Once when she was with us, I went up to her room to see if I could help her as she was leaving. She was seated on the floor, pulling straps tightly round some steamer rugs and a rainy day coat, and she explained she always attended to such "little things." As one wrote of her, after her death, she made the most of herself, but she made more of her husband. Together they went forward, side by side, to the last, comrades and true lovers.

Two of all the wonderful literary treasures in their drawing-room produced a great impression on me, one a caricature of Thackeray's face done by himself with no mercy shown to his flattened, broken nose. A lady said to him: "There is only one thing about you I could never get over, your nose." "No wonder, madam, there is no bridge to it." The other was an invitation to supper in Charles Lamb's own writing, and at the bottom of the page, "Puns at nine."

Two famous story-tellers of the old-fashioned type were Doctor Dixi Crosby of Hanover, and his son "Ben," who made a great name for himself in New York City as a surgeon, and also as a brilliant after-dinner speaker. Doctor Crosby's preference was for the long-drawn-out style, as this example, which I heard him tell several times, shows:

A man gave a lecture in a New England town which failed to elicit much applause and this troubled him. As he left early next morning on the top of the stage-coach, he interviewed the driver, who seemed not anxious to talk. "Did you hear much said about my lecture last night? Do you think it pleased the audience?"

"Oh, I guess they were well enough satisfied; some were anyway."

"Were there any who expressed dissatisfaction?"

"I would not pry into it, stranger; there wasn't much said against it anyhow."

"Now you have aroused my curiosity. I must beg you to let me know. Who criticized it, and what did they say? It might help me to hear it."

"Well, Squire Jones was the man; he does not say much one way or other. But I'll tell you he always gets the gist of it."

"And what was his verdict?"

"If you must know, Squire Jones he said, said he, he thought 'twas-awful shaller."

Doctor Ben's Goffstown Muster was a quicker tempo and had a better climax. 'Twas the great occasion of the annual military reviews. He graphically described boys driving colts hardly broken; mothers nursing babies, very squally; girls and their beaux sitting in the best wagon holding hands and staring about (as Warner said to me, "Young love in the country is a solemn thing"); the booths for sale of gingerbread, peanuts, cider, candies, and popcorn; the marshal of the day dashing here and there on his prancing steed. All was excitement, great crowds, and the blare of the band. Suddenly an aged pair, seemingly skeletons, so bony and wan were they, were seen tottering toward the fence, where they at last stopped. They had come from the direction of the graveyard. The marshal rushed forward calling out, "Go back, go back; this is not the general resurrection, it is only the Goffstown Muster."

Doctor Ben Crosby was one of the most admirable mimics ever known and without a suspicion of ill-nature. Sometimes he would call on us representing another acquaintance, who had just left, so perfectly that the gravest and stiffest were in danger of hysterics. This power his daughter inherited.

John Lord, the historical lecturer, was always a "beacon light" (which was the name he gave his lectures when published) as he discussed the subjects and persons he took for themes before immense audiences everywhere. His conversation was also intensely interesting. He was a social lion and a favourite guest. His lectures have still a large annual sale-no one who once knew him or listened to his pyrotechnic climaxes could ever forget him or them. It was true that he made nine independent and distinct motions simultaneously in his most intense delivery. I once met him going back to his rooms at his hotel carrying a leather bag. He stopped, opened it, showing a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and explained "I am starting in on a lecture on Moses." There was a certain simplicity about the man. Once when his right arm was in a sling, broken by a fall from a horse, he offered prayer in the old church. And unable to use his arm as usual, he so balanced his gyrations that he in some way drifted around until when he said "Amen" his face fronted the whitewashed wall back of his pulpit. He turned to the minister standing by him, saying in a very audible whisper, "Do you think anybody noticed it?"

He was so genuinely hospitable that when a friend suddenly accepted his "come up any time" invitation, he found no one at home but the doctor, who proposed their killing a chicken. Soon one was let out, but she evaded her pursuers. "You shoo, and I'll catch," cried the kind host, but shrank back as the fowl came near, exclaiming: "Say, West, has a hen got teeth?" At last they conquered, plucked, and cooked her for a somewhat tardy meal, with some potatoes clawed up in the potato field. Once, when very absent-minded, at a hotel table in a country tavern, the waitress was astonished to watch him as he took the oil cruet from the castor and proceeded to grease his boots.

Doctor John Ordronaux, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at Dartmouth and various other colleges and medical schools, was another erudite scholar, who made a permanent impression on all he met. While yet at college, his words were so unusual and his vocabulary so full that a wag once advertised on the bulletin board on the door of Dartmouth Hall, "Five hundred new adjectives by John Ordronaux."

He was haunted by synonyms, and told me they interfered with his writing, so many clamouring for attention. He was a confirmed bachelor with very regular habits; wanted his bed to be left to air the entire day, he to make it himself at precisely 5.30 P.M., or as near as possible. His walk was peculiar, with knees stiffly bent out and elbows crooked as if to repel all feminine aggression, "a progressive porcupine" as someone described his gait. His hour for retiring was always the same; when calling leaving about 9.30. Rallied about his methodical habits, he was apt to mention many of his old friends who had indulged themselves in earthly pleasures, all of whom he had the sad pleasure of burying.

He was a great admirer of my mother for her loveliness and kind interest in the students; after her death he was a noble aid to me in many ways. I needed his precautions about spreading myself too thin, about being less flamboyantly loquacious, and subduing my excessive enthusiasm and emotional prodigality. Once after giving me a drive, he kindly said, as he helped me out, "I have quite enjoyed your cheerful prattle." Fact was, he had monologued it in his most sesquipedalian phraseology. I had no chance to say one word. He had his own way of gaining magnetism; believed in associating with butchers. Did you ever know one that was an?mic, especially at slaughtering time? From them and the animals there and in stables, and the smell of the flowing blood, he felt that surely a radiant magnetism was gained. Those he visited "thought he was real democratic and a pleasant spoken man." He told of an opportunity he once had for regular employment, riding on the stage-coach by the side of a farmer's pretty daughter. She suggested that he might like a milk route, and "perhaps father can get you one." So formal, dignified, and fastidious was he that this seems improbable, but I quote his own account.

Doctor Ordronaux visited at my uncle's, a physician, when I was resting there from overwork. After his departure, uncle received a letter from him which he handed to me saying, "Guess this is meant for you." I quote proudly:

I rejoice to have been permitted to enjoy so much of Miss Sanborn's society, and to discover what I never before fully appreciated, that beneath the scintillations of a brilliant intellect she hides a vigorous and analytic understanding, and when age shall have somewhat tempered her emotional susceptibilities she will shine with the steady light of a planet, reaching her perihelion and taking a permanent place in the firmament of letters.

Sounds something like a Johnsonian epitaph, but wasn't it great?

I visited his adopted mother at Roslyn, Long Island, and they took me to a Sunday dinner with Bryant at "Cedarmere," a fitting spot for a poet's home. The aged poet was in vigorous health, mind and body. Going to his library he took down an early edition of his Thanatopsis, pointing out the nineteen lines written some time before the rest. Mottoes hung on the wall such as "As thy days so shall thy strength be." I ventured to ask how he preserved such vitality, and he said, "I owe a great deal to daily air baths and the flesh brush, plenty of outdoor air and open fireplaces." What an impressive personality; erect, with white hair and long beard; his eyebrows looked as if snow had fallen on them. His conversation was delightfully informal. "What does your name mean?" he inquired, and I had to say, "I do not know, it has changed so often," and asked, "What is the origin of yours?" "Briant-brilliant, of course." He told the butler to close the door behind me lest I catch cold from a draught, quoting this couplet:

When the wind strikes you through a hole,

Go make your will and mind your soul;

and informing me that this advice was found in every language, if not dialect, in the world. He loved every inch of his country home, was interested in farming, flowers, the water-view and fish-pond, fond of long walks, and preferred the simple life. In his rooms were many souvenirs of early travel. His walls were covered with the finest engravings and paintings from the best American artists. He was too willing to be imposed upon by young authors and would-be poets. He said: "People expect too much of me, altogether too much." That Sunday was his last before his address on Mazzini in Central Park. He finished with the hot sun over his head, and walking across the park to the house of Grant Wilson, he fell down faint and hopelessly ill on the doorstep. He never rallied, and after thirteen days the end came. An impressive warning to the old, who are selfishly urged to do hard tasks, that they must conserve their own vitality. Bryant was eighty-four when killed by over-exertion, with a mind as wonderful as ever.

I will now recount the conditions when Ezekiel Webster and his second wife took their wedding trip in a "one hoss shay" to the White Mountains in 1826.

Grandma lived to be ninety-six, with her mind as clear as ever, and two years before her death she gave me this story of their experiences at that time. My mother told me she knew of more than thirty proposals she had received after grandfather's death, but she said "she would rather be the widow of Ezekiel Webster, than the wife of any other man." The following is her own description.

The only house near the Crawford Notch was the Willey House, in which the family were living. A week before a slide had come down by the side of the house and obstructed the road. Mr. Willey and two men came to our assistance, taking out the horse and lifting the carriage over the débris.

They described the terrors of the night of the slide. The rain was pouring in torrents, the soil began to slide from the tops of the rocks, taking with it trees, boulders, and all in its way; the crashing and thundering were terrible. Three weeks later the entire family, nine in number, in fleeing to a place of refuge, were overtaken by a second slide and all buried.

The notch was then as nature made it; no steam whistle or car clatter had intruded upon its solitude. The first moving object we saw after passing through was a man in the distance. He proved to be Ethan Crawford, who kept the only house of entertainment. He was walking leisurely, drawing a rattlesnake along by its tail. He had killed the creature and was taking it home as a trophy. He was a stalwart man, who had always lived among the mountains, and had become as familiar with the wild beasts as with the cat and dog of his own home. He said that only a few days before he had passed a bear drinking at a spring. He led the way to his house, a common farmhouse without paint, or carpet, or cushioned seat. The landlady was spinning wool in the kitchen.

Mr. Crawford supplied the table when he could by his gun or fishing-rod; otherwise the fare was meagre. When asked for mustard for the salt meat, they said they had none, at least in the house, but they had some growing.

A young turkey halted about in the dining-room gobbling in a noisy way, and the girl in attendance was requested by Mr. Webster, with imperturbable gravity, either to kindly take it out or to bring its companion in, for it seemed lonely. She stood in utter confusion for a minute, then seized the squawking fowl and disappeared.

When Mr. Crawford was asked if ladies ever went up Mount Washington, he said two had been up, and he hoped never to see another trying it, for the last one he brought down on his shoulders, or she would have never got down alive.

The first night I asked for a change of bed linen. No attention was paid to my request, and after waiting a long time I found the landlady and asked her if she would have the sheets changed. She straightened up and said she didn't think the bed would hurt anybody, for only two ministers from Boston had slept in it. We stayed some days and although it was the height of the season, we were the only guests. Nothing from the outside world reached us but one newspaper, and that brought the startling news of the death of Adams and Jefferson on the fourth of July, just fifty years after their signing the Declaration of Independence.

The large leghorn bonnet which Mrs. Webster wore on that eventful journey hangs in my collection of old relics. She told me it used to hit the wheel when she looked out. And near it is her dark-brown "calash," a big bonnet with rattans stitched in so it would easily move back and forward. Her winter hood was of dark blue silk, warmly wadded and prettily quilted.

Who would not wish to live to be a hundred if health and mental vigour could be retained? This rare old lady wrote lively, interesting letters on all current topics, and was as eager to win at whist, backgammon, or logomachy as a child. Her religion was the most beautiful part of her life, the same every day, self-forgetting, practical Christianity. She is not forgotten; her life is still a stimulus, an inspiration, a benediction. The love and veneration of those who gathered about her in family reunions were expressed by her nephew Dr. Fred B. Lund, one of the most distinguished surgeons of Boston:

To her who down the pathway of the years

Serene and calm her blessed way she trod,

Has given smiles for smiles, and tears for tears,

Held fast the good in life, and shown how God

Has given to us His servants here below,

A shining mark to follow in our strife,

Who proves that He is good, and makes us know

Through ten decades of pure and holy life

How life may be made sweeter at its end,

How graces from the seasons that have fled

May light her eyes and added glory lend

To saintly aureole about her head.

We bring our Christmas greeting heartily,

Three generations gathered at her feet,

Who like a little child has led, while we

Have lived and loved beneath her influence sweet.

THE STREET FRONTING THE SANBORN HOME AT HANOVER, N. H.

Levi Parsons Morton, born at Shoreham, Vermont, May 16, 1824, was named for his mother's brother, Levi Parsons, the first American missionary to Palestine. He was the son of a minister, Reverend Daniel Morton, who with his wife Lucretia Parsons, like so many other clergymen, was obliged to exist on a starvation salary, only six hundred dollars a year. Among his ancestors was George Morton of Battery, Yorkshire, financial agent in London of the Mayflower. Mr. L.P. Morton may have inherited his financial cleverness from this ancestor.

After studying at Shoreham Academy, he entered a country store at Enfield, Massachusetts, and was there for two years, then taught a district school, and later entered a general store at Concord, New Hampshire, when only seventeen. His father was unable to send him to college, and Mr. Estabrook, the manager of the store, decided to establish him in a branch store at Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth College is located, giving him soon afterward an interest in the business. Here he stayed until nearly twenty-four years old. Mr. Morton immediately engaged a stylish tailor from Boston, W.H. Gibbs, or as all called him, "Bill Gibbs," whose skill at making even cheap suits look smart brought him a large patronage from the college students. Once a whole graduating class were supplied with dress suits from this artist. Mr. Morton had a most interesting store, sunny and scrupulously clean, with everything anyone could ask for, and few ever went out of it without buying something, even if they had entered simply from curiosity. The clerks were trained to be courteous without being persistent. Saturday was bargain day, and printed lists of what could be obtained on that day at an absurdly cheap rate were widely distributed through the neighbouring towns. People came in large numbers to those bargains. Long rows of all sorts of odd vehicles were hitched up and down the street. A man would drop in for some smoking tobacco and buy himself a good straw hat or winter cap. A wife would call because soda was offered so cheaply and would end by buying a black silk dress, "worth one dollar a yard but selling for today only for fifty cents." Mr. Morton was perhaps the original pioneer in methods which have built up the great department stores of the present day. If he had received the education his father so craved for him he would have probably had an inferior and very different career.

Mr. Morton greatly enjoyed his life at Hanover; he was successful and looking forward to greater openings in his business career. My father, taking a great fancy to this enterprising, cheery young man, invited him to dine each day at our house for nearly a year. They were great friends and had a happy influence upon each other. There were many jolly laughs and much earnest talk. He met Miss Lucy Kimball of Flatlands, Long Island, at our house at a Commencement reception, and they were soon married. She lived only a few years.

Mr. Morton was next in Boston in the dry-goods house of James Beebe Morgan & Company, and was soon made a partner. Mr. Morgan was the father of Pierpont Morgan. It is everlastingly to Mr. Morton's honour that after he failed in business in New York he was able before long to invite his creditors to dinner, and underneath the service plate of each creditor was a check for payment in full.

Preferring to give money while living, his whole path has been marked by large benefactions. My memory is of his Hanover life and his friendship with my father, but it is interesting to note the several steps in his career: Honorary Commissioner, Paris Exposition, 1878; Member 46th Congress, 1879-81, Sixth New York District; United States Minister to France, 1881-85; Vice-President of the United States, 1889-93; Governor of New York, 1895-6.

Mr. Morton recently celebrated at his Washington home the ninety-first anniversary in a life full of honours, and what is more important-of honour.