Grant, Robert (1852-1940) the the 4/21/2017 Robert Grant (novelist) Wikipedia Robert Grant (novelist) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Robert Grant (January 24, 1852 - May 19, 1940) was an American author and a jurist who participated in a review of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial a few weeks before their Robert Grant executions. Contents 1 Biography 2 Works (partial list) 3 Notes 4 External links Biography Grant was born to a Patrick Grant (1810-1895) and Charlotte Boardman (Rice) Grant (1821-1882) in Boston, Massachusetts on January 24, 1852 and was a descendant of Born January 24, 1852 Edmund Rice an early immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony. [1][2] He attended Boston Boston, Massachusetts Latin School and graduated from Harvard University in 1873. At one point in his college Died May 19, 1940 (aged 88) career he was publicly reprimanded for missing chapel on 22 occasions. [3] He received Boston, Massachusetts the first Ph.D. in English granted by Harvard in 1876 and a law degree in 1879 [4] Nationality American His first novel appeared in 1880. It was called The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl, a realistic depiction of the problems facing young women. He published his second novel An Average Man in 1883, a study of two young New York lawyers with very different ambitions. His next novel was Face to Face (1886), which demonstrated the difference between English and American manners and social standards. He followed that with the novel that proved to be his most successful. Unleavened Bread (1900), the story of a woman who abandons her moral standards in her search for prestige and dominance was one of the best selling novels of 1900. His output continued with The Undercurrent (1904); The Orchid (1905), an examination of the impact of divorce in the upper class; The Chippendales (1909), the story of the decline in character of a Boston family over the course of several generations; The High Priestess (1915), detailing a woman's struggle to have a career; and The Bishop's Granddaughter (1925), a humorous view and critique of American divorce law. [5] At the same time as he pursued his writing, Grant was also served as a probate court judge from 1893 to 1923. He was an Overseer of Harvard University from 1896 to 1921 as well [6] He served as president of the Harvard Alumni Association in 1922 and of the Harvard Club of Boston in 1923-24 and held honorary degrees from Harvard and Columbia. [7] He was called out of retirement by Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller to serve on an Advisory Committee with President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard and President Samuel Wesley Stratton of MIT. They were tasked with reviewing the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti to determine whether the trial had been fair. [8] Some criticized Grant's appointment to the Committee, with one defense lawyer saying he "had a black-tie class concept of life around him," but Harold Laski in a conversation at the time found him "moderate." Others cited evidence of xenophobia in some of his novels, references to "riff-raff" and a variety of racial slurs. A biographer notes that he was not a good choice as he was not a legal scholar and was handicapped by age. The Committee concluded that the trial had been fair, but its report included some measured criticism of the judge in the case, Webster Thayer. Judge Grant furnished the language that found "a grave breach of judicial decorum". Later Grant allowed that he was "amazed and incensed" at the biased comments Judge Thayer made outside the courtroom. In later years he was known to struggle with the judgment the Committee had rendered, though in his autobiography he took a "defensive, almost bellicose tone." He maintained a particularly acute animus toward Harvard Professor of Law Felix Frankfurter who published an article making the case for the defense in the Atlantic Monthly while appeals were still pending. Grant believed that Frankfurter's article served as the foundation of most criticism of the Sacco and Vanzetti case on the part of intellectuals throughout the world, a view in which he was seconded by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft. [9][10][11] Following that very public work, he returned to writing. First he produced another novel, The Dark Horse (1931), a study of society and politics in Boston and finally his autobiography Fourscore (1934) when he was 82. He died in Boston on May 19, 1940. [6] Works (partial list) Novels The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl (1880) 4/21/2017 Robert Grant (novelist) Wikipedia The King's Men, A Tale of To-Morrow (1884) Face to Face (1886) The Reflections of a Married Man (1892) The Opinions of a Philosopher (1893) Unleavened Bread (1900) The Undercurrent (1904) The Orchid (1905) The Law-Breakers and Other Stories (1906) The Chippendales (1909) The High Priestess (1915) The Bishop's Granddaughter (1925) The Dark Horse (1931) Autobiography Fourscore: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1934) Drama The Lambs: A Tragedy (Boston:James R. Osgood & Co, 1882) Notes 1. "Robert Grant". Find a Grave. Retrieved 20 March 2017. 2. Ward, Andrew Henshaw. 1858. p. 272. In: A genealogical History of the Rice Family: Descendants of Deacon Edmund Rice, Boston: C. Benjamin Richardson, Publisher. 379pp. Download PDF(https://books.google.com/books/download/A_genealogical_history_of_the_Rice_famil.pdf?id=DKx AAAAMAAJ&output=pdf&sig=ACfU3U3MH1Wk2ycAAqUP5Xs5hm4Uw5cqBg&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0) 3. TIME: "RADICALS: Committee," June 13, 1927 (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,730682,00.html) accessed Dec. 21, 2009 4. Edd Applegate, American Naturalistic and Realistic Novelists: A Biographical Dictionary (Greenwood Press, 2001), 175-7 5. James D. Hart and Phillip W. Leininger, "Grant, Robert" in The Oxford Companion to American Literature (Oxford University Press. 1995) 6. "Ex-Judge Grant, Boston Novelist (obituary)". The New York Times. May 20, 1940. Retrieved June 11, 2010. 7. Frank Bergmann, Robert Grant (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982), 125 8. New York Times: "Appoints Advisers for Sacco Inquiry," June 2, 1927 (https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20D15FC3A5D17738DD DAB0894DE405B878EF1D3&), accessed January 6, 2010 9. Frank Bergmann, Robert Grant (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982), 50, 125-31 10. Robert Grant, Fourscore: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1934), 366-74 11. New York Times: "Advisers Hold Guilt Shown," Aug. 7, 1927(https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70616F83C5D167A93C5A91783D 85F438285F9&), accessed Dec. 20, 2009 External links Works by Robert Grant (https://www.gutenberg.org/author/Grant,+Robert+(1852-1940)) at Wikisource has original Project Gutenberg works written by or about: Works by Robert Grant (http://fadedpage.com/csearch.php?author=Grant%2C%20Rober at Robert Grant Faded Page (Canada) Works by or about Robert Grant (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%3 Wikimedia Commons has A%22Grant%2C%20Robert%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Robert%20Grant%22%200 media related to Robert Grant (novelist). 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Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Ph.D. LLB. Haward College Grant Grant Illiam GRANT. ROBERT ( Jan. 24, 1852-May 19, His savoir-faire and his rather mellow satirical New 1940), novelist and judge, was born in Boston outlook appeared again in his first novel, The of Scottish Highland and English descent, the Confessions of a Frivolous Girl (1880), which rated. eldest child of Patrick Grant. a commission was well received, though it was made a re- merchant, and Charlotte Bordman (Rice) proach against him in some quarters when he Grant. Moving in Boston's best social circles, was first considered for the bench. His first and he grew up on Beacon Hill-see his boys' serious novel, Face to Face, was published story. Jack Hall (1887)-and attended the anonymously in 1886, but he did not really prai. Boston Latin School and the Arlington Street establish himself as a serious writer until 1900, (Unitarian) Church. He graduated from Har- when he published Unleavened Bread, whose vard College in 1873 and in 1876 became one feminist heroine, Selma White, has been com- of Harvard's early Ph.D.'s in English phi- pared to Becky Sharp and Madame Bovary. lology. In 1879 he received his LL.B. from the By reference to this book. Edith Wharton [q.v.] 14341 Harvard Law School and was admitted to the called Grant the predecessor of Sinclair Lewis Massachusetts bar. Thereafter he pursued both and Theodore Dreiser. Grove a legal and a literary career. Columbia Uni- Grant himself considered Unleavened Bread xietv. versity awarded him an honorary degree in his best novel: with Leo Ditrichstein [q.v.] and 1921, Harvard in 1922, and he was elected to he dramatized it for a George C. Tyler produc- e-the- the American Academy of Arts and Letters in tion in which Ditrichstein, Elizabeth Tyree, and the 1915. Always a loval son of Harvard, he Eleanor Robson appeared. Some critics. how- fornia served as a member of its Board of Overseers. ever, prefer The Chippendales (1909). in which, with but brief interruptions, from 1895 to 1921 feeling that even Howells had written of Boston (after 1917 as president). society as an outsider. Grant tried to picture it college now Grant began his public career as a member from the inside. discriminating between what of the Boston Board of Water Commissioners. must go and what might be salvaged of the Five years later, in 1893, he became a judge of old values. His last novel. The Dark Horse probate and insolvency for Suffolk County, (1931), is "A Story of the Young Chippen- which position he held until his retirement in dales" and the inside workings of Massachu- 1923. In 1927 he served with President A. Law- setts politics. Though it lacks the force of its rence Lowell of Harvard and President Samuel predecessor, it is technically one of Grant's W. Stratton [q.v.] of the Massachusetts Insti- most accomplished works. tute of Technology on a committee appointed Grant returned to the imaginary city of Ben- by Gov. Alvan T. Fuller to review the evidence ham, which he had created in Unleavened upon which Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Van- Bread, in both The Undercurrent (1904) and zetti [gq.v. had been convicted. Their report The High Priestess (1915). The High Priest- censured Judge Webster Thayer for his remarks ess again concerns feminism; the aging Selma off the bench but found no evidence of an un- White makes a brief reappearance, but the fair trial or conviction. central figure is a feminist of a less monstrous Grant was married, on July 3, 1883, to Amy order. In The Undercurrent both the situations Gordon Galt, daughter of Sir Alexander Galt, and the characters are chosen to support Grant's GBO's the Canadian statesman, and granddaughter of thesis that religious opposition to the remar- the novelist John Galt. They had four sons: riage of innocent people after divorce works Robert, Alexander Galt, Patrick, and Gordon. cruel and fruitless hardship. On a less serious Grant died in Boston at the age of eighty-eight level, Grant dealt with divorce problems also and was buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in in The Orchid (1905) and The Bishop's Grand- Cambridge. daughter (1925). He was much concerned Though Grant admired Dickens, both Balzac about the growing American tendency to seek and Thackeray exerted more influence upon his divorce for incompatibility, and the cynicism literary work. He considered Vanity Fair the and evasions occasioned by the wide differ- greatest novel ever written. At Harvard he ences between the marriage and divorce laws wrote for, and helped to edit, both the Advocate of the forty-eight states. In the 1920's he de- and the Lawpoon. and was class poet in 1873. voted considerable energy to agitating in behalf His first literary success was a satire in classi- of a uniform federal divorce law. cal meters on modern society, The Little Tin In addition to his novels, Judge Grant wrote Gods-on-Wheels (1879) this was reprinted, such books as The Reflections of a Married with a number of his occasional and other Man (1892), The Opinions of a Philosopher poems, in Occasional Verses, 1873-1923 (1926). (1893), The Convictions of a Grandfather 257 So overesp. Graves Graves (1912), and Law and the Family (1919), some of Shanghai and the Yangtse Valley. In 1901, of them with a thin fictional veneer. Finding the mission having grown sufficiently to require the short story difficult, he published only two a division of territory and another bishop his collections: The Bachelor's Christmas (1895) jurisdiction became Kiangsu Province only and The Law-Breakers (1906). His attitude and his title Bishop of Shanghai. For two brief toward society and toward fiction was not un- periods (1899-1901 and 1918-20) he was also like that of his friend Edith Wharton, but he charged with oversight of the mission in the was much less brilliant both in style and in Philippines. technique, and the range between his best and Though Graves had heavy episcopa) responsi- his worst work is very wide. bilities, he found time to take an active part in [Robert Grant, Fourscore-An Autobiog. (1934) and other affairs. He participated in many inter- "Marriage and Divorce," Yale Rev., Jan. 1925; inter- denominational ventures, though remaining views in Boston Sunday Post, Dec. 27, 1903, and Boston aloof from such as he felt led towards church Evening Transcript. Oct. 17, 1931; obituary, N. Y Times, May 20 Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance unity. For many years he spent much time (1934) Who Was Who in America, vol. I (1942).] and energy in famine relief work, for which EDWARD WAGENKNECHT he was decorated by the Chinese government. But his primary concern was in extending and GRAVES, FREDERICK ROGERS (Oct. strengthening his diocese, in which much 24, 1858-May 17, 1940), missionary bishop of progress was made, and in the development of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was born in an indigenous church. He had a significant Auburn, N. Y., the eldest of seven children of part in the drawing together of the American, Samuel Seabury and Elizabeth Anna (Wilson) Canadian, and English church missions into Graves. The forebears of both parents were a single Anglican body, organized in 1912 as members of the Church of England who came the Chung Hwa Sheng Kung Hui (Holy early to America and settled in Vermont. From Catholic Church of China), of which he was the age of six Graves spent his childhood and the second presiding bishop (1913-23). youth in Geneva, N. Y., where his father op- From 1925 on, Graves's work became in- erated a large plant nursery. There he had the creasingly difficult, as he had to deal with the major part of his education, in private schools disruption caused by the Nationalist revolution and in Hobart College, from which he was in the twenties and by the Japanese invasions graduated in 1878. His theological training was in the thirties, with financial problems caused in the General Theological Seminary in New by the depression in America, with his wife's York City. He later received honorary doc- illness, and with his own declining health. His torates from the seminary (1893) and from wife died in 1926, and in 1934 he suffered a Oxford (1908). paralytic stroke/ but he recovered sufficiently While in seminary Graves volunteered for to carry on his work. He sought to resign in work in China, and he proceeded to that field 1936, but at the urgent request of the bishops shortly after his graduation and ordination as in America agreed to remain in office longer. deacon in 1881. His first post was in Wuchang, Early in 1937 however, he had to make his res- where, except for about two years (1885-87) ignation final He maintained his residence at as a professor in the theological school of St. St. John's University, where he remained John's College in Shanghai, he remained until through the Japanese attack on Shanghai and 1893, doing evangelistic work and teaching afterwards lived quietly until his death. His theology. He also carried on the work of trans- ashes were interred in Holy Trinity Cathedral, lation, chiefly of books needed in seminary Shanghai teaching, begun by Bishop Samuel Isaac Joseph Graves was generally regarded within his Schereschewsky [q.v.]. In 1882 he was or- own communion as one of the chief architects dained a priest in Shanghai, and there, the next and builders of the Chinese Anglican Church. year, he married Josephine Harriet Roberts of Outside his church he was widely respected by Brooklyn N. Y., a member of the Shanghai Chinese and Westerners alike as one whose mission They had four children: Elizabeth contribution to the Christian cause in China was Woodward, Frederick Rogers, Lucy Josephine, of very considerable significance. and Yosephine Marion. The daughters later were missionaries in his diocese. [Unpublished life of Graves by his daughter Lucy, containing many quotations from his journals, letters, and On June 14, 1893, in St. Thomas's Church, a MS of his memoirs written in 1930: F. R. Graves. New York City, Graves was consecrated the "Some Recollections of a Bishop in China," Spirit of fifth bishop for China with the title of Bishop Missions, June 1918. and Recollections: 1881-1893 (1928); Handbooks on the Missions of the Episc. 258 5/13/2018 Robert Grant (1852-1940) - Find A Grave Memorial ? Find A GRaVE Robert Grant BIRTH 24 Jan 1852 Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, USA DEATH 19 May 1940 (aged 88) Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, USA BURIAL Mount Auburn Cemetery Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA PLOT Tulip Path - Lot 2160 MEMORIAL ID 32560199 . View Source His parents were Patrick Grant & Charlotte Photo added by William Bjornstad Bordman Rice. Wife: Amy Gordon Galt He was a close friend of novelist, Edith Wharton. GRANT A judge, in 1927 he was one of the three members of the Sacco-Vanzetti Commission. Added by stc Famous novelist. Among his books are: "An Average Man", 1883 - "Face to Face", 1886 - "Unleavened Bread", 1900 - "The Chippendales", 1909 - "The High Priestess", 1915 - "The Dark Horse", 1931 Family Members Parents Spouse ? Patrick ? Amy Grant Gordon 1810-1895 Galt Grant* 1858-1936 ? Charlotte (m. Boardman Rice Grant (marriage) 1821-1882 1883) Siblings Children ? Patrick Robert Grant* Grant* 1856-1928 1884-1964 Added by stc Half Siblings ? Henry Rice Grant* 1853-1926 *Calculated Relationship Created by: NWO Added: 1 Jan 2009 Find A Grave Memorial 32560199 Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 13 May 2018), memorial page for Robert Grant (24 Jan 1852-19 May 1940), Find A Grave Memorial no. 32560199, citing Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32560199 2/3 4/21/2017 Grant, Robert, 1852-1940. Robert Grant papers, 1809-1940: Guide. Harvard University Library View HOLLIS Record OASIS: Online Archival Search Information Frames Version System Questions or Comments Copyright Statement MS Am 1115-1115.14 Grant, Robert, 1852-1940. Robert Grant papers, 1809-1940: Guide. Houghton Library, Harvard Library, Harvard University Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 USA C President and Fellows of Harvard College Descriptive Summary Location: b Call No.: MS Am 1115-1115.14 Repository: Houghton Library, Harvard Library, Harvard University Creator: Grant, Robert, 1852-1940. Title: Robert Grant papers, Date(s): 1809-1940. Quantity: 7 linear feet (18 boxes, 7 volumes) Language of materials: Collection materials are in English. Abstract: Papers of Robert Grant (Harvard AB 1873), an American novelist and lawyer. Immediate Source of Acquisition: bMS Am 1115 and 1115.1: Given in memory of Robert Grant, Harvard Class of 1873, by his sons, Robert Grant Jr., Alexander Galt Grant, and Gordon Grant. ; received: 1940 Jul.22. bMS Am 1115.2-1115.14: Gift of Robert Grant; received: 1934-1935. Processing Information: Enhanced with digital content by Alison Harris. Conditions Governing Access: There are no restrictions on physical access to this material. Conditions Governing Use: Images linked to the finding aid describing this collection are intended for public access and educational use. This material is owned and/or held by the Houghton Library, and is provided solely for the purpose of teaching or individual research. Any other use, including commercial reuse, mounting on other systems, or other forms of redistribution requires the permission of the curator. Preferred Citation for Publication: Robert Grant Papers, 1809-1940 (MS Am 1115-1115.14). Houghton Library, Harvard University. Biographical / Historical Robert Grant (1852-1940) was a Boston novelist, whose books were primarily social satire. In addition he was for many years judge of the Probate Court and Court of Insolvency in Boston, and an overseer of Harvard, In 1927 he acted as one of three members of the Sacco-Vanzetti Commission. Arrangement Arranged following series: 4/21/2017 Grant, Robert, 1852-1940. Robert Grant papers, 1809-1940: Guide. I. bMS Am 1115: I. Robert Grant correspondence, compositons, and other material A. Correspondence, A-Z B. Letters from unidentified correspondents C. Articles, speeches, etc., by Robert Grant D. Miscellaneous II. bMS Am 1115.1 - bMS Am 1115.14: II. Robert Grant additional papers A. bMS Am 1115.1: Robert Grant scrapbooks B. bMS Am 1115.2: The confessions of a frivoulous girl C. bMS Am 1115.3: Wise & otherwise or The opinions of a philosopher D. bMS Am 1115.4: The bachelor's christmas E bMS Am 1115.5: The art of living E oMS Am 1115.6: Harvard College in the seventies G. bMS Am 1115.7: The undercurrent H. bMS Am 1115.8: The orchid I. bMS Am 1115.9: The law breakers J. bMS Am 1115.10: The Chippendales K. bMS Am 1115.11: The convictions of a grandfather L. bMS Am 1115.12: The high priestess M. bMS Am 1115.13: The bishop's grand-daughter bMS Am 1115.14: Memories of eighty years Scope and Contents Papers include correspondence, manuscripts, family papers, scrapbooks, and other material. Contains mostly letters to Judge Grant, with a few of his to other people. These deal primarily with his novels, although some touch on other of the more public aspects of his life and some are merely personal letters. Also included in this collection are a number of family papers, especially letters to Judge Grant's father, Patrick Grant (1809-1895) as a young man, from his mother and other relatives. Container List Series: MS Am 1115. I. Robert Grant correspondence, compositons, and other material Arrangement: Organized into the following sub-series: A. Correspondence, A-Z B. Letters from unidentified correspondents C. Articles, speeches, etc., by Robert Grant D. Miscellaneous Note: R.G. stands for Robert Grant, 1852-1940. P.G. stands for Patrick Grant, 1809-1895. Recataloged from AL 1675.05(7-9)* and 9916. A. Correspondence, A-Z (1). Abbott, Holker, 1858-. A.L.s. to R.G.; Wellesley Hills, 29 Dec [1926] 1s. (2p.) env. Date: 1926 (2). Achorn, Edgar Oakes, 1859-1931. A.L.s. to R.G.; Jamaica Plain [Mass.] 14 Feb 1910. 1s. (4p.) env. Date: 1910. (3). Adams, Brooks, 1848-1927. A.L.s. to R.G.; Quincy, 15 Oct 1900. 1s. (3p.) Date: 1900. (4). Adams, Brooks, 1848-1927. A.L.s. to R.G.; Paris, 20 Jul 1909. 1s. (4p.) env. Date: 1909. (5). Adams, Brooks, 1848-1927. T.L.s. to R.G.; Quincy, 13 Oct 1915. 2s. (2p.) Date: 1915. Adams, Charles Francis, 1866-. T.L.s. to R.G.; Boston, 18 Feb 1936. 1s. (1p.) Date: 1936. See fMS Am 1115.1, vol.3, f.25. (6). Allen, Alberta (Lewis). A.L.s. to R.G.; [Boston] 25 Sep 1929.1s. (3p.) env. Date: 1929. (7). Almy, Helen Cabot. A.L.s. to R.G.; Cambridge, 26 Sep [1929] 1s. (2p.) env. Date: 1929 (8). Amory, Anna Powell Grant (Sears). A.L.s. to P.G.; [n.p.] 17 Mar 1831. 1s. (2p.) Date: 1831. (9). Amory, E L. A.L.s. to R.G.; [Boston] 2 Jun 1909. 1s. (4p.) env. Date: 1909. (10). Appleton, William. A.L.s. to [P.G.]; Paris, 17 Jan [18--?] 1s. (4p.) (11). [Appleton, William. ] A.L. (unsigned; incomplete?) to [P.G.]; [Paris? 18--?] 1s. (2p.) Date: 18--? Apthorp, John V. A.L.s. to R.G.; Concord, Mass., 18 Feb 1935. 2s. (3p.) Date: 1935. See fMS Am 1115.1, vol.6, f.54. Aspinwall, Thomas Gardner. T.L.s. to R.G.; Philadelphia, Pa., 5 Feb 1935. 1s. (1p.) 1035 Dorr Timeline 9/16/06 FOURSCORE An Autobiography BY ROBERT GRANT (1852-1940). 4.26 28. With Illustrations O and i Study Robert Grant Boston and New York Crubs. ,260 282. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge PP Note: Dorr family fund whose 1934 birthyear's cultural experience aligns strikingly c G.B.D. snept. you CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 19 'which still stands in its original position on Pinckney Street, but now remodelled as a dwelling.' As some of his five daughters were just coming out at the time when the CHAPTER II family moved in, 'it is not surprising, therefore, that through the centre of the house, as represented by the CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR swell front, was a two-story ballroom.' This house was As I have written, my grandfather Patrick Grant was lost occupied by my great-grandfather until his death and was in a storm in the Bay of Biscay while returning to America not demolished until 1836. from France, November 20, 1812, leaving a widow, Anna Allen Chamberlain states in his valuable Beacon Hill: Powell Grant, and two children, Patrick, born March 17, Its Ancient Pastures and Early Mansions, from which 1809, and Elizabeth Whyte (obviously named for her most of this account of Jonathan Mason is derived; Scottish grandmother Grant), born April 20, 1811. My When 49 Mount Vernon Street was built, Mr. Higginson grandmother when I first remember her lived at 53 Mount perhaps thought that Mr. Mason would keep all of his land on Vernon Street close to her father Jonathan Mason, one of the west open as a feature of his mansion-house grounds, and the well-to-do and influential men of Boston, a lawyer of that this house of his would therefore enjoy an unusually fine distinction and a Federalist. He was a Senator of the outlook down the Hill to the river. But no sooner was the United States from Massachusetts from 1800 to 1803, Higginson block completed than Mr. Mason himself began the having been elected to fill a vacancy. He was also a member erection of a block of four houses on his adjoining lot, and as all of Congress from 1817 to 1821. but one of these, the present Number 57, were placed nearly Jonathan Mason was himself the son of Deacon Jonathan flush with the sidewalk, as were the Higginson houses, the Mason and Miriam (Clark) Mason. He graduated from pleasant view from Number 49 was obliterated. There is a tradition that Mr. Mason built some of those houses for three Princeton in 1774 and married Susannah Powell, the of his married daughters, and this is doubtless based upon the daughter of William Powell, who 'was descended from the fact that at one time they were SO occupied, and upon the Dummer family on her father's side and from the Bromfields further fact that the houses were willed to these daughters by through her mother's family.' their father There were frequent changes among the tenants, Besides being a prominent lawyer and a figure in politics especially during the first ten years. Samuel D. Parker, one of Jonathan Mason was associated with Harrison Gray Otis, Mr. Mason's sons-in-law, occupied 51 in 1808, When Mr. Benjamin Joy, and one or two others in a project for the Parker left 51, the Directory indicates that Patrick Grant, development of Beacon Hill. His house on Mount Vernon another son-in-law, the grandfather of Judge Robert Grant, Street was rated by the assessors in 1801 as the 'elegant took that house. He had married Anna Powell Mason in new house of Jonathan Mason Esq. unfinished," and from October, 1807. In the fall of 1812 he was lost at sea in the Bay another entry in the diary of William Powell, Mr. Mason's of Biscay on his way home from France. Number 53 is the house usually associated with the Grant family because Mrs. father-in-law, dated October 20, 1802, it appears that Grant lived there for some time after the death of her father, 'Mr. Mason moved from Brookline into his new house on who willed her this property. the hill.' This residence, 'always referred to in legal papers of that day as his "mansion house," was one of the finest There my grandmother Grant brought up her family in town The entrance was by the vestibule opening on and lived until her death on April 5, 1861, at the age of the tree-shaded court-yard.' In the rear was the stable Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925. 20 FOURSCORE CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 21 seventy-two. Her summers were invariably passed at flattered them with perfect likenesses.' From a memoran- Newport, where she owned a cottage site adjoining the large dum it appears that he paid two hundred dollars for the estate of David Sears, the husband of her sister Miriam. pair. Stuart painted her again after she became Mrs. As a small boy I occasionally visited there and have pleas- Grant, presumably about the time he did her husband, a ant memories of her place, with its fine trees, one of them handsome and aristocratic-looking young Scotchman, whose a superb tulip, the neat little garden on one side of the portrait is one of his masterpieces. He also painted her house, with its hedges of fragrant box, and the very large mother, Mrs. Jonathan Mason, a stately lady in a turban. ubiquitous toads. I recall vividly, too, the little piles of The original of this is owned by one of the Mason descend- hard crackers soaked in cold water and plentifully buttered ants, but my father had a fine copy, which my sister, which regularly appeared on the supper table. One of the Mrs. Morris Gray, inherited. compunctions of my life which haunts me still was burning After her husband's early death my grandmother Grant a hole in the throat of a toad in order to test a burning- was mainly dependent on her father, who was one of the glass that had been given me. I could not have been more wealthy men of his day. He left rising $300,000 when he than eight, for my grandmother died when I was nine. My died in 1831, but had a good-sized family, consisting of aunt Elizabeth, who never married, was her devoted com- his sons William Powell and Jonathan, and his daughters panion. Both my grandmother and aunt, who died in Elizabeth (Mrs. Sam. Dunn Parker), Susannah (Mrs. 1869, died of consumption, no trace of which has appeared John Collins Warren), Miriam (Mrs. David Scars), and in the later generations. They were delicate, refined women, Mary (Mrs. Samuel Parkman), all of whom had children. very religious and somewhat sentimental, to judge from Thus through the Masons my father was first cousin to a the contents of their diaries, which they, especially my number of representative Boston families. Enabled to grandmother, kept continuously. They were Episcopalians prepare for college, he entered Harvard in the Class of at a time when most of their acquaintance frequented the 1828. Among his classmates were Robert C. Winthrop Unitarian Church, but my surmise is that they became SO and George S. Hillard. I am uncertain where he roomed. after my father grew up, for he was always a Unitarian. He took respectable but not high rank in his studies, and As I remember my grandmother Grant she was slight was a member of the Porcellian Club. A programme and wrinkled and not tall, but my impression is not very preserved by his mother shows that he took part at Junior distinct. There are two portraits of her by Gilbert Stuart, Exhibition, October 16, 1827, with Edward Soley of New the first taken, when she was seventeen, in Washington York in 'A Colloquial Discussion,' 'Courage of the Cabinet during a journey which she made with her father, mother, and Courage of the Field.' A newspaper criticism of the and sister Miriam to Savannah in the winter of 1804-05, occasion entitled 'Exhibition at Harvard College reads: travelling in Mr. Mason's own carriage with four horses and two outriders. In the diary kept by Mr. Mason of The late exhibition was perhaps as good a one as has taken this journey' he records: 'At Washington we obtained of place for years. The parts were all good - that of Grant was Stuart the celebrated painter a promise to paint two of my peculiarly interesting. McKean's dissertation on 'Works of girls; and with the intercession of Joseph Russell and Dr. Fiction' and Woait's remarks upon Neglect as the best check to Eustis he finished the heads of Anna and Miriam and Fanaticis, we observed as among the best performances on the occasion. But the Oration by Hillard, of this city, deserves a See Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1885; the original more particular notice than our time allows us to bestow. manuscript after my father's death in 1895 was given to the Society. Chaste and judicious in its diction - exalted and manly, as 22 FOURSCORE CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 23 well as playful and romantic in its conception - there was yet a mustache would have barred any young man from employ- another recommendation - eloquence in its delivery. The ment on State Street. My father was always a handsome, Music, by the 'Pierian Sodality' (composed of students), was high-bred-looking man, bearing considerable resemblance fine. A Dirge was performed by them in the place on the order as he grew older to his uncle John Grant. He was five feet of Performances vacated by the death of the lamented Sturgis, nine or ten, and of medium figure inclined to slightness, to whom had been assigned a distinguished part. This excited but less spare than his sons. As I first remember him - much sympathy, producing a very solemn effect. We were happy to see the venerable President of the University in com- he was forty-three when I was born - he was virtually parative health, presiding on this interesting occasion. The bald with wisps of white hair around his temples and white Harvard Corps paraded after the exercises - and made a fine whiskers. A photograph from a miniature when he was appearance. about forty shows a dapper figure with high spotted neck- cloth, white waistcoat, doeskin trousers, and a decidedly The Reverend Dr. John Pierce records in his journal of Scotch physiognomy. He had a prominent aquiline nose, 1828: which his sons inherited in a modified form, but he was The day was cool and it would have been very dusty but for better-looking than any of them. F. P. Vinton the artist the watering of the streets by subscription of the inhabitants several times expressed to me the wish that he would sit of Cambridge Patrick Grant was popular in a Colloquial for him, but my father would never consent. He was fond Discussion on 'The Enthusiast and Matter-of-fact Man.' of horseback, which he kept up until over seventy, and After dinner I called at Grant's and Winthrop's chambers, both took that form of exercise two or three times a week over of whom, particularly the latter had large parties In addi- the mill-dam and through the suburbs. He was for some tion to the Governor and Suite, the Lieutenant Governor, time a member of the Light Infantry, and also in his youth of Council and Senate, the President of the United States honored the fire department. At one time, at least, owing to some the day with his presence, the first time for several Commence- defection of the regular force, the gentlemen of the city ments. volunteered for service, and I remember well his telling The President thus referred to was, of course, John Quincy me that many a time he had stood on a ladder playing the Adams. hose while another hose was played on him to keep him After graduation my father spent about a year in Italy cool. All his life my father was fond of clubs. It was the at Leghorn in the household of his uncle John Grant the custom far more than it is now for married men to frequent banker, partly for the purpose, I have gathered, of learning them in the evening, and wives were expected not to mind. the business with a view to becoming his representative in So long as I can remember it was his habit to go to the this country. But either the subsequent failure of the Somerset or Temple Club immediately after dinner for his banking house or other offers made to my father prevented game of whist, returning about half-past ten, rarely later. this. We have no exact data as to his counting-room While there was always wine on our table, my father was employment prior to his becoming the junior partner of temperate in his habits. He ordinarily took two glasses of William B. Reynolds and Company, commission merchants. sherry for dinner, and just before going to bed every night IIc was one of the beaux of his day, and brought the waltz during the last twenty years of his life a tumbler of rye back with him from Europe. Clean-shaven except for whiskey and water. While he enjoyed what was served on side whiskers; and he has often told me that the wearing of social occasions, he lived up to the maxim 'Never drink Some Notes on the Commencements at Harvard University, 1803-1848. between meals' which he impressed upon his sons and which 24 FOURSCORE CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 25 I, for one, have followed almost literally. No father could to preserve the spelling of the name Bordman, as they have been more devoted, and I was deeply attached to him. wrote and printed it, from expanding into Boardman. My father was married first to Elizabeth, daughter of My mother, Charlotte Bordman Rice, at the date of her John Bryant, who lived on Beacon Street just above Charles marriage April 4. 1850, must have been living at 62 Beacon Street. This was on May 7, 1840. She died February 23, Street, which was deeded to her mother, Charlotte Rice, 1843, leaving a daughter, Anna Mason, born May 17, 1841. the wife of Henry G. Rice, in 1819. In the Boston Directory In the interval between his wife's death and his second of 1849-50, my grandfather appears as Henry G. Rice, marriage, I think that he lived with his mother and sister merchant, living at 62 Beacon Street. Allen Chamberlain at 53 Mount Vernon Street. The affection which they both notes that the Rice and David Eckley houses, of which the had for him appears in the numerous letters from my grand- builder architect was Daniel Marsh, stood within a few mother which he had preserved, and in her diaries. doors of each other, and goes on to remark: My mother, Charlotte Bordman Rice, was my father The recorded contract states that Marsh was at the time at Patrick Grant's second wife. She was a daughter of Henry work on Number 62 for Mr. Rice, and certain features of the Gardner Rice (Harvard, 1802) and in the ninth generation Eckley house were specified to be like those in the Rice resi- in direct descent from Deacon Edmund Rice (1594-1663), dence. The specifications covering two features of the Eckley born in Buckinghamshire, England, and known as the house are suggestive of the comparative primitiveness of the Pilgrim, who with his wife Tamazine and seven children time. Here was a high-class residence in a fashionable quarter, landed in Massachusetts in 1638. and it and its next door counterpart, number 56, rank among The details of my mother's genealogy were supplied to the handsomest houses along the Common front today. The me after I was grown up by Charles Elmer Rice and are contract provided for stone cornices and handsome interior contained in his By the Name of Rice, an historical sketch finish, also that 'In the cellar there is to be a bathing room in of the founder of the English family of Rice in the United front into which the aqueduct is to be led,' and that the pump States, a copy of which he presented to me. Our descent is in the back yard is to have a box 'to hang meat in.' from Edward, the Deacon's second son through Jacob, My earliest recollections centre around 62 Mount Vernon Obadiah, Tilly, and another Tilly (Brown University, 1777), Street where my parents set up housekeeping after the who was my grandfather Henry G. Rice's father. This wedding. I was assuredly the 'fair-haired mite' whom my latter Tilly lived in Brookfield, Massachusetts, and was a cousin Henry Grant remembered seeing in Leghorn in physician and magistrate. Why it was that my grandfather 1854, when I was two and a half, but I have no remembrance Rice moved to Boston, I do not know; but he married a of crossing the ocean at that age, though I have been told Boston girl, Charlotte Bordman, one of the three daughters that I enjoyed feeding the pigeons in the Piazza San Marco of William Henderson Bordman, a well-to-do merchant, at Venice. My parents and I were erroneously reported as who was largely engaged in the Northwest Coast, China, and lost on our way home when the Collins Line paddle-wheel India trade. To her and to her sisters Eliza Henderson steamer Arctic collided in a fog with the propeller Vesta in (Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, Jr.) and Mary (Mrs. John D. the autumn of 1854, an appalling disaster of the day. We Bates), who with their bachelor brother William H. returned by some other vessel, and the orbit of my memory Bordman were in their social prime when I was a lad, I is confined until I was well past five to the immediate shall refer later on. A minor concern of my life has been neighborhood of Mount Vernon Street. Our house had a Press of the Williams Printing Company, Alliance, Ohio, 1911. In Beacon Hill, page 173. , 26 FOURSCORE CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 27 basement dining-room, and I vividly recall my brother We always went upstairs to the front room, as I recall, Harry (Henry Rice), fourteen months my junior, and I and were regaled with jumbles-little cakes with a hole breakfasting every morning with my father, one on either in the centre - after we had paid our respects to our side of him. Presumably he breakfasted earlier than my great-aunt and uncle. mother, for she does not come into that picture. I have While I have always had avocations which prevented a definite recollection, too, of the thrill which came from my becoming a bookworm, I never shared the chronic trying to frizzle ham at the nursery fire in a tiny cast-iron antipathy which many boys feel toward school. Of Miss toy saucepan in company with my brother but at my in- Brown I have fond rather than merely tolerant memories. stigation. I was a fairly timid and unassertive child, yet from the Memory does not help me again until my first day at intent to teach us that the way of the transgressor is hard, school and the seemingly perilous feat of coasting by my- the penalty of disobedience was being sent downstairs self down the very slight incline of the driveway directly that into a sort of labyrinth of outhouse and back yard. This across the street appear to coincide. The school was next to me, however, when experienced was a minor diversion in door but one above our house on the same side and was spite of the solitude. I remember later on that Lorenzo kept by Miss Sarah M. Brown, who, though she looked Papanti the dancing-master used to make the unruly sit mature, was doubtless young when I came under her with the girls, a repellent doom, and I have a sort of remem- charge at the age of five. She taught both boys and girls, brance that Miss Brown made use of the same expedient and the schoolroom was in one of several low buildings with distasteful effect. On the other hand, the rewards of which had been stables appurtenant to Chestnut Street being studious and well-behaved took the form with her of houses. It was transformed in later years into a studio. little pink bits of paper on which was printed 'Good,' Two of the near-by premises in the same row were occupied in the collection of which I became mildly interested. At by friends of my childhood; Number 58 by F. W. Small the all events, I remember being given a prize book entitled grocer and 56 by D. and A. Chamberlain, provision dealers, 'No Such Word as Fail,' the hero of which, if I recall the with both of whom I was on easy terms. tale correctly, appears on the first page with a younger The easterly limit of my world at that period was my brother in charge, penniless and unbefriended, their parents grandmother Grant's house at 53. I am told that I threw having just died of cholera. The spirit of the age saw her coral necklace into the glowing parlor grate, but of this nothing incongruous in so bromidic enforcement of a I have no recollection. The proximity of the tradesmen to precept, and my own sense of humor was of course too the school and the coasting privileges opposite for children undeveloped to marvel. The prize was cherished, and when of tender years gave sufficient glamour to Mount Vernon my Class Day at Harvard was in sight Miss Brown stood Street for me to be aware of little else outside it during the one of the first on the list of those to be invited. ten years we lived at 62. It must, however, have been My years of transition from five to ten are definite during them that my brother Harry and I were taken by chiefly as they shade into the consciousness of becoming an my father on Sundays after church to call on his mother's older boy. I was just ten when we moved to Number 5 sister Mrs. David Sears at 42 Beacon Street (now the Chestnut Street, which was only around the corner by way Somerset Club). The broad bow front of this (borrowed of Walnut from where I was born. Meanwhile my contacts in some degree from her father Jonathan Mason's house on with the neighborhood had individualized. The Augustus Mount Vernon Street) is one of my earliest landmarks. Hemenways were on the corner of Mount Vernon and 28 FOURSCORE CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 29 Walnut Streets, and a few doors below me on Mount Vernon were the two starkly towering mansions of Nathan- aunt Elizabeth had come to live with my father. Another iel and John E. Thayer, whose spacious back yards pro- inmate was my stepsister Anna as she was christened, but tected by solid masonry were later to become the scene Annie as we always knew her, of whose personality I now of many a snowball assault. seemed to become aware for the first time. She was just Of the large Nathaniel Thayer family, boys and girls, entering society, and I have vivid memories of covertly the elder were demi-gods, though familiar, especially overlooking with my brother Harry her preparation for Stephen Van Rensselaer, a very handsome youth some balls when we were supposed to be asleep. Our room ad- joined hers on the front of the house and our method was to three or four years my senior. With Nat, nearer my own crawl stealthily into her chamber and from behind her bed age but two years ahead of me at Harvard, I played a good deal. It was not, however, until we were on Chestnut entrance ourselves with her finery - though occasionally detected in the act. Street that I remember myself as playmate conscious. Next door to our new abode were Lithgow and Maidie It was in her company that I first went to the theatre. I Devens and directly opposite the Cunningham boys Fred remember the event as if it were yesterday. Annie took me and Stanley and their handsome sister Julia who became to the Boston Museum to see Kate Reignolds in The the wife of Bishop Lawrence. On the upper corner of Marble Heart (or The Sculptor's Dream). This lurid melo- Beacon and Walnut Streets lived Jim Lawrence (son of drama by Selby, SO utterly inappropriate to my years and James) condemned to wear pantalets and bare legs long over my head, impinged itself on my youthful heart SO un- after the rest of us had graduated into trousers. Gus forgettably as to inoculate me with a taste for the stage Hemenway was still on the corner of Mount Vernon and which has never palled. I must have been twelve, for the Walnut Streets. Ned Gray (son of William) joined us playbills of the period recite that it was given in 1864. Yet Gray presently from Joy Street, and from the lower end of Chest- though my bosom was wrung by the heartlessness of the nut Street, Sam Henshaw, son of the auctioneer and in heroine - 'false one of the past, false one of the future, woe later years distinguished in comparative zoölogy at Har- to the man who loves her'!!- as an epitome of womanhood, vard. Thither, too, for we had developed a group, came the this initial experience was presently mellowed by the fas- Iasigi boys from upper Mount Vernon Street, Arthur cination of the delightfully acrobatic Ravels, whose im- Rives from 43 Beacon Street, and Brooks Parker (known as personations my parents took me to see at the Howard 'Spoopsie'), an adept with snowballs and in building dams, Athenxum. I especially remember my enjoyment of Jocko the ape. but also remembered for the peculiarity when injured in the fray of holding his breath SO that his woe was like the sound Another favorite that comes back vividly through the of a humming top before it emerged in a cataclysm of tears. years is Lester Wallack's Rosedale (or The Rifle Ball). It Number 5 Chestnut Street held by this time three boys must have been in the winter of 1864 that I saw this at the of its own, for my brother Pat, five years my junior, was in Boston Museum. According to the playbill the part of the existence. The house was large as well as tall, for it had an hero, Elliott Grey, was taken by L. R. Stowell, but William ell which contained the kitchen, with a spare bedroom over Warren, Kate Reignolds, and Mrs. J. R. Vincent were in the it. We were now a fairly large family. My sister Flora cast. The story centres around the kidnapping by gypsies Gray (later Mrs. Morris Gray) had been born in 1858, and fol- and recovery of a youthful heir. My mind is still sensitive to the thrill of the final scene of the fourth act. The lowing the death of my grandmother Grant in 1861 my regimental but disguised hero seems certain to be over- 30 FOURSCORE CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 3I whelmed by the gypsy followers who have risen from cover at the villain's whistle, when suddenly they are out- year later my brother Harry) to the Latin Grammar numbered by the troops who respond from every unexpected School, or Public Latin School as it was usually called, on quarter to the answering cry, 'Up, Lancers, and at them.' Bedford Street, at which boys were prepared for college. It While the love interst in Rosedale had but a secondary was much more usual for parents who lived in the vicinity of Beacon Street to do this than it is today, but even then interest for me, the well-verified tradition is that the play was written on a bet made at a dinner party given in New the sprinkling was small. Most of the sons of our acquaint+ York by Thackeray during his last visit to this country. ance were sent to Dixwell's (Epes S. Dixwell) a well- 'Lester Wallack, who had become bosom friends with the remembered head master of his day. My father thought it English satirist (whom he once thought pompous and better for his sons as future citizens of a democratic country supercilious), opposed an assertion that the lovers in a to be trained with the rank and file. I followed the same course later with my own sons, from the same conviction popular play must be very young persons. He decided to though it was cheaper, to be sure - and I can well re- put his own theory to the test, and eventually did SO by writing Rosedale in which Elliott Grey is a man who has member the tenseness with which mothers (never fathers) passed the first blush of youth, and Rosa Leigh proves to be would say to me at dinner parties, 'Aren't you afraid your boys will have a dreadful time at Harvard?' I was amused a young lady who has outlived by some years the candy- when my eldest son was the first man in his class elected eating period of girlish sixteen Rosedale is poor dramatic into the 'Dickey' (D.K.E.). Some of the fathers dared to fare as viewed from present standards, but it was con- structed with sufficient adroitness to please the dramatic side with me. I remember that Mr. T. Jefferson Coolidge mood of the passing generation, and it made a small fortune our Ambassador to France - even sent two of his daugh- ters to the English High School when Dr. Samuel Eliot was for the management.' Its attraction for me did not flag, for head master. His friends were aghast at that, for however I saw Lester Wallack play in it himself as Elliott Grey at it might be with boys, girls were "different." the Boston Theatre, in 1875. Would I do it again? Except for economy's sake I am My youth from ten to twenty was passed in the Chestnut not SO positive. To begin with, my boys turned a cold Street house and a host of early associations are linked with it. From Miss Brown's school I went for a year or two to shoulder on the experiment by not studying, and giving as a reason that there was no one to arouse their ambition. Fette's, which was, I think, at 15 Boylston Place. I re- Then, too, as one of the deprecating mothers who was a member Mr. William Eliot Fette very well, not merely as a close friend remarked, 'the Grant boys go to school with the slightly peppery master, but as a kind and loyal friend. In crowd, but play with the Back Bay boys in the afternoon.' later years he lived on Walnut Street. He was also our This could not be denied, and I remember still later that master at Nahant, for the summer term of vacation was SO President Eliot held no brief for sending a son to a public long that a little regular instruction was thought beneficial for small boys. I shall refer to him again in this connection. school for the sake of democracy if the free education pro- vided was inferior to what could be had at a private. To- My memories of his school in Boston are rather hazy. I day, though it is otherwise in the towns and suburbs, the have no remembrance of being interested or proficient in my proportion of parents in populous cities who can afford not studies, or good at sports. I was only eleven, however, when to send their children to the public schools and do SO for the my father carried out his intention of sending me (and a sake of instilling democracy would appear to be smaller Twelve Great Actors, Edward Robins. G. P. Putnam's Sons (1900). than ever. 32 FOURSCORE CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 33 When I entered it, the Public Latin School, besides being 'The oldest school in America, was one of the best in the I sometimes think that all we learned was to memorize and that the reasoning faculty was kept in abeyance. At country as it is now. Its emphasis was laid on scholarship according to the method of the day and its graduates had no the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the school in 1885, I allowed myself as the poet to sati- difficulty in passing the entrance examinations at Harvard. rize this tendency: The head master, Francis Gardner, was a rugged and unique character a thorough and devoted scholar, but Though not a parrot or a mocking bird, austere; tall, with an iron physique, and a protuberant I learned the Latin grammar word for word. Open the page and start me at the top shock of hair over one eyebrow. I got along with him in the I could continue until bid to stop, long run and learned to respect him highly. His austerity And shall remember to the day 1 die was relieved by mannerisms and pithy sayings which ap- The ablatives with either e or i. pealed especially to the worst scholars. I can see him ex- Appalling lists still aggravate my brain Familiar as a nursery refrain, tend his two forefingers as the horns of a dilemma and Which ne'er have been, SO far as I can see, inquire, 'Would you rather be a fool or a knave?' His most Helpful to others or of use to me. spectacular performance was to order a culprit to stand up Let us accept the bitter with the sweet; and repeat the advice of Stephen Burroughs. Now Stephen Continuous eulogy is indiscreet. Burroughs was a murderer whose last words before he was Our Masters knew the ancient way to teach. hanged, as Dr. Gardner had constantly informed us, was Forgive me, guardians of my infant speech! Not even he whose love of learning shone 'Never tell a lie for one shilling.' Pure as the springs that rill from Helicon - During the first year I lived in a sort of maze. There He of the rugged frame and furrowed brow were about three hundred boys in the school, and the sixth And heart of oak, as e'en his foes allow, or lowest class was the most numerous. The vividest re- A stern impressive figure claiming kin membrance I have is of my teacher Albert Palmer (subse- In nature with the souls who ushered in New England history - not even he quently Mayor of Boston), who when out of temper had a Forebore to satiate my memory trick of dividing his black beard and chewing the ends. I did With rules of grammar it could ne'er digest, not seem to make much headway, but by the time I was in Of very little value at the best. the fifth class I found myself in calmer waters and getting Committees made the system, God the man. Peace to his dust. No criticism can my bearings. Charles J. Capen, known universally by his Impair his greatness, which will live secure pupils as 'Cudjo,' was the usher in charge. In a list of five While pedagogues prevail and boys endure. ushers in the catalogue for 1866, with my pencil annotations Still rings his query hoarsely from the grave: in the margin as to qualities, good,' decent, or 'horrid,' he 'Which horn of the dilemma, fool or knave?' appears as 'horrid,' but I am certain that I changed my I became fairly proficient in this form of excellence over- estimate of him later. Among the ushers who contributed night as it were and was presently in close competition with to any progress which I made at the school thereafter, I Charles E. Perkins for head of the class. Baird's Classical have affectionate memories of 'Cudjo,' Moses Merrill, and Manual, a compendium of events with their dates, was the the submaster William R. Dimmock, without disparage- most searching textbook. If I remember correctly, the con- ment of any others. They did all they could to assist me test varied for a year or SO with the advantage on his side. and were painstaking and sympathetic. Eventually we were passed by Ambrose C. Richardson and FOURSCORE CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 34 35 then by Ernest Young who respectively graduated fifth and Except for the use of fictitious names for the boys who second scholar in the class of '73 at Harvard. I have an gathered at the top of Chestnut Street an authentic account impression that Perkins died, but I managed to maintain a of our sporting life is contained in the early chapters of creditable rank, for I stood seventh among the nine mem- my Jack Hall published in 1887. Number 5 was advanta- bers of the class to whom Franklin medals were awarded on geously provided for mischief with a lower side entrance graduation in 1869. guarded by a heavy swinging door which when bolted Our house, Number 5 Chestnut Street, was at the head of against pursuers made sanctuary of the long passage which the street and flanked by Walnut, at the corner of which led to our back yard. Our early pranks were played chiefly stood the store of Jonas H. Priest, a highly respectable on the neighbors nearly opposite by devices too com- grocer whose life the boys of the neighborhood made fairly mon to warrant details. The chief victim, next to the miserable, although he was far from churlish. His premises grocer at the corner, was Dr. Luther Parks, flippantly were a shining mark because of the low annex to his store, distorted by us into Puther Larks, from whose doorbell, in one panel of which was a small shutter to facilitate the approached by a winding flight of steps, a cord on the level delivery of loaves of bread. To hit this shutter squarely in with the hats of passers-by could be readily conducted into the middle SO that a snowball would drop inside was a con- our alleyway. We must have been consummate nuisances. stant stimulus to an idle boy, for there were many misses Yet the tormented turned the tables on us in the end. with a thud to every bull's-eye. These were the days when After it got about that his new wife was shortly to be con- during the average winter Boston streets remained banked fined, we may have been more considerate, but I doubt if we high with snow on either side and all conveyances from were conscious of being SO. At all events, after the baby booby-huts to market-wagons made their jingling way on had arrived and Mrs. Parks was convalescent, we were runners. surprised one afternoon by the appearance on his doorsteps For an enterprising group of boys there was no lack of of Dr. Parks with a cricket set which he forthwith presented occupation. When we could not coast on the Common or to the boys in recognition of how quiet we had kept during down Branch Avenue (by some called Kitchen Street), we his wife's illness.' Cricket had not yet become obsolete, and built dams with the assiduity of beavers or snowballed pass- of course we were impressed by such magnanimity. A ing vehicles. I was no worse than the rest, but I recall truce was the result, and he was thenceforth thought of no plugging a snowball from close to the corner of Beacon longer as 'Stiffy Parks,' but a good fellow. and Walnut Streets at a dandified acquaintance on horse- Besides, we were growing older. Our range of activities, back and knocking off his round astrachan cap. What trivial bounded hitherto by the Frog Pond, Charles, Mount Ver- exploits cling to the memory! I have better reason for not non, and Joy Streets, had extended. We penetrated to forgetting the afternoon when a marketman whom we had Pinckney Street in our fierce snowball fights with the peppered from the same stand wreaked a just vengeance. Anderson Streeters, skated on the Public Garden pond, and Having finished his deliveries on Beacon and Charles utilized the pan-shaped lots on the new 'made land' of the Streets, he craftily went up Chestnut and descending Wal- Back Bay for baseball and football. The long icy coasts on nut swooped upon us SO suddenly that we were off our guard. the Common, the best of which started in front of the State He singled out me for castigation and what a trouncing I House, attracted hordes of boys from all over the city, who got, besides having my mouth and ears plastered with with their formidable double runners maintained a terrific snow! speed which carried them to the Tremont Street mall. 36 FOURSCORE CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 37 These coasts were crowded, and in the winter before I nervous propensity after my evening meal, doing it with entered Harvard my brother Harry was stabbed while gusto, but I objected strongly to eavesdropping. The use of endeavoring to prevent some hoodlums from taking away the book or card was purely mechanical. Although I used our younger brother Pat's sled. The wound was not serious, the same one repeatedly until the open page or corner be- but the episode got into the newspapers and made Beacon came worn, I never read from either. My words were Street mothers nervous. wholly introspective. There is evidence that I was over- My interest in the outside world began at an early age. I heard to say, 'The cat laid an egg.' This may have been a recall the exact spot where I was standing when my father distortion; but whether or no, the effect of the war was soon announced that Fort Sumter had been fired on, and from SO great that other lucubrations were displaced and my this moment my absorption in the morning newspaper imagination dwelt on that. Concurrently with much ac- became intense. My method was to come downstairs ahead curate knowledge of what was going on at the front, I con- ala of everyone in the family and read the war news, stretched ducted separate campaigns of my own, with preference for GBD at full length on my stomach on the dining-room rug before certain generals and their manœuvres. From this fictitious the fire. I had a definite panorama in my mind of what was but systematic warfare I derived a lot of exhilaration, and going on at the front, but while this was accurate in the 'running' was my favorite pastime for a considerable main, I have reason to think that it was susceptible to my period. imagination. Meanwhile I was made aware of the realities of the war. A serious illness due to drinking water from the lead The names of the young men who had enlisted, several of pipes in our house laid my father low at this time. He them beaux of my sister Annie's, were on the lips of my father appeared paralyzed and for a long time was unable to elders. I thrilled to the exploits of the New York Fire sleep. His life was despaired of, and when the true cause Zouaves and appropriated the intrepid Colonel Ellsworth illinoms, was detected, the cure prescribed was to take the baths at as a permanent hero. The march of the Sixth Massachu- St. Catherine's, Canada West, under the care of a celebrated setts Regiment through the streets of Baltimore in the Dr. Mack. This he did in the summer time, and my teeth of the invectives and brick-bats of the mob seemed to mother and I accompanied him. How I could have imag- presage a speedy end to the rebellion until the humiliating ined that the rebel gunboats would be able to pass through name of Bull's Run registered a major disaster, which, with the neutral locks of the Welland Canal and bombard our the affair of Ball's Bluff three months later, brought a long hotel in order to exterminate three Northerners baffles my list of Beacon Street casualties. comprehension, yet I remember lying awake night after The moment when Jeff Davis was to be hung 'to a sour- night and shivering when I heard the fog horns blow, under apple tree' was indefinitely postponed and anyone could see the impression that they would succeed. that we were in for a long tussle. I settled down to the Then, too, my interest in the Civil War correlated with routine of boy life with the tame reliance that General an idiosyncrasy of my own already well developed. The McClellan was in command of the Army of the Potomac and name which my family coined for this was 'Running,' and I erecting fortifications around Washington. This took a never substituted any other. Run was what I did, on the long time and he was SO persistently in winter quarters that tips of my toes up and down the front entry hall with an martial enlivenments were lacking except for the tramp of open book or a card held out before me, enunciating imag- newly recruited regiments down Beacon Street or a visit to inary situations under my breath. I was apt to indulge this my great-aunt Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis's arsenal across the 38 FOURSCORE CHILDHOOD AND THE CIVIL WAR 39 Common, where all the ladies of our acquaintance were was waging an aggressive instead of a defensive war. The making havelocks to protect the soldiers from the summer battle of Chattanooga was fought, and fresh from his heat of Virginia. It was a busy place, and she an important, victories in the West, Grant was called to Washington and pigcon-breasted woman abounding in executive enthusiasm assigned to the command of the Armies of the United and graciousness. My brother Harry and I were duly im- States. Though a year was to elapse before the surrender of pressed, and having been provided with havelocks sub- Lee's army, the prospects of crushing the rebels seemed ordinated a lurking readiness for pranks to desire to become brighter. The North had developed four great generals, soldiers at once. Grant, Sherman, Thomas, and Sheridan, to overtop in my Presently, however, the menace of Lee and Stonewall 'mimic running' those of the enemy. Soon Farragut with Jackson to the safety of Washington gave me a panic as I his ships had won the battle of Mobile Bay, Lincoln was re- scanned the morning paper, lying on the rug, only to be elected, and General Grant with the new volunteers was relieved by the victory of Antietam. The heated complaint hammering away at Lee and headed for Richmond. Ham- against McClellan, of being a procrastinator, was for the mering away at frightful cost, so that I shivered a little, but time being forgotten and everyone was singing with grim determination. It seemed an age before Rich- General McClellan, he is the man mond was evacuated, but when this happened, it was plain Who whipped the rebels at Antietam that all was over. Yet much to our chagrin Davis had managed to escape, SO we were told, in women's clothes. even those critical of him for not following up his victory. There was great rejoicing over the collapse of the rebellion, My recollections of the frequent changes of sentiment re- but my memories of details are hazy. The circumstance garding that leader are vivid. My father's circle recognized which stands out above all others is going out of the house his abilities as an organizer, but continued to be distrustful one morning shortly after, and before I had left the door- of his willingness to fight, both before he was relieved from, steps on Chestnut Street realizing that something stupen- and after he was restored to, the high command. As I grew dous had happened. It proved to be the assassination of more accustomed to the war, although my absorption in it Abraham Lincoln. The impression is as distinct as though was great as ever, the succession of events passed as in a it were yesterday. There was a stillness, a tenseness in the panorama, but were fixed in my twelve-year-old mind with air, but whether I divined the calamity subjectively or chronological accuracy. from the faces of the few passers is still unsolved for me. The thrilling episode of the Monitor and the Merrimac, Pope and the second Bull Run, the victories on the western front of Fort Donelson and Shiloh, Burnside and the battle of Fredericksburg, the dashing Hooker and the battle of Chancellorsville - how often did my heart throb but oftener sink during that succession of thwarted hopes and changing generals. The turn of the tide, when the fall of Washington must be the price of defeat, followed the three days of desperate fighting at Gettysburg under Meade which culminated in Pickett's heroic but disastrous charge. At almost the same moment Vicksburg fell, and the North FIVE CHESTNUT STREET AND NAHANT 41 a Latin School prize. From these I turned to his sea stories like Wing and Wing. CHAPTER III It was later on, but before I went to college, that my mother encouraged me to read Shakespeare by an offer of FIVE CHESTNUT STREET AND NAHANT twenty-five cents for every play. I do not remember that I I WAS thirteen when the Civil War ended, but my daily life read many at the time. It was either she or my Aunt during its continuance, though that of a normal boy, calls Elizabeth who introduced me to Waverley and the rest of for some retrospect. Number 5 Chestnut Street (today an Scott's novels, which were of course on our shelves. Ivanhoe, apartment house) was commodious, sheltering, besides my Quentin Durward, and Anne of Geierstein remain in my parents, two brothers, sister and half-sister, my aunt mind as especial favorites. Although I finished all but a Elizabeth Grant, who was somewhat of an invalid. We few, I was never SO completely captivated by them as by children were very fond of this aunt, whom we called Dickens, whose David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and Aunty Peep, and who was devoted to us, assisting us Nicholas Nickleby were read at about the same period. The nightly in our studies. She was a very refined single woman, first books that I bought with my gift money were a set of more saintly than the rest of us and addicted to journals into Dickens (lacking only A Tale of Two Cities) with mottled which she copied religious extracts. She was spare in figure sides and red morocco backs which I own today. with grey puffs at either temple and a gracious smile. A My mother was very devoted to us as children, but cultivated woman, especially in a literary sense, she prized occasionally boxed my brother Harry's and my ears. She books, both those inherited from her father, some of them had a quick temper, and I was early warned to curb one of Italian classics, and those she chose for herself. I still my own which constantly got the better of me. She spared possess an attractive small set of The Letters of Lady Mary no pains to bring up her children well. I was too immature Wortley Montagu, in green calf stamped with her initials, to appreciate her quick intelligence, but when the truth E. W. G. There had been whisperings during her mother's began to dawn on me, I became increasingly envious of two life of serious attentions from an Episcopal clergyman at of her gifts. She never went abroad prior to her marriage, Newport where she spent her summers, but nothing came of yet she spoke French with accurate ease and a nearly this romance. She did not die until I was sixteen, by which perfect accent. How did she learn to do so? Far more time I was able to appreciate her qualities more under- time must have been spent at school and college in impart- standingly. When she came to live with us, my interest in ing the French language to my peers and me, and yet of reading was centred on the animal stories of Ballantyne and how many boys could this be said? I doubt if a single one. of Mayne Reid, the latter of which, and especially his more Her other gift was a distinguished handwriting, flowing in sophisticated books like The White Chief (regarded by some graceful loops (not spikes or humps like its successors) yet parents as strong meat for babes), I enjoyed immensely. I entirely legible. She shared this beautiful form with half a read, maybe surreptitiously, a few of Beadle's dime novels, dozen ladies (Mrs. Augustus Lowell and Mrs. Abbott Law- much in vogue among boys of my age, but for some reason rence among them), whose handwriting was to all intents their lurid contents soon palled, and presently I was de- identical. I have never discovered who it was who taught vouring with avidity over and over again the five volumes them, but few if any in society write so engagingly today. of Fenimore Cooper's Leather Stocking series given to me as The earliest portrait of my mother (taken from a da- guerreotype) shows her exactly as she must have appeared FOURSCORE FIVE CHESTNUT STREET AND NAHANT 43 42 to her children, a woman of thirty-five, for she is wearing a household. The dozen or more gentlemen would assemble brooch in which my brother Harry and I are regarding each between four and five and after cards in the drawing-room other like cherubs. With a bonnet set back on her head, descend at seven to a high tea. This consisted of hot bis- hair parted in the middle low on her brow, an aquiline nose, cuit, waffles, cheesecakes and quince preserve, to enumerate and sensitive, eager face, she conveys a quality of her own only the high-lights of my own remembrance, but it was an preferable to mere beauty. In later years I think of her as elaborate meal in its way, at which I think my mother possessing that essential consideration for others in her presided. When it was over the guests would return to their speech and bearing which are the true signs of breeding. whist and the bowl of excellent rum punch that stood at My sharpest memory, at that age, of my father, with their elbows. But what astounded my youthful imagina- whom afterwards I became exceedingly intimate, was his tion was the zest with which they all sat down again at frequent appearance, often a little late, at the children's eleven o'clock to a solid repast of cold meats flanked by dinner in our exceptionally large pantry in the rear of the mince pies. I ought to have been in bed. It is possible that dining-room. He had just come uptown from his counting- I peeped through the crack of the china-closet door. Plenty room, and in preparation for horseback over the mill-dam of wines there must have been, but I never observed a sign would butter himself a roll, walk up and down while he ate or heard a whisper of anyone having taken too much. The it, and drink perhaps a glass of sherry. This was all he ever day of the two-bottle men was well over, and decorum had took for luncheon to the end of his eighty-six years. He was begun to require temperance. very particular as to how his food was cooked, but always a Among my vividest early memories were the torchlight moderate eater. Most wives whose husbands like good cook- processions, which during my youth were in their heyday ing are reputed to have a 'hard time,' but I have no re- of emblazoned transparencies, glittering glass, and colored membrance that our cooks failed to stay on with us. We fires. Though I was only eight, I remember distinctly the were brought up on the theory that food ought to be choice political campaign of 1860, when there were four candidates and appetizing, but plain rather than over-rich. My for the Presidency in the field whose names were on the tip mother saw to this admirably. Long after I had grown up, of my tongue. Like my father and many of his friends, I one of my classmates confessed to me later in life that his was for Bell and Everett, the ticket of the Whigs, which own knowledge of the difference between good and poor seemed to me to possess an immeasurable advantage over cooking dated from a college banquet which seemed to him Douglas and Johnson, Breckinridge and Lane, or even delicious until I turned up my nose at it! Lincoln and Hamlin, by virtue of the obvious symbol of a We children came home from school to two o'clock dinner huge and often clamorous bell which imparted its own les- at which hour my mother would take her luncheon with us. son in the gleaming parades. The adult dinner hour was then in process of extension, Two other obligations which broke the monotony of the and while the more sedate held to four and the ultra- work-a-day week were Sunday School and Dancing-School. fashionable preferred six or even seven, my recollection is To the former my brother Harry and I would trudge down- that during my boyhood my parents dined at five. They hill and across the Public Garden, rain or shine, to the re- dined out more or less in their social circle, and also enter- cently built Arlington Street Church, for pious instruction tained at home; but except for Thanksgiving, the most before the morning service. I can just remember accom- exciting occasion of the year was my father's Whist Club, panying my parents to the Unitarian Church on Federal which deliberately taxed the gastronomic resources of the Street, but retain a dim impression of that and of Church FOURSCORE FIVE CHESTNUT STREET AND NAHANT 45 44 Green on Summer Street. But my religious experience, the precise Mark Hopkins of Williams College, the deep- that of a lukewarm yet reverent and sophisticated Christian, voiced, big-souled Bishop Clark of Rhode Island, or the began at and is still linked with Arlington Street Church. syllogistic Dr. Park of Andover, wide apart on doctrine as The famous divine, Dr. Ezra Gannett, was in its pulpit they were and none Unitarians. The only flaw in the whole- during my boyhood, and I have almost as strong an im- heartedness of the Union Service was that a few of the pression of his zeal and fervor as of his agility in locomo- Episcopalians would drive to Lynn to church when one of tion by hobbling with two canes. Towards Sunday School their clergy was not to be in the pulpit. But they were few itself I cherished no antipathy. What I learned there of and stood out as peculiar. Bible history supplemented the teachings of my mother. I remember declaring years after at my lunch club to a She was a pious Unitarian, well-grounded in the doctrines group at the table that in matching heads or tails I pre- of her faith, the leading tenet of which held Christ to be a ferred to have the other man match me to matching him, a man supremely endowed with the spirit of God but no part remark which drew from a sagacious son of Bishop Clark the of God Himself. I proved a docile pupil, and the intricacy inquiry 'Why?' My glib retort was, 'Because it puts a of the Trinity has always remained a tangle to me in any burden on the other fellow and I lie dormant.' The scornful attempt to penetrate it. My mother was assiduous in mak- comment came, 'What perfect nonsense! I'll match you ing us learn our Sunday-School lessons, and it was not long now ten times for five dollars a time.' Though this was before I found myself interested in the differences between very stiff for my purse, I consented, with the result that I the several sects and impressed by the determination with won nine times out of the ten and pocketed forty-five dol- which each one hedged itself off from the other. In my lars. Yet, if the tolerant Bishop Clark was at the side of the own inclination to disregard those differences as secondary Recording Angel, I am sure he would have held a just bal- to the essence of worship, I was oriented by the method ance between the common-sense of his son and my ingenious at the Nahant Church, whose founders, all summer resi- premium on inertia. dents, combined to build a chapel where different sects All of my acquaintance were taught their dancing-steps might assemble to unite in the worship of God.' Here, by the well-known Lorenzo Papanti. An Italian, who had dating from July 8, 1832, over one hundred years until the been a soldier, he settled down to earning his living in Bos- present day, succeeding generations, 'differing in creeds, ton by establishing a school which under his régime became in spirit one," have continued this liberalizing practice. a local institution. I remember him as a florid, good-looking religious Thus at a formative age I had the opportunity from late man, a pattern of deportment, who, long suffering and Cheenliner June to mid-September to listen to the leading preachers choleric in contact with insubordination, managed to en- of the country, Unitarian, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, force order merely by a rap on the back of his fiddle. At Congregationalist, as equitably chosen by the Committee. his familiar dancing-hall on Tremont Row, the girls were Throughout my boyhood I looked forward to their sermons apt to be prompt in taking their seats on the side of the hall and I credit any reasonableness in my outlook largely to reserved for them; some of the boys were dilatory, with a the comparisons which led me to discern that, though out- tendency to hide in their dressing-room, the condign pun- wardly divergent, each was in search of truth. If all could ishment for which was to be obliged to sit with the girls. not be right, perhaps none of them were; yet this did not This involved crossing the well-waxed floor front of the prevent my being carried away by individual demeanor or mirrors and under the big chandelier amid suppressed logic. I found difficulty in deciding whom I was fondest of titters. 60 FOURSCORE My father gave us a small sailboat, the Waterlily, but well FIVE CHESTNUT STREET AND NAHANT 61 as I could row and swim, and exempt as I was from sea- him and I never saw my mother SO much moved as by his sickness, I never took to sailing, and avoided learning even sudden death from peritonitis (as it was then called) when its rudiments. This sounds stupid, but to drift for hours in I was about fifteen years old. Tall and good-looking in spite a glassy calm for me was ever boresome, not to be com- of his reddish-brown whiskers of the period, with a delight- pensated for by the exhilaration of a fair breeze. To beat ful disposition, he played the fairy godfather to his nephews against a head sea to the dreary tune of 'Hard a lee' was and nieces by his visits and Christmas presents from Balti- only to be endured for the sake of a destination. Yet I thrill more where he then lived and had prospered. His wife had to ocean and sky on the deck of an ocean steamship. My run away with a New-Yorker and he was waited on by a brother Pat was the only one of the grandchildren who had powerful, smiling negro named Jackson who was very a passion for sailing, and with him at the tiller the Waterlily, polite to my brother Harry and me on the occasion when we and later the Fancy, were soon formidable competitors on stayed with my uncle in Baltimore. It was Uncle Henry both the north and south shores. who had the Bower constructed for his own use at Nahant, Yet as a landlubber I loved the rocks, of which there are his visits to which were prolonged during the few summers SO many boldly beautiful expanses at Nahant and became when his only son Charles Allen Thorndike Rice, whose addicted not only to fishing but to the search for starfish custody had been given him by the Court, lived with my and sea anemones. I devised out of four window-frames a grandmother. During these visits the powerful negro was vast aquarium to stand on the piazza, which Mr. J. T. Wil- left in Baltimore. Charley, as we called him, was six months son, the carpenter who built it, thought might hold water. older than I and six months younger than my cousin Eliot When it leaked and finally burst, I was deeply impressed Guild. We three and my brother Harry attended summer by his refusal to charge my grandmother anything for his school at the church under the instruction of Mr. Fette, and trouble. I played a good deal by myself from twelve to I was eight and a half in August, 1860, when the most sixteen, and may have been regarded as credulous, for I sensational occurrence of my boyhood took place. remember a procession of the other boys which brought me We pupils sat in pews in the body of the church. But be- with ceremony a rare marine specimen which turned out to cause of a make-believe headache Charley Rice had asked be a commonplace mollusk. Among the red-letter days of permission one forenoon to recite to the master close to the that period for all of us were the parties two or three times door. They had not been seated there long when we beheld each summer when my father and uncles would hire a three men rush into the church, one of whom threw his arms schooner, and we sailed away to more remote fishing- around Mr. Fette, another held a billy over his head, and a grounds for large cod and haddock, with the chance of a third abducted Charley Rice. This was all we actually halibut. There were money prizes for the first and largest saw, but it was terrifying enough to cause one of the boys fish, a chowder cooked aboard, and we listened spellbound to vault over the pews towards the pulpit in an opposite when homeward bound to the merry anecdotes of Wilmot direction from the door. The rest of us caught our breath, Johnson of Baltimore or William Turnbull of New York, and then at our wits' end followed in the footsteps of Mr. my uncle Henry Rice's friends. Fette out of the church. In the fond memories of my youth there is no more out- An eye-witness from another angle was Henry Cabot standing figure than this uncle, Henry Gardner Rice, my Lodge, who a playmate some two years older than the mother's eldest brother. The family old and young adored rest of us was waiting outside for school to close. In his in- teresting Early Memories (1913) he gives a graphic account H.C. Lodge 64 FOURSCORE Allen Thorndike Rice. Returning from Europe he 'bought the North American Review and converting that sober quarterly into a monthly, filled it with conspicuous names, articles of current interest, and made it very successful CHAPTER IV financially and for the purposes of its editor. He took an COLLEGE LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES active interest in politics, was a strong Republican and a warm admirer of Mr. Blaine. By President Harrison he was THE gradual transition from the existence of a carefree lad appointed minister to Russia, and died suddenly in New into the self-conscious atmosphere bounded by my college York, just on the eve of his departure for his new post.' entrance examinations stands out in the not always im- As his grandmother Mrs. Bourne was wealthy, he had portant impressions that memory retains today. Except ample means. Immediately following his return to the for minor changes both scene and routine were identical United States, Allen called on my grandmother Rice, and between my tenth and twentieth years; but the observa- relations were friendly for a year or two. On her death, tions which I harbored were changing. I had become curious however, he unsuccessfully disputed her will, by which she concerning life and the conduct of my elders. Though left him all his father's considerable property but none of mildly critical but rarely subversive in my approach, I re- her own, and we saw no more of him. member the delight with which I listened to the ladies settled for a forenoon talk on our Nahant piazza with my mother and aunt. I recall in particular. the visits of Mrs. Amos A. Lawrence and Mrs. Francis Tuckerman, always fondly spoken of and often coupled together in my hearing as Sarah Lawrence and Lucy Tuckerman. The former, Bishop Lawrence's mother, lived on the next point to ours, but Mrs. Tuckerman's excursions were made from Salem, and when she timed them, the two were apt to be asked to meet each other. Mrs. Tuckerman, sister of Leverett Saltonstall, at one time Collector of the Port of Boston, was a most entertain- ing conversationalist. A portly, jolly-looking woman, whose sides would shake with laughter to the tune of the merri- ment produced by her stories, she had the especial gift of being able to tell a long-winded one SO that it never dragged. Her yarns were of the gossipy order in that they usually dealt with individuals, but her points were witty and free from malice. Mrs. Lawrence, a noble woman in the beauty of her prime as well as character, with a store of benign good sense, was an excellent foil. While they talked the hands of the four ladies were busy with knitting or fancy work, and my blind grandmother invariably made up the 66 FOURSCORE COLLEGE LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES 67 circle, an ever appreciative, cheerful listener. I never con- Thanksgiving while she lived the ceremony of inviting Miss sidered a forenoon wasted when I was allowed to sit within Davis to 'top off' was never omitted. earshot with a book in my lap. I became curious, too, as to why one half of my relations A family intimate, always an object of curiosity to me and kept back their presents until New Year's Day instead of regarded virtually as a relative, was Miss Helen Davis, a bestowing them on Christmas. Some of them were very maiden lady who had been my grandmother Rice's brides- rigid in the practice, and from the point of view of having maid. That she had been one was impressive solely because something to look forward to, we as mere children approved of curiosity as to what had been expected of her in that of it. Though this was half a century before the era of capacity. It was vouched for that she accompanied the electric trains and other mechanical apparatus, there was a happy pair on their honeymoon in conformity with custom. plethora of gifts in our stockings, and on the first of the I was sophisticated enough to regard this as extraordinary year, some of them quite as appealing to youthful imagi- and I continued to wonder as to the nature of Miss Davis's nation as those vaunted today. It was easy to like what duties. I tried to believe that she might have been useful-in another received better than what was given one, but when ordering the meals, but could not shake off the obsession this human emotion had passed, one was rarely disap- that she must have been very much in the way. pointed. I cherished fondly and preserved for years a Of another family tradition, associated with Miss Helen decorative old-time European fort, the exact original of Davis in her later years, I was an eye and ear witness. Our which may never have existed. When its various parts and Thanksgiving dinners were the most elaborate feast on the properties were set up on the wooden foundation that went calendar. The particular one I have in mind was presided with them, the result was a formidable quadrangle of bat- over by my grandmother Rice, who by this time had moved tlements, of moat and drawbridge, of pointed towers from with my aunt Guild from Boylston Street to 80 Beacon, which flew pennons, and a general brightly colored effect of nearly opposite across the Public Garden. Besides the impregnability. Of tin soldiers, more correctly described family old and young, Miss Davis as usual was present, an as lead, on both horse and foot, in the various uniforms of ever welcome guest. I can see her perfectly, wearing a Europe, I had abundance both for attack and defence of purple headdress, the insignia of slight mourning, and hear this gay citadel. I remember, too, a large duck, likewise her low but very clear voice, which when she disapproved imported, the interior of which held an assortment of boats, became dry. We marvelled, too, at the undaunted appetite swans, ducklings, and fish, all of such careful manufacture of one so well along in years. Watching her on that evening that they followed the magnet scrupulously. So dainty we were not aware of her refusing a single course, and at were these toys that my mother wisely kept the duck in a dessert, while I am not certain that she took both the plum cabinet alongside of our Mayflower teapot (which never did pudding and mince pie, she ate the whole of a delectable come over in the Mayflower) and let us play with it only cheesecake ringed with almond pips. But for some reason now and then. my grandmother's alert sense of hospitality urged her guest Our stockings on Christmas Eve hung by the empty to have some more of this or that. In vain it seemed; until hearth in the chamber which my brother Harry and I OC- suddenly Miss Davis broke the silence with her clear, small cupied together in separate beds. We were bound in honor voice: don't mind, Charlotte, if I top off with a little of not to take even a peek before morning at what Santa that wine jelly.' Prodigious this alike to old and young. Claus might bring us, a pledge which we never violated. The phrase became a watchword and on each succeeding But going to sleep promptly was much less easy for me than 68 FOURSCORE COLLEGE LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES 69 for my brother. Notwithstanding our mutual excitement, this was that the master complimented me in open class I would lie awake long after he had ceased to respond to upon what he termed a creditable attempt at blank verse. whispered conjecture. An incident when I must have been No one could have been more amazed than I or more quick about thirteen brought out the difference in our tempera- to disclaim poetical intent. But my mistake when owned ments more strikingly. Having dropped off at last, I awoke led me to ask myself, 'Why shouldn't I try?' And try I did when it was barely dawn. Yet as I could see to fumble I in the various exercises of the same kind that followed. deemed it sufficiently morning. Stealing to where my stock- My master, William R. Dimmock, I think, took a warm in- ing hung, I examined my presents most of which were on terest in my attempts, and I was much attracted to metre the hearth. After the edge of excitement had worn off, I and rhyme and the choice of words. By the school cata- returned to bed with the large sock itself, curious as to a logues of the day, which I still have, it appears that I protuberant package in its toe. My brother awakened by received a prize in 1866 for a translation from Livy and my movements had followed my example and we drew out again in 1867 for one from Sallust. These were for prose almost simultaneously a good-sized plum cake. How differently we acted under the circumstances! Yet translations, of course, and I well remember when, having studiously established myself in the Public Library on on my behalf the circumstances should be carefully weighed. Boylston Street, my thrill of surprise at running down in It was not more than four o'clock; to light the gas and act the Latin lexicon an apt gloss of one and then another of as if it were day would rouse the house. Four hours before breakfast. Surely to bite off a morsel of the cake to see how the identical phrases in Livy which were in the passage set. If a little diligence could work such wonders, the pursuit it would taste was not yielding to temptation. Yet the fact of knowledge was worth while. I, have no remembrance remains indisputably that, having gone thus far, not a crumb was left when it was time to get up. On the other of competing for the prize offered annually for a poetical hand, my brother did not eat a crumb of his, but wrapped translation from Ovid, yet in 1869, the year of my gradua- tion from the Latin School, my muse soaring above the it up and kept it. Kept it SO long, in fact, that, though he medium of mere reproduction made its first original flight. won renown at the outset, my memory is at fault whether A very tender and timid muse, yet bold as brass on the the mice actually got into and spoilt it or this was the envi- surface, for by choosing 'The Ocean' as a theme she had ous application of a Sunday-School story. At least I had challenged the ages. Yet the performance was deemed eaten my cake without dire consequences, even though I had not had it. But perhaps I had learned, too, that there worthy of a prize in spite of the stipulation in the catalogue, 'No exercise will be rewarded because it is the only one is a happy mean in everything. My subsequent faith in the presented.' Yet though the printed record of the award does Greek motto oudév áyav (nothing overmuch) may not im- not limit the degree of merit, I have a definite remembrance probably date from this episode. of the announcement as 'a second prize.' I was about thirteen too - when sheer ignorance be- I won also in that same year of graduation the second of came a spur to literary ambition. It was either in my second the two third prizes for declamation. This must have been or third year at the Latin School that my master set us an for zeal rather than desert, for I had little presence and less. exercise in translating Latin verse - probably the Aneid - voice to boast of. Much attention was given to declama- into English prose. For the reason that every line in the tion; which, allowing for partiality, an extract from the Latin text began with a capital letter, I began every line in school newspaper, The Satchel, in 1866 (its first year) tends my prose translation with the same. The consequence of to confirm: 'The great event of our school year, the Annual FOURSCORE COLLEGE LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES 70 71 Prize Declamation, took place last Saturday, May 26, at because of the indelible impression produced on me by a the Lowell Institute, before a large and brilliant audience. story in the school newspaper. In this a transient sleeper At an early hour the vestibule and avenue leading to the in a Paris hotel, no villain but a virtuous man, was con- Hall were filled, and when, at half-past nine o'clock the vincingly stabbed to death from below through the mattress. doors were opened, the expectant throng steadily poured in, But this susceptibility to horrors had a precautionary filling all the sitting and standing room in the house, and rather than morbid effect on me. I lived in the everyday leaving large numbers unable to gain admittance.' When and practical rather than the unusual. The ambition to do my name was on 'The Order of Exercises' for a similar gala well in my college examinations led me to study harder occasion in 1869, I have no remembrance what I recited. than my physical strength could stand. I have an impression that it was Aytoun's 'Edinburgh after Yet I was constantly in the open air, rode on horseback Flodden.' This with his 'Burial March of Dundee' and at Nahant with my father across the beaches, and in 'The Execution of Montrose,' were favorite pieces. Re- Boston played baseball and football with zest, though I dounding in martial glory, pathos, and woe they rarely did not excel at either. In these later teens I had very failed to stir an audience. They had formidable rivals in close companionship with my father. We would pace Milman's 'Belshazzar,' Scott's 'Harold the Dauntless, and together the long piazza, which completely encircled the Macaulay's 'The Battle of Ivry' - to pick at random: Nahant house, many times every evening. To him I even more formidable in the extracts from orators such as confided my worries concerning my rank at school, my Daniel Webster, Brougham, and Curran, the patriotism or health, and the conduct of life. From his good sense, invective of which would often win more favor with the solid solicitude, and constant sympathy with my aims I derived citizens who served as judges than the cadences of dramatic very helpful stimulus. He taught me to play chess, which verse. I kept up for a short while until I decided that because of There were plenty of books at Chestnut Street, but other interests life was too short for chess. a seeming paucity at Nahant. However this may have In those later formative years before I entered Harvard, been, the only shelf in the drawing-room which held them, we were a healthy-minded household both in town and at a small one on the wall near the front door, had continuous Nahant. I have no recollection of money or stocks and fascination for me because of its largest volume, Chronicles bonds ever being discussed in my presence. My father's of the Bastille, by Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, a quarto in business as a commission merchant in flour, chemicals, black cloth. This book, the English translation of which and sundry merchandise enabled him to live in comfort was republished in this country, had considerable vogue with no serious concern for the morrow. I was told by him in its day as an absorbing if lurid compendium of what its subsequently that he never speculated in the stock market, name suggests. My absorption in it was frowned on, not nor, though socially intimate with the few who made for- forbidden, and though I have forgotten all the incidents, tunes in mills or Western railroads, had any share in their and have never seen the book since boyhood, the continu- enterprises. I doubt if this was from lack of astuteness, ous relish with which I returned to them still lingers. but rather because of a conservative tendency to follow From about the same time but of different origin dates his own path and avoid unfamiliar hazards. the habit of looking under any bed before I lie down to The atmosphere I breathed was also void of the super- sleep. This, though long ago mechanical, still persists stitions with which some people chose - and still choose - Elisser and Proctor, New York, 1859. to afflict themselves. To sit down thirteen at table in my 72 FOURSCORE COLLEGE LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES 73 grandmother Rice's house was early established as a Yon mantling cloud has hid from sight negligible risk because of the frequency with which it was The last faint pulse of quivering light. done. She kept open house in summer in the sense that, with SO large a family and her hospitable instinct to invite If some poor wandering child of Thine strangers on short notice, and someone to meet them, Have spurned, today, the voice divine, Now, Lord, the gracious work begin; seating capacity was the only restraint. Yet I remember Let him no more lie down in sin. that occasionally the whisper that a guest would be dis- tressed if there were thirteen would appeal to my grand- I found that I learnt verse by heart readily and could mother's nice consideration for others and a seat would be retain it. Many of the hymns at the Nahant Church set for a child at a side table at the last minute. But the varying as they did with the denominational preachers, list of taboos, such as walking under a ladder or discrimina- stuck in my memory. I am able to recite a number of them tion against Friday, were regarded as neurotic and absurd. today. But I was attracted by those with the most literary If the dread of lightning may be regarded as an exception, quality, though unaware at the time that this was what we were all more or less susceptible to it. The thunder- appealed to me. Despite a fairly tolerant point of view of the storms that visited the peninsula of Nahant were SO violent elder generation - seventy-five per cent more SO than that that where the next bolt would strike kept young and old of youth today - I was left completely cold by songs of on edge, especially after new science declared the lightning praise which professed immediate longing for a new Jerusa- rods, by which our house was supposedly protected, to be lem. Such a patent hypocrisy could not escape me, it conductors in reality. Because of this youthful dread the being self-evident that every man 'and woman in that sight in later years of my wife wooing the thunderstorms at well-to-do congregation was eager to live as long as possible. their worst in the open doorways - - a practice she delighted Yet at that age I said my prayers on bended knees both in out of sheer enjoyment of the elements would simul- night and morning and have done SO ever since with spon- taneously bring my heart to my mouth and convict me as a taneity, however remote or nebulous the power which coward. Even when a bolt struck our chimney and passed controls the universe may have appeared. But as for the through the bathroom while she was sitting with the chil- hymn-books, deep as is my obligation to the best that is in dren in the parlor not far away below, I failed to observe them, I am thankful that, instead of the feeble rubbish in any change of attitude. between, instinct taught me to admire the most perfectly Bezique and Russian backgammon were played in the phrased. This was true alike in varying effect of Watts's family and I was fond of both. As a foil to these I became 'O God, our help in ages past,' of Addison's 'The spacious enamoured by my own prompting one summer of the firmament on high,' and of Pope's 'Rise, crowned with hymns of John Keble, a number of which I committed to light, Imperial Salem, rise.' memory with fervent enthusiasm. One of the rooms of As I was approaching seventeen by this time, my world our cottage commanded over the water a view of the setting had developed with me. My younger brother Pat and my sun often in clouds of glory and I have never forgotten the sister Flora swum into my ken as very individual children pious inclinations wrought in me by his 'Evening,' the four- of twelve and ten. Of my two cousins under the same roof teen stanzas of which linked susceptibility to nature with at Nahant, Charlotte and Eliot Guild, the former, four aspiration: years my senior, had been launched in Society and the 'Tis gone, that bright and orbed blaze, latter was to enter Harvard in the autumn. With the Fast fading from our wistful gaze; 74 FOURSCORE COLLEGE LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES 75 exception of Charley Rice, already mentioned, I had no the poet Longfellow and Louis Agassiz the scientist, cot- other cousins. Of these two I was already fond and destined tagers like ourselves. I would see in the distance the tall to become even fonder as time went on, so that their figure of Charles Sumner who often stayed with Mr. relationship for a lifetime was virtually that of a sister and Longfellow; but I have no remembrance of him at our brother. When following my marriage I expressed surprise table. This may have been because he was such an extreme that my wife was not more intimate with her own first abolitionist. But then again, his wife, who obtained a cousins, she replied very aptly that she had eighty, some of divorce from him, was my father's first cousin. Two or whom she had never laid eyes on. three times in the course of the summer my great-uncle During these later years of my boyhood at Nahant there William H. Bordman would sail down from Boston in his were frequent visitors for a day or two if not longer. There white yacht and drop anchor in time for Sunday dinner. always seemed to be room in the Bower, if nowhere, else, At the same time once in a while would arrive my great- for Wilmot Johnson of Baltimore and William Turnbull aunt Otis, apt to be accompanied by a boon companion of New York, intimate friends of my uncles. I enjoyed Captain Murdock. Thick-set and short, with broad protu- listening to their lively conversation and to the talk of the berant features, the color of mahogany, the Captain, who guests invited to meet them. My grandmother Rice's had lived in the East, was strong on curries. As children dinner parties were large but informal. Being at the age we managed to overhear with bated breath that he had when nothing was expected of me but silence, I listened 'scuttled a ship.' But none the less he appeared to move in with avidity, if present, to the stories and banter and polite society, and his appetite was extraordinary. availed myself of every legitimate opportunity for eaves- When my cousin Minnie 'came' out' at eighteen, I was dropping on the piazza. Most of the cottagers with whom still a hobbledehoy. It was natural that the hospitalities the family was intimate were invited to a meal at least of the Nahant establishment should centre on the first once in the course of the summer. I remember in particular, granddaughter, but for a time it seemed to us juniors Mr. and Mrs. Amos A. Lawrence and Mr. and Mrs. Edward that. we were of no account. Croquet was at its acme as Motley. Mr. Motley was the brother of the historian. a social pastime and from our background we looked out A constant guest was Mr. William Amory, treasurer of covertly on grown-up parties of maidens in long skirts and the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, whose well- high hats and very spick-and-span youths assembled on our informed but sprightly conversation on people, affairs, rather primitive croquet ground. Our attitude was one of and books attracted me greatly. He lived until after I was contempt, for we knew ourselves to be more skilful with grown up and in his old age used to call on my wife, whom the mallet than any of them and would have scorned being he admired. Writing of him in Later Days of the Saturday present at the set luncheon which followed as an unmiti- Club Bishop Lawrence records: 'He had charm. He won gated bore. Feminine summer recreation was still at a low the hearts of young women, the admiration of their mothers, ebb and except for croquet and an occasional moonlight and he had the confidence of their fathers. To me he had a party on the water, the chief excitement of the season lay touch of Lord Chesterfield, a Chesterfield however, of in the yearly outing of the Cadets, the crack corps which finer moral character and standards than the writer of the attended the Governor. Their visit for a week with its Letters.' Mr. Amory's wife was my father's first cousin semblance of roughing it in tents on the verge of the ocean Anna Powell Grant Sears. Occasional guests, too, were served as a stimulus to midnight flirtation under the trees or Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927. on the improvised parade ground. What was deemed such a 76 FOURSCORE COLLEGE LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES 77 martial occasion could not be wholly resisted; but I was College in the Seventies,' delivered by me in Sanders at the shy age when the extent of my social initiative Theatre, Cambridge, in April, 1896. This lecture was the consisted in hanging on the outskirts of the glittering third of three treating of Harvard in successive decades by encampment and peering at the dancers. invitation of the Harvard Memorial Society: 'Harvard in Although many of the cottages at Nahant commanded the Fifties' by President Eliot and 'Harvard in the Sixties' the horizon and telescopes were the fashion, custom had by Moorfield Storey. Mine was published in Scribner's prescribed a deep inlet identified by a small rock named Magazine for May, 1897, and the same number also con- Cupid as a resort where summer residents, men and boys, tained an article immediately preceding mine. 'Under- could plunge in the sea head foremost without bathing graduate Life at Harvard,' by Edward S. Martin (the clothes. A slight crest at the turn of the main road pro- distinguished writer, editor of Life and Harper's Magazine), tected it from close observation and though in full view who graduated in 1877, four years after me. To anyone at a distance from Mr. Lodge's house on East Point, curious as to details the two papers in conjunction give no remonstrance was ever made. Here every day, and in a comprehensive panorama of the lives of students in our larger numbers on Sunday mornings after church, the male day, if the footnote which I inserted to my article be kept cottagers old and young would flock, and depositing their in mind: 'It is a narrative of manners and customs, and clothes on the shelf of rock which burned the soles of does not pretend to describe the mental processes of those their feet, dive again and again into water often SO cold in authority at the time or to depict the results of scholar- as to daunt all but enthusiasts. Here the boys of my time ship. I insert this caveat merely for the benefit of any learned to become almost as much at home in the sea as literal-minded readers who have never been to college and on land, and some of my happiest hours were spent. Here, might be disposed to ask where the study came in.' too, I recall my father in the very act of diving with the As I look back this caveat was eminently called for. tall grey hat, which elderly men of his class wore then in During my four years as an undergraduate I took no inter- summer, still on his head. But before he could spring one est whatever in the mental processes of those in authority of my brothers, who was nearer, saved him from breaking except for a metrical diatribe on The Tabular View' his neck. which seemed to us to do no credit to the lucidity of those took my entrance examinations for Harvard in June, processes. Neither was I concerned with scholarship be- 1869, at the age of seventeen and a half, and passed without yond maintaining a respectable average in the middle conditions. 'Our entrance examinations began on Thurs- of my class. I entered college well equipped as a student day and continued through Friday and a part of Saturday and was able to maintain that rank without much exertion. morning. Saturday afternoon we learned our fate. My On the other hand, although as a freshman I was ingenuous, class numbered 154. Students were received on probation, retiring, and very simple-minded, it did not take me long as it was termed, and were not matriculated as members in to become sophisticated and ambitious to participate in full standing until the end of the first half year. Our en- collegiate avocations trance examinations were in Greek composition, Greek gram- When I was examined for Harvard [to quote again from my mar, history and geography, English into Latin, Latin article], the college topographically was the old college. Holmes grammar, plane geometry, arithmetic and algebra. Besides House and the railroad station next it, the Old Commons, were these written examinations we had to translate orally still standing. Neither Thayer, Weld, nor Matthews was in Latin and Greek.' The quotation is from a lecture, Harvard existence. There was no Hemenway Gymnasium; only the 78 FOURSCORE COLLEGE LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES 79 small circular one; there was no Memorial Hall; and Gray's sentiment, the repertoire of which, pandering at the start was a comparatively new building. Holworthy was regarded to trivial emotions with 'Shoo Fly' and as the lady patroness of the dormitories. The suites there, consisting of a parlor and two bedrooms and a coal closet, were Ha-ha-ha, you and me, much in demand, and even as late as 1876 we find 'The Song Little Brown jug how I love thee, of the Blood': made the welkin ring with 'A Health to King Charles,' 'Some like upon the winding Charles then clutched the heart by the melody 'Seeing Nellie To ply the bending oar, Home' or 'Dearest Maiden, dance ever with me; canst Nor care they, though their backs are burned thou refuse me? Canst thou but choose me?' And every muscle sore. I belonged to one of the last few classes - 73 - which was 'But as for me, it suits me not; hazed or took part in hazing. President Eliot was inaugurated I'll ever be content in October, 1869, and I was tossed in a blanket that same To loaf in front of Holworthy, autumn in the gymnasium, one of the last freshmen who And toss the shining cent. underwent the ordeal Hazing, SO far as I knew it personally, 'Some like to grind the livelong day, was rather mortifying to one's self-esteem than painful. I think And think it is immense I had to recite 'Mary had a Little Lamb' in my night-gown To study for their Annuals, with a pitcher in my hand to a group of appreciative sopho- And take in large per cents. mores who were smoking to a man as hard as they could. A few of my classmates had pails of cold water poured over them in 'But, as for me, ah! give me a rest, bed, but I was little and perhaps that saved me Hazing And let me, free from care, received its final quietus in 1873, when the classes of 75 and Sit on the steps of Holworthy '76, who were then sophomores and freshmen, entered into a com- And take the evening air.' pact with the faculty that there should be no more war if cer- tain members of the sophomore class, who had been caught in This was the philosophy of the day, even though on the the act and had been suspended, were allowed to come back. eve of change. As yet I barely knew we were the first fresh- CNE man class of President Eliot's long term of illustrious My chum until graduation was Grant Walker no service to education. From Holworthy 9, which I and my relation in spite of the name. We had been great friends chum occupied as tutor's freshmen, we looked out on the at the Latin School and SO continued until his death in yard at upper-class men disporting themselves in the care- middle life. He was much taller, but less athletic and even free belief they had been sent to college to acquire know- more retiring than I. We were as freshmen equally simple- ledge of the world and incidentally the patter words that minded and diffident, not to say 'green.' We lived most would enable them to pass in it for educated. They wore happily together. But though his religious attitude was mustaches and whiskers, a few were bearded like the pard. already devout, he was a mediocre scholar like myself. Old clothes were popular, for the times were hard, and little I was dimly aware and became certain when the lists were round grey soft hats. The arbiters of fashion - malevolent published that there were men in my class who studied sophomores among them - were much given to a pea hard. In token of this their names - those who took jacket surmounted by a tall silk hat, a combination which highest rank - bear numbers in the Quinquennial Cata- overawed me. Yet they were very susceptible to song and logue. I played around, very mildly at first, with men 80 FOURSCORE COLLEGE LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES 81 content to hold their own or worse. I was even let into the University. I was awed by the sight. Nevertheless, instead secret of successful conspiracies to get from the printer or of lying low, I asked myself, 'What ought I to do?' Mr. elsewhere examination papers in advance. I did not need Eliot was just over forty. Yet I assume that to me he them, but would have scorned their use instinctively as a looked elderly. I had been brought up to be polite to my concession to falsehood. Yet, though I knew by rumor who elders, and what else than politeness prompted me I never made use of them, I recognized the deceit as a low device discovered. At all events, I got to my feet and sitting to 'get through," not to establish rank, and harbored only down in the vacant place beside him introduced myself. a shade of reserve towards culprits who were friends. I was aware that he knew my parents. The President had Yet if I was free from self-righteousness in this instance, the reputation of passing students in the College Yard as if that I was too morally fastidious in another appears from he did not see them. I realized, however, that he was taking the remark which I made to a close friend midway in the my initiative in good part. We chatted amicably on casual freshman year. It may have been to Arthur L. Ware, with matters of no importance, and I was able to credit myself whom I constantly walked and talked on the affairs of the when we separated with a quasi-virtuous act, however Universe. As we came out from looking on at billiards, I venturous. The sequel of the episode is what justified it inquired, 'Can you imagine asking home to pass the week- completely. A fortnight or SO later, while travelling into end a fellow who would drink and play billiards in a saloon?' town, I became aware that someone on the opposite side of The verdant speech returns to haunt me, yet with the the car had arisen and was sitting down beside me. I had comforting reminder that my point of view SO speedily not noticed President Eliot among the passengers, but it moderated that I ought to be proud to record that I made was he who had come to return the compliment, which it. Among the many subjects of prime importance which incidentally showed that he had been gratified. the Ware and I discussed in our evening strolls was that of many years of my acquaintance with him, I have always college societies whose names and formidable rites were borne in mind this retort courteous when I heard him touched on in whispers from the depths of ignorance. charged with being cold or businesslike in social approaches. ) When in the following autumn I was told of my election to I do not find among the Faculty for the year 1869-70 the AKE (or 'Dickey') in the first ten chosen by the original the name of Dr. William Everett, the classical scholar ten from my class elected by the sophomores the previous with an extraordinary memory and later a member of spring, my astonishment was great. It is proper to add Congress. But he was living in Cambridge, for I took my that from this moment my perspective rapidly widened. meals at his house during my first term as a freshman. It is evident, however, from the following incident His encounter on a horse-car with the President was one in my freshman year that I had been well nurtured in of the current anecdotes in my day. Dr. Everett, like social proprieties, even to the point of overcoming timidity many others, had a propensity for alighting from a car where they were at stake. In those days nothing was while still in motion. Perhaps Mr. Eliot had observed thought of walking into or out from Boston over the Cam- this. However it may be, on the occasion in question bridge Bridge, but whoever had no time to spare patronized he chose to reprimand the offender by tapping him on the the horse-cars, the only public conveyance. On my way to shoulder and begging him to desist. The reply credited to town in a car one afternoon I recognized sitting obliquely Dr. Everett, before he jumped from the car, was, 'I in- opposite across the aisle, on either side of which the occu- sist, Mr. President, on being allowed to kill myself in any pants then faced one another, the new President of the way I see fit.' 82 FOURSCORE Dr. Everett's independence of judgment was illustrated also by the short life of the Club table under his roof. A son of the statesman and orator Edward Everett, he occu- pied the family estate at Winchester while I was at the CHAPTER V Latin School. Because of his fondness for the Prince boys who lived near him, one of whom was my classmate and TEN YEARS AT HARVARD playmate at school and college, he cherished the plan of As I passed ten years at Harvard - a record which I assembling at meals six or eight undergraduates as paying doubt has been surpassed or equalled by any other regis- guests. My remembrance is that he knew us all in advance. tered student - I must, in order not to be voluminous, His house was a stone's throw from the College Yard and confine myself chiefly to details that bear on my own the experiment seemed to us for a time to be working development or elucidate the period. The length of time admirably. The food was excellent and not only did we is accounted for partly by lack of physical vigor and partly deem ourselves in clover, but were unconscious of giving by uncertainty as to what I wished to do. When I urged offence. In what way we did SO we never adequately dis- one of my own sons to take his A.B. degree in three years covered. As there is no rose without its thorns, our brilliant instead of four SO as to spend a year abroad in learning to but temperamental host doubtless found daily contact speak French, his plausible answer was, 'You know it with budding youth to be prickly. By coming later and took you ten years to get through Harvard.' later to meals and finally by waiting until we had finished, My undergraduate years seemed leisurely at the time, he showed an increasing disrelish for our society. While yet my scrapbook indicates that I was fully occupied with we at a loss plied our knives and forks, he paced the room one thing and another. directly overhead spouting long passages from the ancient classics, in which he was prodigiously versed. Once, only In my freshman year from the beginning of the first term once, was he overheard to murmur as he fled at our approach until the Thanksgiving recess and from March Ist until the 'Another week of agony.' Beyond this he remained in- end of the year, morning prayers began at a quarter before seven. After the Thanksgiving recess until the first of March articulate, except that after we had separated, and in- at a quarter before eight. The first bell rang some time in the quiries were made by disinterested persons, he was reported night, but the second bell five minutes before the exercises to have laid stress on Bob Grant's having consumed his opened. In that five minutes many endeavored to dress and buttered toast. My seat at meals had been next to his reach the chapel in time. An ulster and top boots were a favor- and between us stood a platter of this from which the ite garb and during the last few languishing notes of the bell crusts had been cut off. It seems that he suffered from a some noble sprinting was done. When prayers began at a tender mouth. But I obtusely had failed to discern that quarter before seven, recitations were at eight. Compulsory the toast was a private dish. morning prayers and the rank-list were the two leading griev- ances of the students. Changes in regard to the former and the abolition of the latter were among the first reforms introduced by President Eliot. Under the rank-list system marks of cen- sure were combined with marks for scholarship, and a student's rank, as held out to the world, was gravely affected by de- ductions for cutting prayers and recitations, whispering in lectures and smoking in the yard. The elective system of 84 FOURSCORE TEN YEARS AT HARVARD 85 studies made this combination of lesson and conduct marks still and a certain mischievousness of disposition, which means no more distasteful, and in the famous regulations of the Faculty serious harm, I dare say, lead me to suggest to you the im- for 1871 they were separated. We were allowed by these regu- portance of impressing strongly upon him at the beginning of lations sixty excused absences from prayers instead of twenty next year to be upon his guard against the temptation to in the course of the year. But penalties for evil conduct re- pranks which is SO strong at the beginning of the sophomore mained in all their lawfulness. The list of these enumerated in year. I think I am doing him a kindness if I put any fresh the inverse order of their importance included marks of cen- difficulty in the way of heedlessness on his part. sure, parental admonition, private admonition, public ad- Very truly yours monition, special probation, suspension, dismission, and ex- E. W. GURNEY pulsion. A public admonition was accompanied with a letter from the Dean to the father of the student The office of Dean of the Faculty Dean was established in the winter of 1870. Hitherto the An admirable and tolerant epistle all will agree. I must President had been obliged to devote his personal attention to the minor details of college government. From this time the have been chagrined at the moment as well as my father. Dean was the official with whom the students came in personal Yet the little strips of white paper received from time to contact when the faculty wished to communicate with them. time through the mail have a tendency to show that the kindly admonition slipped off my varnished sense of re- Except for the record of my scrapbook, it would not sponsibility like water from a duck's back. I find that a have occurred to me to think of myself as other than well- deduction of 32 was marked against 'Grant, Soph., on behaved and co-operative with the authorities in my under- the weekly return of February 4th, for inattention and graduate days. Yet I recall my belief that the worthy disorder at Italian exercise'; on June 13th of the same year, Dean Ephraim W. Gurney, who did much to 'promote 1871, I was 'publicly admonished for twenty-two unexcused friendly relations between the authorities and the students absences from prayers'; and on a date, of which I have lost and to encourage the undergraduates to govern themselves," the record, I was again publicly admonished at the instance took a 'slant' against me from the first. But I must admit of Professor Sophocles. The last was excessive punishment that the following letter which he wrote to my father toward for what had excited his ire. By this time, I had ceased to the end of my freshman year justifies a poorer opinion of be a tutor's freshman, the only obligation of which I was my co-operative spirit than I seemed to have held. called on to perform, SO far as I remember, being the de- livery of a note for the professor whom I served, and had Harvard College, June, 1870 Dear Sir: I am sorry to be obliged to inform you that at the moved to number 5 in the next entry of Holworthy. These last meeting of the Faculty it was voted that your son 'be rooms up one flight were immediately over those of Evange- publicly admonished and be put upon special probation' for linus A. Sophocles, the distinguished Professor of ancient, participating in disorders in the recitation-room of Mr. Byzantine and modern Greek, who though much venerated tutor in to the freshmen. for his learning, was reputed to live in peculiar isolation. Mr. has been greatly tried by the conduct of the class, He had seemed wholly unaware of our existence until the being an amiable person and a new instructor, and would have moment when he rapped on our door and, entering, stared done more wisely, I have no doubt, to have provided earlier at us with yellow, piercing eyes, the gleam of which was and vigorous measures against an evil which is fatal to the in- ominous. I stumblingly explained that I and a classmate struction and discipline of the College. had been endeavoring to deposit my chum in the coal The indifferent manner in which your son receives warnings, closet. That this had been a difficult job accounting for the 86 FOURSCORE TEN YEARS AT HARVARD 87 racket made was manifest from the length of the legs and member of the Med. Fac., SO I am unable to testify on that arms of the victim. Our visitor continued to stare for a point. The whole matter remained shrouded in mystery while moment envisaging the situation. Then, without having I was in college, and my impression is that the father of one of uttered a single word, he closed the door. When a few weeks my classmates was SO indignant that his son was suspected that later I was summoned to the Dean's office, I had almost he sent his other sons to Yale. taken for granted that the misdemeanor had been for- I am misty after SO many years as to the names or quality given. of the courses I took. I gave up Greek as soon as this was In the article in Scribner's Magazine I see that I wrote: permissible, perhaps inadvisedly. The personalities of our I think there is much to be said on the side of the Dean, but instructors are more sharply defined, but rather for their my own belief is that what he considered indifference on my idiosyncrasies than educational methods. The venerable part was really shyness. His impressions regarding me were un- Andrew P. Peabody, Plummer Professor of Christian fortunately strengthened early in my sophomore year by the Morals, was deservedly popular in his required course of blowing up of Stoughton, an episode which caused much excite- ethics. To hear him inquire 'What èes ethics?' was not ment at the time. One evening late in the autumn of '70 the merely a vocal curiosity, but encouraged the general under- Yard was startled by a loud explosion which proceeded from standing that one's brains would not be taxed. Zealous and the north entry of Stoughton. The ground floor room nearest paternal though he was, I learned next to nothing that I Holworthy had been blown up by combustibles placed in the did not know already. Professor Henry W. Torrey was cellar. Its inmates were freshmen, and among the occupants at the moment was my brother who was a freshman of '74, and another beloved gentleman of the old school, precise, who tumbled out of the window in great haste. Those who literary, and very well-mannered in imparting to us history tried to escape by the door could not, for the flooring had of which we took notes. Excellent and accurate information started. One man is said to have struck the ceiling, but in spite I am certain, but my interest in history remained languid of the noise and smoke no one was hurt I rushed down to see until my junior and senior years. I find that I wrote in what the matter was, and SO did everybody else in the Yard. 1896: 'I remember well how interested I was in the history Conjecture as to who did it selected the Med. Fac. as the courses of Professors Gurney and Adams, which were con- probable culprit; but no one was caught at the time. In about ducted after the then new method of lectures with out- a fortnight my chum and I, and some dozen other members of side work by the class. Dr. Peabody and Professor Torrey my class, were sent for to see the Dean on the eve of the Christ- were still actively instructing and were much beloved. I mas recess. I think that President Eliot addressed us in per- used to wonder sometimes that men who applauded loudly son. I remember that we were given to understand that the authorities had a clew, and were informed that if the matter at the mention of their names should put off preparation in were not confessed before the end of the recess the guilty parties their courses until the night before examination day.' Of would be prosecuted in the criminal court as well as expelled. our tutors I remember James B. Greenough and Prentiss We went home to think it over, and I, for one, felt aggrieved, Cummings in Latin, Edwin P. Seaver, with a jet-black for I was innocent as a lamb of the offence and moreover was beard, in mathematics, and Thomas Sergeant Perry in entirely ignorant as to who committed it. There were no con- German, all men of ability and scholarship. fessions known to me made after the recess, and SO far as I am Yet again I chronicled: aware the Faculty never discovered who blew up Stoughton. I do not think that it was the fashion in my time for in- I have heard it positively denied by those who claimed to know that the Med. Fac. had anything to do with it. I was not a structors to interest themselves in the students individually to the extent they do now There was certainly less working to- 88 FOURSCORE TEN YEARS AT HARVARD 89 gether in the matter of studies, and consequently more formal Advocate, the only newspaper when I entered, though intercourse. The recitation in most cases, at least where I was presently the Crimson and the Harvard Lampoon became concerned, was the sole medium of contact, and the expression 'Not prepared' on the one side and 'That is sufficient' on the rivals. Once more I had recourse to rhyme, a short poem, other, uttered in varying keys calculated to produce repulsion, 'Christmas,' SO deftly composed in spite of commonplace were too often the Alpha and Omega of acquaintance. What title and sentiments that it was promptly accepted. Its infinite gradations of meaning those expressions 'Not pre- appearance in print encouraged me to contribute short pared' and 'That is sufficient' were susceptible of I remem- articles on college affairs in a lively, satirical vein. This ber the solemnity of the occasions when one was sent to the attitude affected and drove into retirement my serious black-board to demonstrate a problem in trigonometry or muse in favor of metrical skits like 'The Tabular View' physics concerning which one knew nothing. I can see again, and 'The Other Young Man.' When the time came to as plainly as though it were yesterday, one of my classmates draft men from '73, I was chosen an editor of the Advocate. in this plight draw with the chalk simply a huge square and At the Institute of 1770 suppers, I officiated as poet of the walk back to his seat with the dignity of profound helplessness. occasion, and enlivened topics of the day with rank but Yet an important incident for me - whether in my congenial banter. In my junior year I carried on the same freshman or sophomore year I am uncertain - began on method, but more circumspectly. When my Occasional the day when our tutor in themes, James Jennison, I Verses were printed in 1926, the only Advocate poem which think, colloquially spoken of as 'Bogy Jennison,' invited I included was a paraphrase of Horace, Odes I and 3, in- the class to condense within four pages of letter-paper spired by the newspaper item, 'Among the passengers in a play of Shakespeare - strange to say I have forgotten the Cunarder on Saturday was President - of Harvard which one. But I do remember vividly pricking up my ears College.' My dash, of course, meant Eliot. But in this I was at the proposal and resolving to try how well I could do. merely respectfully playful as appears by the opening in- Anyone would agree today that the dimensions imposed vocation: were absurd. So certainly I found them before I finished the task, to which I applied myself with care and ardor. Yet o Pollux in the wintry sky, O pollocks in the frozen seas, by the time the first three acts were epitomized, there was Ye cuttle-fish with baleful eye only a single page of paper left. A little out of conceit, (By Verne described), attention please! yet choosing to go through to the end, I summarized the Remorseless sharks with awful tails, rest in rather despairing fashion on the last sheet and handea Seals, dolphins, and enormous whales, the production in. Without much hope, yet curious, I E'en each gay automatic porpoise I pray, be gentle to the corpus listened to the tutor's announcement at the next exercise Of him who freights the swift Cunarder, that he had singled out two themes as the best of the lot. He is our chief, SO don't retard her; When he read mine as one of them, commending its style And bear the framer of our laws and diction, 'except for the last page which was hurried," In safety to the Cheshire shores, I was much surprised and pleased. Hitherto my self- Unless you wish to draw the tear From many a hoary Overseer. expression had been confined to rhyme or blank verse, though I knew I lacked divine fire. But now a new medium I enjoyed greatly my duties as editor of the Advocate and seemed open. association with my fellow journalists. The promising Shortly after this, I aspired to contribute to the Harvard Frederick Wadsworth Loring, of the class of '70, was 90 FOURSCORE TEN YEARS AT HARVARD 9I looked up to by us all because of his clever verse. He was the students went to evening parties in Boston. For a fresh- killed in the West by Indians shortly after graduation. At man or sophomore to go was an unusual thing. On the other the annual dinner of the editors of the Advocate in May, hand, there was considerable simple social gaiety in Cambridge. 1876, I heard Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes read his poem, Assemblies were held in Lyceum Hall, under the management 'How the Old Horse Won the Bet,' and applauded enthusi- of the students, and small parties were given by the parents of astically the closing couplet the Cambridge young ladies. The piping query, 'Going to wear a dress suit tonight?' called up from the Yard to a man in his Moral for which this tale is told, room, was a familiar sound in my day and shows that we were A horse can trot for all he's old! still simple souls. In spite of my satirical predilection I recall the distaste There was no freshman society in my day, and the only two with which I listened when a freshman to the SO called sophomore societies were the Institute of 1770 and the Everett Athenxum. The juniors had the Hasty Pudding Club the 'Mock Parts.' For many years it had been the custom to Pi Eta, and the Signet. The O.K. was the literary society. At hold a travesty on the Junior Exhibition, SO called, an it we read papers and consumed beer and little cakes cut in the academic celebration long defunct in my time. One of the form of O and K. There were the Glee Club and the Pierian junior class was deputed to deliver from a window in Hollis Sodality, and two religious societies, the St. Paul's and the Hall an address which bristled with satirical and bitter Christian Brethren. The only secret societies were the AK.E. 'roughs' and personalities on other members of the class and the Med. Fac. The Alpha Delta Phi was merged in the sent in anonymously. As I listened to the Mock Parts of A.D. Club, which was founded just after I entered college. the class of '71, I was shocked by the cruel thrusts which There were several members of my class who were members usage permitted to be made at those who were unpopular. both of the Porcellian and the A.D., but '73 was the last class The savageness of one of these, 'God help the fool,' coupled in which men were allowed to belong to both The A.D. had with the name of an unattractive acquaintance, repelled quarters on Brattle Street, just beyond Harvard Square; two rooms, in one of which we sat and played whist and the other me utterly, SO that I can hear today the exultant voice of a sort of pantry in which we kept the crackers and cheese. the orator. The latter happened to be my friend Henry Cabot Lodge, on whom it was incumbent, I assume, to When I was initiated into the 'Dickey,' 'I was sitting read every gibe sent in and could be regarded only as a blind-fold on a chair, believing that the worst was over, medium. Yet others must have felt as I did, for the next when two upper-classmen, whose voices I recognized, ap- class, '72, abolished the ceremony forever. proached me and told me to open my mouth. I did SO and As regards the cost of living, I spent just $1000 a year dur- one of them placed a large plug of tobacco between my ing the first two years and a little more the last two. I should teeth, and told me to masticate it until I was given leave to say that $1300 would cover the cost of my senior year, without stop. I was an innocent boy; I had never smoked or chewed including my share of my spread. I sent my bills for tuition, in my life, and I shall always remember the experience of rent, board and clothes - all my bills, in fact - to my father, that burning mouthful to which I was obliged to hold fast and was allowed $15 per month pocket money. I lived com- until late in the evening.' My sensibilities, however, soon fortably on this, bought a few books, and was a member of the hardened, for when a companion at the A.D. Club said to 'Dickey' and the A.D. Club. There were a number of men in me while we were playing whist a year later, 'I'll bet you a my class who spent more, but I doubt if anyone much exceeded box of cigars you daren't smoke one," I lighted one with $2000 a year. Scarcely anyone kept a horse, and very few of aplomb and finished it without a qualm. Yet all I smoked 92 FOURSCORE TEN YEARS AT HARVARD 93 of the box were two or three, and I doubt if I ever smoked a dozen cigars in my entire life. I lacked relish for the the men who might otherwise have felt left out. Yet even habit; and it was not until my sons were in college that I then I was beginning to perceive that society is not a took to smoking a single cigarette after meals as a con- charitable institution and that every tub must stand on its cession to sociability. own bottom. It is significant, as I write, that the members Early in my college course a reading-room was established of the A.D. Club from my grandson's class, sixty years by the students in lower Massachusetts Hall. I was one of later, are fewer than those taken in from my own. the officers. We provided the magazines and leading news- A society I greatly enjoyed was the O.K., to which I have papers, and it presently became a popular and successful already alluded. Its atmosphere was literary, and at its institution. A Telegraph Club was also established in my meetings I became well acquainted with upper-classmen time. The Pudding and the Pi Eta theatricals were then, and men of my own class whom I might not otherwise have been thrown in with. Several warm intimacies were the as now, prominent factors in social life. The names 'Lyon's' and 'Kent's will recall to men of my time many a game of result of these contacts. For some reason which I have billiards, and those who sought amusement in town must never discovered, unless it were that I was thought of as a have vivid memories of the Parker House and of Selwyn's capable scribe, I served for a time as secretary of the Har- Theatre, where the combination of Tennyson's 'Dora' and vard Boat Club, although I never dipped an oar in the the burlesque 'Black-eyed Susan,' in which Stuart Robson Charles. My name appears officially in at least one batch played Captain Crosstree and Kitty Blanchard appeared in of controversial correspondence between Harvard and tights, drew the same students, like a magnet, across the Yale, but I knew nothing of the technique of rowing and bridge again and again. I was immersed in studying law at my pen must have been guided in argument by the members the time the Soldene troupe carried by cyclone the class of of the crew. It was a surprise to me, too, in middle life to '77, but I believe that the college authorities retain keen find that I had been the first president of the Harvard recollections of the occurrence. The troupe went from Football Association. The whereof of this is, however, ex- Boston to Cincinnati, and the first words which Emily plainable, for I was fond of football and in the game as Soldene is said to have uttered on alighting from the train then played light men who could run fast were not at a dis- were, 'Is there a University here?' advantage. Indeed, as appears in my article on 'Harvard I read more or less in a not very systematic method the College in the Seventies, already quoted from, I was 'one of leading books of the day. I remember in particular my the half-dozen men who revived football which had been absorption in George Eliot's Middlemarch, with its masterly dormant at Harvard for some years.' The complete extract portrayal of Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy; also King- bearing on this - too long to quote in full - is illustrative lake's History of the Crimean War which illuminated the of the change of attitude with respect to all athletics which differences between the Roman Catholic and Greek took place during this decade: churches. frequented the A.D. Club, though wondering I have the impression that, apart from the small contingent a little at the policy of limiting its membership to thirteen who were active candidates for the crew, or nine, the older men in our class of one hundred and forty.) The Porcellian classmen when I entered college were lazy as regards exercise. and it were then the only final clubs, SO that the discrepancy It is my recollection that some of them spent much time in was greater than today when, though classes are SO much drifting from room to room and in coloring meerschaums, and larger, there are a number of other desirable clubs to absorb that those who took themselves seriously did not know what to do when they had studied enough. Certainly, between the 94 FOURSCORE TEN YEARS AT HARVARD 95 years 1870 and 1880, a marked change took place in the matter In the following October we sent a team to Montreal and of athletics, SO that by the end of the period it had become the for several years a match with McGill was a regular event. habit of the large majority, instead of a small minority of the In November, '75, the first football match ever played be- students, to take part daily in some form of outdoor exercise. The beginnings of this change occurred while I was an under- tween Yale and Harvard took place at Hamilton Park, graduate. I happened to be one of the party who owned the New Haven. Fifteen men played on each side, and it was first tennis set at Harvard. We set it up and played on it back substantially the Rugby game. of College House It was in my sophomore year, I think, From what has been set down it appears that I took a that a party of us took a black rubber football, such as we had lively interest in collegiate activities and was not unduly been accustomed to use at school, and went out and played. cliquish in my social relations. The only fact that needs to Our example attracted others, and presently we had a following be mentioned with respect to the latter is that during my of some twenty-five or thirty men. We played at first, I think, four years as an undergraduate I was never on better than on the vacant lot at the side of the Scientific School, for it was formal or neutral terms with a single one of my instructors. claimed that, with baseball and cricket already in possession of I do not recall any of my friends - though there were Jarvis Field, there was no room for us there. The faculty, how- exceptions in the class, no doubt - - of whom the contrary ever, would not let us stay; accordingly we removed our rubber ball to Cambridge Common, where we played energetically for was true. Unfortunately a line of cleavage seemed to be a year or so, at the end of which we were turned off by vote of drawn whenever the lecture or recitation was over, without the Cambridge town authorities. By this time the game had ostensible fault on either side. Social commerce or affabili- become SO well established that we were able to insist on our ties between the Faculty and the students were not in right to play on Jarvis Field. The game played by us was one fashion, and it was not easy for the inferior mind to make which had originated with the old Oneida Club of Boston some the first approach. I cherished no animosities against any ten or fifteen years previous, and it was generally in use at the of those who taught me. Even when I satirized in verse in schools and colleges of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and the Advocate the professor who won a Jersey calf in a raffle Vermont. One of the salient features of the game was the rule at the Homeopathic Fair, my muse merely made merry that a player could run with the ball only when chased, and he over the episode and was void of malice. On the other hand, must stop as soon as pursuit ceased. Dribbling was forbidden. through 'sociables' and dances at private houses I had many The ball was kicked a great deal, and there was much running and dodging. There were eleven men on a team, and the mem- friends among the Cambridge girls. I recall especially the bers were considerably lighter men, as a rule, than those who daughters of the poet Longfellow, Miss Rose Fay (later play nowadays. Mrs. Theodore Thomas) and Miss Molly Wyman (who married Professor W. F. Davis). As football played at McGill College, Montreal (usually At the election of officers in my senior year I was chosen styled the Rugby game), differed less from ours than that of Class Poet. Though proud of the honor, I was duly con- any other college, a match was arranged for the spring of scious of my own limitations to the point of alarm. Would 1874. Two games were played at Cambridge on successive I be able to acquit myself creditably on Class Day? I re- days, May 14th and 15th, the first according to our rules solved to spare no pains, and in my solicitude (I have for- with eleven players on a side, the second according to theirs gotten through what formalities) asked counsel of Professor and with only ten. My brother Henry Rice Grant, then a Francis J. Child, the eminent English scholar, known senior, was captain of the Harvard eleven. The first game familiarly to the collegiate world as 'Stubby.' I outlined was won easily by Harvard, the second resulted in a draw. my metaphor - the not very original one of a ship leaving 96 FOURSCORE TEN YEARS AT HARVARD 97 port - to him as well as I could, and received encourage- in the British Isles was to precede this. We landed at ment. No one could have been kinder or more sympathetic. Queenstown and, having kissed the Blarney Stone, set out My ambition at the beginning of my senior year had been for the Lakes of Killarney, the loveliness of which led me awakened, too, by the course in medixval history given by fondly to memorize 'Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,' and Professor Henry Adams. His method of introducing us to other melodies of Thomas Moore. After a mere glimpse of the German Emperors and the Popes, to Barbarossa and Dublin we crossed to Scotland, where I soon learned from Hildebrand, prompted me for the first time to try to do the shopkeepers' signs that the Grants were nearly as well continuously in a college elective. Instead of saunter- numerous as the Smiths and Browns at home, with a pre- ing through the course, I studied hard and got an 82, which dilection for Patrick scarcely less than for Robert or Alex- disappointed me a little, for there were several who did ander. But my memories of my brief stay at Edinburgh better. then were completely eclipsed by the entrancement of the My poem was well received on Class Day, June, 1873. Trossachs, the closer beauty of whose lochs and isles en- I was told by one of the Faculty that Professor Child had raptured me even more than Irish scenery. Knowing by praised it highly. I had chosen for the serious portions the heart from my school days much of The Lady of the Lake stanza of nine lines, the first eight containing ten syllables, and other poems of Sir Walter Scott, I travelled under the and the last being an Alexandrine. There were lighter pas- spell of a constant delight, and relished even oatcake with sages in a livelier metre. In my Occasional Verses (1926) avidity, as if I were a son of the Highlands instead of three are included scattered extracts, ten stanzas from the per- generations removed. Yet there was something in my blood formance, the final one of which is typical: which kept me loyal to FitzJames rather than Rhoderick And now today the voyage of Youth is over, Dhu, for I could still thrill to the relief in the couplets which Forever our gay pilgrimage is done; my brother Harry and I used to spout at each other: No longer may we feast in fields of clover; They tug, they strain! down, down they go, The goal is reached, and lo! life's rising sun, The Gael above, FitzJames below. Breaking in splendor from dark clouds of dun, Gilds with his rays the pinnacles and towers But hate and fury ill supplied Of that sought city by our labors won The stream of life's exhausted tide, That world, vague vision of our sweetest hours, Brilliant with gorgeous hopes and redolent of flowers. Down came the blow! but in the heath The erring blade found bloodless sheath. At graduation I weighed only 118 pounds. I was slight The struggling foe may now unclasp and anxemic. On the wings of my father's generous desire The fainting chief's releasing grasp; that I should spend a year in Europe, I crossed the ocean, Unwounded from the dreadful close, however, immediately after Commencement, in company But breathless all, FitzJames arose. with a classmate and fellow member of the Club, The transition to Long's Hotel in London was SO be- Harry (or Albert Harris as he appears in the Quinquennial wildering that poesy was driven from my head, though my Catalogue) Thompson. I had in mind to settle down in fondness for both the inside and outside of books was al- Paris and learn to speak French, which I could already read, ready too dominant to keep me out of the bookstores. But but not with the ease which my long acquaintance with it the impressions which I at twenty-one got of the metropolis at school and college should have resulted in. But a holiday were those of its hansom cabs, restaurants, theatres, and 98 FOURSCORE TEN YEARS AT HARVARD 99 social pageantry rather than of its arts or even ancient the room overhead has upset his bath.' Imperturbable as monuments. I saw the conventional sights, of course, this sounded, it marked the beginning of the end. from Hyde Park corner to the Tower. Fascinated by the In 1873, as I have mentioned, the hotel, though of the Thames and its bridges I found my way on a penny steamer ancient order, was still in its prime. My recollections, how- to a whitebait dinner at Greenwich. Whitebait with brown ever, of London at twenty-one are SO much less vivid than bread and butter was at the height of its popularity, to- those when I was twenty-nine, that more light will be gether with mustaches and whiskers, silk hats on all occa- thrown on my development by combining them in a later sions, but worn with cutaways of diverse tweeds as well as chapter. Though very receptive to all that went on around with frock coats. I was but a day or two in London before me, I was verdant as well as young. I could not but feel out I was as well rigged out as anyone. How it was that we of place in a hotel whose patrons were highly seasoned men happened to fix on Long's Hotel I can't remember. On New of the world, none of whom I knew and any one of whom Bond Street and facing Clifford Street, it was still in its might have wondered what I was doing there. The details of heyday as a sporting fashionable resort. Its dining- and what I did do have faded, partly because I was physically even its writing-room opposite were small yet cosy. Its out of sorts and kept no diary. Inevitably, however, my rather fusty set of chambers overhead had a comfortable inquiring mind was intrigued by the panorama of a period atmosphere of their own. How well I remember William when the lot of the English upper classes still passed for the the head waiter, a pattern of deportment and deferential most enviable upon earth. Though but a roped-off specta- omniscience, the genius of the establishment. Until he tor of its pomp, I followed the open course of its pleasures served it, I had never tasted a cocktail which wore a circle by sampling the theatres, restaurants, horse-races and of frost around the rim. Under his eye I made acquaintance coaching trips, without neglecting altogether during our with sole cooked to perfection in the English manner. short stay Westminster Abbey and the galleries. This was It is easy to distinguish between the Long's of my first a time, too, when Piccadilly and its neighborhood swarmed visit and that of 1881, eight years later, when I stayed there with women, and though shyness or prudence (if not princi- again with my friend Charles Head. By then the prestige ple) might deter a youth from yielding to their solicitations, of the hotel had begun to wane. William was omniscient curiosity was sure to lead him (as it did me) to the Argyle and unchanged, but though the service was still excellent, rooms still in full lustre, to view - but merely to view there were evidences, notably wide cracks in the ceiling of the demi-monde on dress parade. the writing-room, which indicated the need of repairs. I With aristocracy itself I came in touch, too, through the happened to be idling in the writing-room one forenoon, kindness of Lady William Vernon Harcourt, the sister of and not far from me, ensconced in an easy-chair, sat a guest our historian, J. Lothrop Motley. My parents had written of the hotel dressed to the nines like myself, but with his to her that I was coming, and I have always remembered silk hat on his head. Of a sudden the ceiling opened and a the graciousness with which she greeted the callow youth considerable stream of water fell with a splash on the crown who called upon her. Having lunched at her house in of the hat and thoroughly soused him. His anger caused a Clifford Street, I was bidden to an evening reception to commotion, and William, brought to task, proceeded to meet the Prince and Princess of Wales. Though this privi- explain, with an air which, though deeply apologetic, im- lege impressed itself upon me, I felt no nervousness as to plied that a sheer accident, like an act of God, was not to be how to behave, and when the evening arrived sat down after guarded against: 'I'm very sorry, sir, but the gentleman in dressing myself to a game of piquet with a fellow American, 100 FOURSCORE TEN YEARS AT HARVARD IOI Hollis Thayer, in my chamber at Long's. The hotel was rein, but that eye was never closed. If it should happen that but a stone's throw at right angles from Sir William Vernon an eligible boarder from overseas should lose his head over Harcourt's house, and as the contest grew close I thought, Polly or Minna's charms, a la bonheur; but there were to while I glanced at my watch, 'If I arrive by eleven, I shall be no halfway adventures unless under hand and seal. be in the nick of time.' I was punctual to a dot, but though I was agreeably charmed, but never captivated. Nor was the rooms were still full, I was chagrined to hear from my I to be regarded as eligible except on the general theory hostess that the Prince and Princess had just gone. Here that every American who could afford instruction was to be was a lesson in the habits of royalty. I was introduced regarded as rich. I could enjoy Mademoiselle Polly's dalli- instead to Sir Charles Dilke, then at the zenith of good ance, and yet feel myself entirely safe. I was sure to learn reputation. to speak French if I remained long enough, and incidentally From London I crossed the Channel alone, and, stupid acquire a speaking acquaintance with the theatres, galleries, though it sounds, my first impressions of Paris, as of Lon- restaurants, and even the Latin Quarter. Alas! these ex- don, are blurred with respect to details. Whether this was pectations were dashed, and with them my dearly cherished from sheer bewilderment or lack of vitality, I am uncertain. purpose to speak languages was blocked forever. After a It had been prearranged before I left home that I was to be few weeks I awoke one morning very much out of sorts. quartered with a Parisian family for the study of French. Overtaxed by a succession of experiences, strange cookery Some talk of Tours had been renounced because this family and red wine instead of Cochituate water, my digestion in was SO well recommended by men a few years older than I spite of its youth refused to function. Because of violent who had profited by the experience. palpitations, I ascribed the trouble to my heart, an opinion Besides Madame Hoffe there were two daughters, Polly which the French physician to whom I was recommended and Minna. Each of the girls gave me her tintype before gravely confirmed. Luckily I had the sense to call on Dr. we parted, which I preserved for many years. Yet I think George H. Lyman, a family friend who happened to be in I should have remembered their features without these. Paris. Yes, it was the heart, but a functional disturbance, I was to learn French by conversation with all three, with due to being run down. For the reason that I could not the aid of a teacher from outside two or three times a week. hope to get better of it without rest and suitable diet, he There was at least one other linguistic boarder besides my- advised my going home. My condition indeed was SO far self. It was a happy family that sat down together at miserable that I realized I was homesick. So I burned my déjeuner and dinner. Mother and daughters were very gay bridges, and having tactlessly alarmed my parents by a and companionable. Polly was the prettier of the two girls, cable that my heart was affected, took the next steamer for with a round peach-bloom cheek, an aquiline nose, and a my native land. smart bow on top of her hair. Minna was less vivacious, and appeared in the tintype with an arm around her pug dog who was posed on a table. Perhaps because I had just finished Balzac's Le Père Goriot, I imagined a second cousin resemblance in their mother to Madame Vauquer. Madame Hoffe had a curved nose too, and, what I suspected in spite of her bonhomie, a predatory eye to the main chance where her daughters were concerned. She allowed them a loose Cost Timilie by JACK HALL OR THE SCHOOL DAYS OF AN AMERICAN BOY BY ROBERT GRANT AUTHOR OF "FACE TO FACE," " THE CONFESSIONS OF A FRIVOLOUS GIRL," ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY F. G. ATTWOOD BOSTON JORDAN, MARSH AND COMPANY 1888 28 JACK HALL. ter of an hour before Dubsy was able to lift his head from the roof and be helped down the ladder. Meanwhile, Jack and Bill sat on either side of him and tried to cheer him up. Bill, who was able to CHAPTER II. speak from experience, assured them that the sick- THE SNOW-BALL FIGHT. ness would soon subside, and that he had been much more miserable after his first smoke. But to tell As soon as Dubsy Perkins felt all right again, the truth, Jack and Bill also, despite his former ex- Jack and he left Bill French's and went home to periences, felt rather squeamish themselves and not their dinners. Jack lived alone with his mother much inclined to talk. Besides, the remembrance he was her only child. Her husband had been of what he supposed to be his dried blood haunted killed in the Civil War ten years before, and Jack Jack's mind. Altogether, it was, on the whole, a was all she had in the world to care for and be bad quarter of an hour, as the French say. proud of except the memory of Jack's father's gal- lant services as a soldier, which she was never tired of talking about to Jack. His name had been John Hall, just as Jack's was, and he had fallen at the head of the regiment of which he was Colonel, in one of the last battles of the war, when Jack was a mere baby. Back of Colonel John Hall was a long line of Halls, running very nearly into Mayflower times, a good many of them John Halls or, as those who knew them best called them, Jack Halls, though John is a good name for any boy or man to be con- 30 JACK HALL. THE SNOW-BALL FIGHT. 31 tent with and not to wish to change. They were a lives of Jack's ancestors in detail, but you may be hardy, thorough-going set, these Halls, Massachu- interested to learn something of the career of Israel setts folk who in Colonial times, when the days Hall's eldest son, - also named John, - who, hav- were gone by for shooting Indians, tilled their farms ing to make his own way in the world, left the and made sure that their liberties were not inter- family farm and came to Salem town in search of fered with by King James or King William or something to do. Now, at that time Salem was a King George. When this was impossible without famous commercial port, little as one would im- taking arms, they were equal to the occasion. Is- agine it to-day. Forty years later its prestige was rael Hall, Jack's great-great-grandfather, was one usurped and overshadowed by its near neighbor, of the raw recruits composing the Continental Army Boston, but from 1770 until 1820 the maritime su- over which General Washington assumed command premacy of Salem was unquestioned. Prior to the under the famous old elm at Cambridge. He fol- Revolution, the inhabitants of the town had been lowed his commander through thick and thin, be- noted for their commercial energy, and when war came a sergeant, then a captain, was wounded, but was declared they fitted out their trading vessels got well in time to be one of those who made the with guns, and built others to the number of over memorable passage of the Delaware when our army, one hundred, which made great havoc among the reduced to a forlorn band of four thousand, fell enemy's commerce in the English Channel and the upon the Hessians at Trenton, routed them, and Bay of Biscay, so that the rates of insurance went plucked up spirit and hope once more. He was up amazingly among the British underwriters. shot dead, however, at the battle of Brandywine, The patriotism and enterprise of the old Salem and, as will be the case with many brave fellows merchants is a glowing chapter in the history of SO long as wars last, left a wife and some wee bits our country. of children to get along as best they could. But as soon as there was no more fighting to be It would take too long to give an account of the done, the merchants turned their fleet of privateers 32 JACK HALL. THE SNOW-BALL FIGHT. 33 into trading-vessels again, and as the vessels were It was into the counting-house of one of these too large for mere coasters, sent them out laden merchants that Jack's great-grandfather, John with Spanish dollars to every nook and corner of Hall, chanced to stray one morning in search of the Oriental world, - to Calcutta and Madagascar, employment. Probably the head of the firm liked and Batavia and Java, and the Celibes, and all the the looks of the boy and divined that he would chain of islands in the Indian Archipelago which make a sterling sailor; at all events he took him you have read about in your geographies. There into his service and sent him on a long voyage in the silver freight was exchanged for pepper, spices, one of his ships, which turned out very success- gums, coffee, or other Eastern products, with which fully for the merchant, and for John Hall too, in- the captains would either return or would bear asmuch as everybody had a pleasant word to say away to some European port, like Marseilles, where in his behalf. From this time forward his life was part of the cargo was sold at a profit, and its place one of marvelous experiences for many years to supplied by wines and silk to be brought home. come. One thing leads to another when a young It was an adventurous, exciting life for those who man is efficient. Before he was nineteen John sailed; and meanwhile the owners sat in their Hall was a mate, and on his twenty-first birthday counting-houses casting up figures and waiting for he found himself in command of a three hundred their vessels to arrive. It was often two and even ton ship, which was a large one for those days. If three years that they had to wait, but the ships it were his career I was narrating, it would be easy came back at last, freighted with merchandise, to keep you awake many hours with thrilling tales which their owners sold to their fellow townspeo- of what happened to him. He fought with pirates, ple at a snug profit. Or, if by chance the ships and had hair-breadth adventures with savage tribes, were lost and never returned, the underwriters re- was twice shipwrecked, and barely escaped being imbursed the merchants SO that they were able to eaten by cannibals, only to be imprisoned in a buy new ones. South American dungeon instead. But in the end 34 JACK HALL. THE SNOW-BALL FIGHT. 35 he passed safely through his perils, and settled our breaths, the standards of morality by which down in Salem for the rest of his days with sev- they did business were not the highest. How enty-five thousand dollars in hard cash, which was could it be otherwise? The population of the strip quite as much as a million is now. of seaboard States which then composed our coun- Very possibly some of you may be thinking that try had to begin existence as a nation bankrupt, you would like to have lived when a career similar and chiefly dependent for its wants on the products to that of Jack's great-grandfather was a natural of other lands. Our great-grandfathers were down one for an ambitious boy to follow. But though to hard pan, as the saying is, and life meant for the glamour of such adventures as his does make them a struggle for the means of existence unre- the blood even of those of us who are grown up lieved by any but the most homely pleasures and tingle as we read, it will not do to shut our eyes to tastes. There were no mills and factories then to the truth. We see only the glory and forget the compete with the manufactories of Europe, no hardships. We forget, too, - and their many vir- great west with its fields of waving grain and de- tues make us forget, - that resolute, noble fellows veloped mines of gold and coal and iron, no cotton as were the men whose enterprise and pluck built gin, no splendid libraries and broad institutions of up fortunes for themselves while supplying their learning, no railroads, no telegraph. All these country, starved and draggled by the Revolution, were yet to come, and it is to such men as John with the necessities and even the luxuries of life, Hall that we are indebted for having laid the foun- these old merchant captains and their crews were dations of that prosperity which affords to their de- rough, ignorant people compared with what some scendants opportunities for usefulness and culture of your fathers are to-day. They had but little such as our forefathers never dreamed of. Let us knowledge except of a practical kind acquired by admire their courage, grit, and perseverance let us bitter experience their one absorbing interest was applaud their successes and recognize the sterling the accumulation of money, and, let us say it under virtues by which they won them, but their lot 36 JACK HALL. THE SNOW-BALL FIGHT. 37 should no more arouse our envy than should that esting was in prospect outdoors, to scurry through of those later pioneers in the struggle of reclaiming his meals and leave the table with his mouth full our west from the forest and the savage, inspired the instant the last course had been served. Some- by whose adventures as scouts and trappers SO times he would bolt from his chair as soon as he many boys have run away from home and been had finished his meat, crying, - merely by way of very sorry afterwards. explanation for his hasty departure, - as he seized We left Jack going home to his dinner, for which his cap and just prior to slamming the front door, he did not feel very hungry at first. But a fine " Don't want any pudding." On such occasions piece of beefsteak with potatoes and macaroni, fol- his mother did not always have the heart to detain lowed by cold rice pudding with bits of cinnamon him. in it, of which Jack was especially fond, brought But this day he dined alone and there was no his appetite back again, SO that when he had fin- one to put a check on his movements, for Mrs. ished his second plate of pudding, cleaning the Hall had been called away out of town to see an plate with his spoon until it shone, the thought old friend who was sick, and would not be back occurred to him that he would have a third help until after Jack's bed hour. Deeply as he loved but the well-known Ehu - ehu - ehu' resound- his mother and fond as he was of having her with ing from the street told him that the fellows were him, Jack felt a certain pride in being his own beginning to collect again, and he started up. master for once. As an indemnity for being left Jack dined in the middle of the day, and his alone for the day, he had obtained permission to mother had her dinner at night; but Mrs. Hall order whatever he liked for tea, and to have whom- made a point of taking her lunch at the same hour ever he chose among the boys to share it with him. as Jack dined, and after he had finished eating she He had already exercised the second privilege by always tried to beguile him into sitting still for a inviting Dubsy Perkins, Bill French, and Harry while, for he had a tendency, when anything inter- Dale, another of his friends, and it was now neces- 48 JACK HALL. THE SNOW-BALL FIGHT. 49 their adversaries advanced, Jack having first, with the instinct of destroying anything that the enemy might find pleasure in, swept away with his shovel the remaining rampart of the dam. They were outnumbered for the moment in the proportion of four to one, and though to retire was ignominious, it seemed necessary under the circumstances. The vanguard of the invading army now began to dis- charge their snow-balls, the shower of which fell slightly short, but served to whet their ardor. invaders perceived that they were recognized, they set up a derisive, triumphant yell, and dashed on- ward at a rapid dog-trot, preparing snow-balls and waving sticks. " There's a regular posse," cried Jack. " Who '11 go and tell the other fellows ?" "I will," cried Harry Dale, and suiting the action to the word he started off to warn their friends, who were running tiddledies. Meanwhile, Jack and the four other boys, who were all there were, for Bill French had slipped away to change his clothes, retreated slowly as 52 JACK HALL. THE SNOW-BALL FIGHT. 53 emerged. There they made a stand, while their "Put on their wigs, pursuers, who were not too flushed with success to And over to Boston came," be cautious, being still numerically inferior, drew only to be routed and driven back without them. up at a respectful distance and held a council of Jack delighted in the accounts of these old con- war. tests, and though the names were now changed he These snow-ball fights were of tolerably frequent had no difficulty in seeing in the Anderson-Streeters occurrence between the boys who lived in Jack's and their allies, foes no less terrible than the boys neighborhood and hordes from other localities, who with whom his forefathers had fought. were apt to be styled muckers by those whose ter- But it is time to return to the immediate scene ritory they invaded. Once or twice every winter of action, where both sides were beginning to real- skirmishes such as the one now in progress would ize that there had as yet been no real fighting to develop into battles of some magnitude, enlisting speak of, merely a feeling of one another's strength. the services, on one side or the other, of all the Scouts had, apparently, been sent out by the muck- youth in that part of the city. Contests of this ers to scour the country, for recruits were coming kind had traditions to encourage them. Mr. War- in by twos and threes. They were a motley-look- ren, of whom you will hear later, who had been ing crew, as compared with Jack and his friends, the college chum and dear friend of Jack's father including some ragged specimens and several and was now his mother's adviser, had often told negroes, one of whom, a left-handed lad nick- Jack of how, in the days long before he and Colo- named Custard" on account of the lightness of nel Hall were boys, there had been relentless strife his sable, was unerring in his shots. Cardigans, between the Round-pointers and the Nigger-hillers, for the most part, took the place of overcoats and the North-enders and the South enders, and among them, but some wore only tightly buttoned the Charlestown pigs, SO called, which last named, jackets, and kept warm by kicking their toes against in the language of a local bard, - the curb-stones, and alternately stuffing their hands 54 JACK HALL. THE SNOW-BALL FIGHT. 55 into their pockets or blowing on their bare fin- last, who, with General Warren's instruction at gers. Bunker Hill, of which he had recently read, fresh From time to time they jeered at and insulted in mind, has waited to see the whites of the the other army, who, by their pea jackets and rub- enemy's eyes before giving the order. ber boots, suggested the solidity and dignity of "That's the sort !" shouts Dubsy, as the whole grenadiers, an impression which was heightened by volley delivered at short range goes smashing into the silent disdain with which they received the vi- the faces of their foes. tuperation showered upon them. It is so deadly a volley that two or three of the But now the Anderson-Streeters, having accumu- muckers clap their hands to their eyes and cry out lated a goodly supply of ammunition, and being with pain; others sputter as they receive the big twice the numbers of their opponents, show signs hard balls full against their teeth. Several caps of an intention to attack. Their pickets edge up are knocked off and fall into the snow. Jack, with gradually on the sidewalk, more or less sheltered his attention riveted on Joe Herring, sees, to his by the trunks of the line of trees which grow delight, his first shot take the leader squarely in there. Snow-balls begin to fly, and Joe Herring at the forehead, SO that Joe shakes his head savagely one point and Custard at another move forward si- like an angry bull; yet, putting it down, comes multaneously, which is the signal for a general ad- on in butting fashion all the same, and hitting vance. The grenadiers stand firm without firing a Jack plump in the stomach nearly sends him over. shot. A perfect hail-storm is showered upon them, Custard, too, apparently is not struck, or at least, which they bear unflinchingly. A loud yell spreads if he is, does not mind it, and though some falter along the advancing line, and the flower of all An- he does not, but with another yell rushes at the derson and Pinckney and Revere streets comes grenadiers. These muckers, though checked for dashing on. an instant, have good stuff in them. "Now let them have it, fellows !" cries Jack at Give it to them again !" cries Jack, who seems to be recognized as the commanding officer. 90 JACK HALL. A DAY OF RECKONING. 91 soaking wet, stiff with mud, or full of rents, bore him to some school away from home. The grow- silent but eloquent testimony to the recklessness of ing city seemed no place for a high-spirited boy, his conduct. She felt that she did not, of course, for whatever he did was pretty sure to be mischief mind the mere rough usage, though it entailed per- or against the law. Time was when the Common petually washing and mending that was to be had been an ample play-ground, but the crews of expected, perhaps, of an active boy but his con- children which crowded it now, to the annoyance stant return home in a draggled condition made and even peril of adult persons, had induced the her anxious as to the character of his amusements. municipal authorities to consider whether the popu- He was perpetually in the company of Bill French, lation had not become SO large as to make it im- whose family, though rich, were new-comers in that perative to forbid ball-playing and other healthy part of the city, and to whose society she would sports to go on there. One strong argument in have liked to see him less devoted. This incident favor of the proposed restriction was that the play- of rattan-smoking was another piece of testimony ground was usurped by youths of seventeen and to confirm her opinion that Bill was an undesirable upwards, large and powerful as men, who kept crony for Jack. Dubsy Perkins and Harry Dale away the smaller boys. For a time the vacant lots seemed to her less objectionable, especially Harry, on the outskirts of the city had become favorite who was a quieter and more thoughtful-looking resorts, but these were rapidly being occupied by boy than most of the others who made a play- houses. Only the streets were left, and boys who ground of Mr. Briggs' corner. As for Dubsy, he tried to play there were involved in an incessant imitated Jack in everything, applauding all he did, warfare with the police. To keep Jack indoors and trying his best to keep up with or even sur- was impossible, and she reasoned that if the natu- pass him in whatever was proposed. ral outlets for youthful energy were obstructed, Little by little, it had come over Mrs. Hall of others of an unwholesome kind would be found by late that the best thing for Jack would be to send him. Nothing disturbed her more than the thought JACK HALL. A DAY OF RECKONING. 92 93 of Jack becoming old before his time, one of the scholars who lived in adjoining towns - outside of knowing little gentlemen of fifteen, who sauntered the class-room, unless any boy became conspicu- about the streets in standing collars and kid gloves ously disreputable. She had discussed the matter with an eye to the girls. She wished to see Jack somewhat with her adviser, Mr. Warren, who remain an unsophisticated manly boy as long as agreed with her that Jack would be better off away possible, and she feared that another year of city from the bricks and mortar, and who promised to life might bring about a change in him far more make inquiries as to where it was advisable to send to be deplored than any amount of mischievous- him. He had further made her understand that the question had only latterly been forced upon the ness. But the thought of parting with him was un- attention of parents by the growth of our cities. bearable. He was her idol and the delight of her Hitherto there had been, and there was still in the existence. At present he was under her eye, at smaller places, facilities for children to play natu- least for a part of the time, and could not go very rally and yet to go to school at home. Our system far wrong without her perceiving it. Would it be of free education, which dated from noble John possible to find a school in the country where, in Winthrop's time, had properly been our boast, and addition to the advantages of a natural boyish de- we had, accordingly, always rather regarded it as velopment, Jack would find also the watchful care superior to the English system of large public of a home? There were, she knew, academies - schools away from the cities, without perceiving some of them large ones - to which certain of her that it might not always suffice for our needs. friends had sent their boys, but she had derived the Home training was, doubtless, the key to many impression that at them excellence in instruction virtues, but there was unquestionably a more pre- was the chief consideration, and that the masters ponderating danger to be feared, to the growth of were not expected to concern themselves with the the muscles, and to the action of the liver, lungs, morals of the pupils - many of whom were day- and heart, and, most important of all, to the charac- 94 JACK HALL. A DAY OF RECKONING. ter itself, in the cramped, unwholesome life which were obliged to take advantage of it in order no a boy is in danger of leading who goes to school in be regarded as aristocrats. As well say that a n a large city. was no lover of republicanism because he lived There was another point of which Mrs. Hall had a more expensive house than his neighbor. thought in this connection. She knew that her husband had been very anxious that his son should grow up an American, without false notions of equality, and with pride and faith in his country. It had been his intention to send Jack to the pub- lic schools so that he might mix early with all sorts of boys. And yet she could remember hearing him remark shortly before he went to the war, that it might well be a question how far, to insure this, one would be justified in subjecting a child to the companionship of rough or vicious boys. Since then she had discussed the matter with Mr. War- ren from this point of view. She was far from wealthy, but she could afford to pay a reasonable sum for Jack's tuition. Would sending him to a school to which the mass of boys were not well enough off to go tend to foster in him undemo- cratic notions ? As her adviser explained to her, it would be folly to assume that because free educa- tion was open to all for the sake of the poor, all 8/12/2021 104 Marlborough I Back Bay Houses Back Bay Houses Genealogies of Back Bay Houses 104 Marlborough 104 Marlbor ough is loc- ated on the mean south side of Marlbor- ough, between Clar endon and Dartmouth, with 270 Lot 19' x 112 (2,128 9 sf) Clarendon to the east and 106 Marlborough to the west. 104 Marlborough was built ca. 1866 as the home of hardware merchant Albert Fleetford Sise and his wife, Edith (Ware) Sise. They previ- 104 Marlborough (2015) ously had lived at 26 Chauncy. Albert and Edith Sise assembled the land for 104 Marlborough in several transactions. On November 8, 1865, he bought the lot at the southwest corner of Clarendon and Marlborough, with a 30 foot frontage on Marlborough, from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The next day, he entered into an agreement with William Thomas, owner of the 50 foot wide lot to the west, specifying that, for the next twenty years, no https://backbayhouses.org/104-marlborough/#RGrant 1/8 8/12/2021 104 Marlborough I Back Bay Houses building of more than eight feet in height could be built in the rear areas of either of their lots (encompassing what would become 270 Clarendon and 104-106-108 Marlbor- ough). On the day after that, Edith Sise purchased a 10 foot wide lot from William Thomas, adjoining Albert Sise's lot to the east, and on November 21, 1865, Albert Sise transferred the western 9 feet of his lot to his wife. The Sises then built 104 Marlbor- ough on that 19 foot wide lot. Albert Sise retained the eastern 21 feet of his lot as va- cant land until August of 1873, when he sold it to Dr. James Read Chadwick, who built his home at 270 Clarendon. Click here for an index to the deeds for 104 Marlborough, and click here for further in- formation about the land between the south side of Marlborough and Alley 424, from Clarendon to Dartmouth. The Sises continued to live at 104 Marlborough in 1871, but had moved to Medford by 1872. On March 20, 1873, 104 Marlborough was acquired from Edith Sise by Horace John Hayden. He and his wife, Harriet (Putnam) Hayden, made it their home. He was general freight agent for the Boston and Albany Rail Road. They had married in October of 1872 and probably had lived briefly thereafter in Kansas City, Missouri, where he had been general freight and ticket agent for the Missouri River, Fort Scott, and Gulf Railroad. Horace Hayden's brother, Dr. David Hyslop Hayden, a physician, lived with them at 104 Marlborough and probably maintained his medical office there. He previously had lived and maintained his medical offices at 60 Chambers. David Hayden married in September of 1876 to Elizabeth Cabot Blake. Soon there- after, they moved to 285 Clarendon, which had been Elizabeth Blake's family home (her mother, Ann Hull (Blake) Blake, had died in 1873 and her father, George Baty Blake, had died in 1875). https://backbayhouses.org/104-marlborough/#RGrant 2/8 8/12/2021 104 Marlborough I Back Bay Houses Horace and Harriet Hayden continued to live at 104 Marlborough in 1880 but moved soon thereafter, probably to New York City (he joined the New York Central Rail Road in 1880). He continued to own 104 Marlborough and lease it to others. By the 1880-1881 winter season, 104 Marlborough was the home of carpet dealer Ar- thur B. Lovejoy and his wife, Grace (Cheever) Lovejoy. They previously had lived in Salem. They continued to live at 104 Marlborough during the 1882-1883 season, but moved thereafter to Sharon. By the 1883-1884 winter season, 104 Marlborough became the home of Robert Grant and his wife, Amy Gordon (Galt) Grant. They also maintained a home in Nahant. Robert Grant was a lawyer and would later become a probate court judge, He also was a well known and prolific author of novels. Robert and Amy Grant had married in July of 1883. Prior to their marriage, he had lived with his father, Patrick Grant, at 14 Commonwealth. His father's commission merchant business failed in 1883. He sold his house at 14 Commonwealth and moved to 104 Marlborough with his son and daughter-in-law. In his autobiography, Fourscore, Robert Grant indicates that he and his wife purchased 104 Marlborough. However, it was first rented by the Grants from Horace Hayden, and then purchased from him on June 25, 1886, by Patrick Grant, as trustee under the will of his daughter, Anna Mason (Grant) Lyman, the wife of Charles Frederick Lyman. Robert Grant describes 104 Marlborough as "a snug little house, which looked as if it would accommodate comfortably fewer than it did." He notes, "My father, the one chiefly to be considered, had a large room to himself on the second floor; we sheltered four maids and employed a chore man. Our range of expenses for the first four years was from $6500 to $7500, without life insurance, and we paid our bills invariably by the tenth of every month." He also notes that his father shared the expenses. Note: A family friend if the Dorrs, he probated the will of Charles Hozen Dorr. https://backbayhouses.org/104-marlborough/#RGrar 3/8 8/12/2021 104 Marlborough I Back Bay Houses Patrick Grant died in October of 1895. Robert and Amy Grant continued to live at 104 Marl- borough until 1898, when they moved to a new home they had built at 211 Bay State Road. The house continued to be owned by the trustees under Anna Mason (Grant) Lyman's will 104 Marlborough was not listed in the 1899 and 1900 Blue Books. By the 1900-1901 winter season, it was the home of Francis Bacon Sears and his wife Mary Elizabeth (Sparhawk) Sears. They had lived in an apartment at 220 Marlborough in 104-106 Marlborough (2015) 1899. They also maintained a home on the Old Boston Road in Weston until 1906, when it was destroyed by fire. Francis Bacon Sears was a banker and also served as treasurer of several cotton mills in Georgia and South Carolina. The Searses continued to live at 104 Marlborough during the 1905-1906 season, but moved thereafter to 284 Marlborough. On April 30, 1906, 104 Marlborough was purchased from Francis C. Welch, successor trustee under Anna Mason (Grant) Lyman's will, by Dr. James Jackson Putnam, a neuro- logist. He and his wife, Marion (Cabot) Putnam, lived next door at 106 Marlborough. 104 Marlborough was not listed in the 1907 Blue Book. 104 Marlborough became the home of Dr. Putnam's sister, Elizabeth Cabot Putnam, who previously had lived at 63 Marlborough with her other brother, Dr. Charles Picker- ing Putnam. It also was the home and medical office, first of Dr. H. M. Swift (in 1907) https://backbayhouses.org/104-marlborough/#RGran 4/8 8/12/2021 104 Marlborough I Back Bay Houses and then Dr. Walter E. Paul (from 1909 through 1923). Several shorter-term lodgers also lived at 104 Marlborough with Miss Putnam and Dr. Paul. James Putnam died in November of 1918. After his death, 104 and 106 Marlborough were transferred to a trust established in his will, with Marion Putnam's brother, Fred- erick P. Cabot. and brother-in-law, Arthur Lyman (husband of Susan Channing Cabot) as trustees. Marion Putnam continued to live at 106 Marlborough. Elizabeth Cabot Putnam continued to live at 104 Marlborough until her death in Octo- ber of 1922. Dr. Paul continued to live there in 1923, along with Miss Hamlen, but both moved thereafter. On June 11, 1923, 104 Marlborough was pur- chased by attorney Charles Henry Fiske, Jr. He and his wife, Mary Duncan (Thorndike) Fiske, made it their home. They previously had lived in an apartment at The Colonial at 382 Common- wealth. The Fiskes lived at 104 Marlborough during the 1923-1924 winter season. Their daughter, Cor- nelia Robbins Fiske, lived with them until her marriage in April of 1924 to Thomas Wentworth Storrow, a stockbroker; after their marriage, they lived in Readville in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston. 104 Marlborough (ca. 1942), photo- graph by Bainbridge Bunting, courtesy By the 1924-1925 winter season, the Fiskes were of the Boston Athenaeum living in Weston and 104 Marlborough was the home of the Misses Katherine Lyman Thomas, Alice Lee Whitridge Thomas, Rosamond Whitridge Thomas, and Elizabeth (Betty) Thomas. They were the daughters of architect Douglas Hamilton Thomas and his wife, Bessie Lyman (Chadwick) Thomas. They previously had lived at 288 Beacon. They con- https://backbayhouses.org/104-marlborough/#RGrant 5/8