Chapter VIII: The “medic” (2)

“Oh, my!--well, you surely wouldn’t have me put that mite in the pail--and it won’t stay on the wrist _now_.”

He knew, and I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew that he knew, that I did it purposely--his question, the prominence of the tiny bone with its slender attachment, put it in my head--“Opportunity makes the thief.” So he let me have the pisiform, but shook his head as though he thought me incorrigible; and after that rallied me on what ruse I would resort to with my next “part,” as I could hardly take the head, or any of the vertebræ. I have these bones somewhere now. They gave me a lot of bother to get clean, and of what earthly use are they? Yet perhaps as much as many of the things we scheme and work for. It is the endeavour that counts, and it was fun to outwit the Demonstrator. So we managed to get some amusement out of the dry bones, but were glad when the long weeks were at an end and we could go out in the sunshine after lectures instead of working in that unsightly upper room.

One of the memorable experiences of that first year was an afternoon spent with Laura Bridgman. Helen Keller’s achievements have since familiarized us with what wonders can be done in teaching one who is deaf, dumb, and blind, but when Dr. Samuel G. Howe attempted to teach the child, Laura, it was pioneer work, and the difficulties were well-nigh insuperable.

Miss Wilkins and I were invited to meet Miss Bridgman by Mrs. Lamson, who, under Dr. Howe, had been one of the first to teach Laura to communicate with others by means of the sign language. Mrs. Lamson told us of those early struggles, how overjoyed child and teachers were the day they succeeded in making her understand that certain signs made upon her open hand represented the door-key which they had put in her hand. When the import of this one thing, for which they had toiled long, dawned upon the shut-in soul, she was a freed being; she went about eagerly touching other objects, teasing in her mute way to be shown their “sign,” too. Slow, infinitely wearisome were those first steps in her education, but after a certain point, progress was astonishingly rapid. She had not the distraction other learners have; her thirst for knowledge was intense; her memory phenomenal--a thing once learned became a part of her; she wore out all her teachers with her insatiable desire to learn.

Among other things Dr. Howe earnestly wished to test whether the human mind, without suggestions from outside, would, in its development, evolve the idea of a Supreme Being. Here was an unprecedented opportunity to test it, for, shut in as she was, Laura had no means of learning anything except through her teachers. It would be a valuable contribution to psychology to learn for a surety whether, unaided, her mind would conceive the idea of a Deity. So for years they planned and laboured with this experiment continually in view. Assistants were rigorously instructed to exclude any hints or teachings which would suggest worship or religion--anything which could in the remotest way give her a glimmering of such ideas. Laura was showing wonderful progress in development. Dr. Howe’s efforts seemed on the way to success in this important test, when one of his teachers was called away at a time when he himself was in Europe. The substitute, though carefully enjoined to observe the precautions so jealously practised, actuated by untimely zeal, and believing it to be her duty to thwart Dr. Howe in his experiment, deliberately enlightened Laura about the main orthodox teachings: she told her she had a soul to save from eternal damnation; that a just God stood ready to pardon her manifold sins, and so on. Laboriously she poured into Laura’s listening fingers the intricate orthodox instruction concerning which she had hitherto been kept in blissful ignorance.

One can imagine the difficulties encountered in expounding to this deaf, dumb, blind, and bewildered girl (whose only religious training had been daily examples of loving-kindness), the puzzling doctrines that then passed for religious teaching. But in that, as in all else, Laura was an apt pupil, and on Dr. Howe’s return from Europe he found the careful forethought and labour of years destroyed by that fanatical teacher. He was nearly frantic with rage and disappointment. I myself can never think of that bigoted interference without my own breath coming fast in anger.

When we saw her, Miss Bridgman was a tall, spare woman, perhaps not more than fifty, though she seemed much older to me than fifty seems now. Pale (she wore blue spectacles over the blind eyes); her dark brown hair was parted over a refined face which had a non-fleshly look, very mobile, very sensitive--a quivering, changing face with the soul very near the surface; her lips were thin and very red. Her long white hands were marvellous in their rapidity, receptivity, and expressiveness.

Mrs. Lamson talked to her by swift touches on the palm, Laura’s lightning fingers replying on her friend’s hand--a marvellous sight, those two silently communicating, by touch alone, all the complicated things which the instructor interpreted to us.

The one word which this mute woman could articulate was “doctor.” In youth she had accidentally uttered the syllables and on being told what it sounded like, had eagerly practised until she could articulate the word. Though intelligible, it was distressing to hear it, and I was glad when she resumed talk on her silent uncanny fingers.

“I don’t think it is nice for women to be doctors,” she said, on learning that we were medical students. When her friend told her she ought not to say this, she inquired, “Why not, if I think so?” They had never been able to convince her that politeness sometimes constrains us to conceal our thoughts. She even added, “Tell them I do not think that women can be as skilful as men.” But she soon asked us to prescribe for her eyes, explaining that the lids were sometimes sore. It struck us as novel to be asked to prescribe for Laura Bridgman’s _eyes_. Her friend told her we were only students, and had not yet learned to prescribe, but added, “_I_ can tell you something that will relieve them--if you will get some of the iron-water from a blacksmith and bathe them, it will help the soreness.”

“What is a blacksmith?” asked Laura--“Is it one who colours things black?”

There she had been all her life learning far more complicated things than this, yet this familiar occupation was unknown to her! It was a pleasure to see her teacher impart to her this information; to see the eager, childlike delight as the knowledge became her own. We saw why this aged face gave the impression of perennial youth; why we thought her then, and still think of her, as a child; she had the freshness and curiosity of a child; every contact with her fellow-beings opened new vistas to her mind; every explanation begat other inquiries; she was tireless in her endeavours to learn. Human strength was not equal to the avidity she continually showed.

As we were leaving she said, “Please ask them if I may touch their faces, then I shall know them _when I see them again_.”

Those white fingers twinkled over every part of my face--“the moving finger” read, and seemed to read with uncanny skill. I was uneasy, except that it was done so delicately, done eagerly, yet lingeringly. It was as though she were probing my soul to find what manner of being I was. She felt my hair, my shoulders, my hands. I cannot recall now whether she made any comments. Then she did the same with Miss Wilkins, whose ready blush mounted while restively submitting to those searching fingers.

Laura paused and began talking to Mrs. Lamson. The latter laughed, shook her head, replied on Laura’s fingers, seemingly arguing a point.

“What does she say?” insisted Miss Wilkins.

“She says that you are old and, when I told her no, she insisted. I told her you were not old, but were older than your friend, and then she cornered me by saying, ‘Ask her the year she was born.’ She always was obstinate under evasion.”

Miss Wilkins blushed deeper than ever, but enjoyed Laura’s ready wit, though forbearing to satisfy her curiosity as to the tell-tale year.

Though we attended strictly to business, it was not all work in those days; yet we had little time or money for amusement. But in Boston there is much to see and learn at little cost. The churches themselves are an education, and I was an inveterate church-goer, hearing Phillips Brooks the oftenest of any, but Minot Savage frequently, occasionally little old Cyrus Bartol (whom someone called “the moth-eaten angel”), Edward Everett Hale, James Freeman Clarke, Phillip Moxom, George Gordon, and others.

When we had been only about two weeks in Boston a Harvard “medic,” introduced by a Michigan cousin, called upon me. He was a bright, dignified young man. The acquaintance proved pleasant and stimulating throughout the college course. It seemed good to have a caller in the strange city, and one who knew cousin Etta, and we were soon on the best of terms. Suddenly I thought of Belle upstairs alone, and went for her, and we three had a lively time, “Westerners” that we were, comparing the Eastern ways with ours. We giggled and chatted and made sport of the queer things we had encountered; mimicked the New England pronunciation, and told him about “Our Caddie”; while, in turn, he told us bits of his experience, of various places of interest, and how to get to them. Belle was especially vivacious and entertaining that day. But, after a little, she and he struck several points of variance, and differences that began in a jest soon became heated arguments. They were both Baptists, but he was liberal and she strait-laced; and while at first it was fun to watch them spar, I grew uneasy as I saw Belle’s right ear reddening--her danger signal. When she had asked him which Baptist church he attended, instead of designating it decorously, he had solemnly replied, “The church of the Holy Bean-Blowers,” referring to the four figures on its steeple with long gilt trumpets held up to their mouths. When Belle remonstrated, he declared with mock gravity that they were assuredly blowing beans all over Boston, and everybody would have them to-morrow morning for breakfast.

On leaving, Mr. Sergeant said that Canon Farrar was to preach the next day at Trinity and that if he might he would like to call and accompany me there. Had I been to Trinity yet? and heard Phillips Brooks? There would probably be a big crowd, so, if I pleased, he would call early, that we might be near the doors when they opened.

No, I--we--had not been to Trinity yet, I said, but that I--_we_--(with an inquiring glance at Belle) would be pleased to go. (I had not the slightest idea who Canon Farrar was, but did not ask.) Naming an early hour, and not including Belle, though I had, he took his leave. Belle was furious, declared she would not go, but did go when the hour came the next day.

There was a big crowd waiting by the closed doors of Trinity. Belle, being tall, was left to shift for herself in the crowd. I remember how pleasant it was--an utterly new sensation--to be piloted and shielded and gently pushed along in that well-bred crowd by my new acquaintance. Towering above me he smiled down indulgently as we were jostled this way and that. Soon I was swept off my feet and packed so closely that the crowd bore me along, Mr. Sargeant near by assuring me that there was no danger; that this was only the eagerness of the Bostonians to attend church. Presently the big doors opened; the surging mass of people carried me forward; in the vestibule I found my footing, and we were soon seated in the great, dark, holy Trinity.

We heard the English divine whose “Life of Christ” I have since read. His voice was not big enough to fill the church. I could not understand him, and was not at all impressed, but for other reasons the day was memorable. I was strangely moved by the church itself. When I go back to Boston now, one of the things I care most to do is to go down the little side street by which I approached, and come suddenly upon Trinity as I saw it that first day. The vine on its gray walls, the doves around its tower, the very stones in its huge pile, have an inexplicable charm for me; and within--it calmed and satisfied me; it seemed a worship in itself, that dim interior whose details gradually became discernible to my unsophisticated eyes. I question if any old-world cathedral could now have so profound an effect upon me as Trinity had on that girl fresh from village life, who had seen only the humble little churches of the home-town, or occasionally a more pretentious but commonplace church in a small city. Those glorious stained-glass windows! And the organ! Church and music stirred me, if the English divine did not.

(A few years ago, one summer day, I went into Trinity and sat long in the obscurity--the solitude, the silence, and the enveloping peace were inexpressibly soothing. I seemed again to feel the uplift that had always come on hearing Phillips Brooks. I thought of all that had happened to me since, as a girl, I used to hear him pour out his rapid, inspired utterances. How directly they always came to me! Tossed with doubt as I was, I never heard him without receiving help. For years he had been an uplifting influence in my life, and although I had never spoken to him, his death (when I was practising in U----) was a real loss to me--something precious then went out of my life.)

As we came out from Trinity that day, our new acquaintance proposed going into the Art Museum. Acquiescing promptly, I was annoyed to find that Belle was scandalized--“The Art Museum on _Sunday_! No, indeed!” And she and Mr. Sargeant began sparring, he getting very sarcastic and she very angry; but we ended by going in for a short stay, though the mental atmosphere was not propitious.

It was always a welcome break in my evenings of study when the gong would signal our room and “Theresa” the bell-girl, would announce through the tube, “Miss Arnold has a gentleman caller.” It was almost never any one but Mr. Sargeant. Down to the big reception room I would rush, eager to meet him, and not having artifice enough to conceal it, or not caring to. Other girls, receiving callers in the same room, would keep them waiting; and when they did come would enter with indifference and dignity, so unlike my prompt response to the signal. But we were both “Westerners” and understood frankness, while most of the young people there were from New England. Sometimes there would be several young men ranged around the room waiting. As each girl would appear, she would stand poised in the door-way till she discovered her caller, then, making directly for him, would be more or less oblivious to the others throughout the evening. We learned on entering the room to nod to the other “steady” callers, but there was seldom further interchange among us. As it neared ten o’clock, the young men would sit with watches in hand, talking up to the last minute, when “Theresa” would sound the gong; they would then start with a rush for the door, and we would hurry to our rooms with a pleased sense of almost having transgressed the rules; for there was but little time after that signal before lights had to be out throughout the building.

We had had a funny initiation, after the first two or three weeks in Boston, when we had moved from the Association building on Warrenton Street to the one on Berkeley Street. It was then that we came especially under the chaperonage of Miss Wilkins. That first night, at the table assigned us, we found some bright girls whom we recognized as students of some sort, as they evidently did us, but students of what, all were unaware. One fascinating girl, in a light, bantering manner, informed us of the rules and regulations of the place. We liked her vivacity, her gestures, her imitative powers. On learning that we had just come from the other building, she raised her eyes in reminiscent horror--she too, had been there. In a serio-comic way she expatiated on the disadvantages, with an exaggeration and dramatic power that won the whole table; she declared the lights had to be out at eight-thirty; that the tea-cups were hewn out of the solid rock; (they were the thickest cups I ever saw); and that no man’s voice had ever been heard in the sacred precincts. She then asked us how we had liked there, for in Boston they never say “How do you like _it_?” We told her we liked _it_ well enough, but it was too far from our work, and too noisy to study much--that there had been several elocutionists who had ranted and howled so much that we found studying almost impossible. Her amusement at this egged Belle on; she grew vivacious in elaborating and rehearsing our tribulations on this score, becoming elated as they laughed gaily at her recital. And when we said that if by any chance the elocutionists gave us any peace, the musicians drummed and vocalized until the last state was worse than the first, fresh gales of laughter arose. Significant glances passed among our new acquaintances; and then the vivacious one solemnly warned us that she feared our trials had but begun; for here, she said, in addition to elocutionists and musicians who infested the place, there were night prowlers--medical students whose midnight calls disturbed the whole house. If we heard the door-bell ring vigorously at unseemly hours we must not think it meant fire or other catastrophe--it would only be the summons of the “medics” to their nocturnal sprees. All this was mingled with frank and rather disparaging comments about women medical students; and by unfeigned rejoicing when someone volunteered that a bunch of the “medics” had left yesterday; and that the staid spinster whom they pointed out to us at another table (our own Miss Wilkins) was the only one of the obnoxious ilk remaining. Belle and I exchanged glances but held our peace. But on stepping into the elevator, our table-mates with us, Miss Wilkins came also, with the matron, and there introduced us to that sober lady as her class-mates who had come over to-day from the other building, so as to be with her, and nearer the College. Our new acquaintances, astonished at this disclosure, and a bit discomfited, soon rallied; the vivacious one declared that we were now even, since she and her room-mate were elocutionist and musician respectively, and that the others at our table belonged mostly to one or the other of those reprehensible classes.

A delightful friendship grew out of all this; especially with the two girls from Maine. Agnes, the vivacious one, was studying elocution; Anna, the staid, music--the one all life and vigour; the other quiet, sombre, phlegmatic. The sprightly Agnes would amuse us by stirring up her chum--poking her in the ribs, she would say, “Anna, Anna, animation!” and Anna would laugh and blush and rouse herself to please her whimsical friend. They went with us on Saturday afternoons on our sight-seeing expeditions, and to lectures, concerts, and church; and in the evening, for the half-hour after supper, we usually allowed ourselves a chat in their room, or in ours, before buckling down to study. They were curious about our work, as were we about theirs. It was fun to hear Agnes, who attended the Brown School of Oratory, exalt it at the expense of the Emerson school; and to see her toss her head, and watch her nostrils dilate, when she argued with the Emerson girls. Sometimes we went to their recitals. Anna used to play for me by the hour, when I had time to listen, shyly pleased that her music pleased me; she was too susceptible to anything I said or did, and would have formed one of those extravagant friendships of which we were seeing so many in Boston, had I been so minded.

Our life at the Y. W. C. A. building had much in common with boarding-school life--though less restricted in many ways--a community of women, its walls seldom echoed to a man’s step or voice, except in the evening when callers came. It sounded good to hear the deep tones of “Dan,” the janitor, when he brought trunks to the rooms, or was otherwise called up from the basement. Even the elevator-boy was a girl.

As our medical books accumulated, we had need of book-shelves, but to buy a book-case, even the cheapest, was not to be thought of. There were so many expenses to be met, so many fees at College for the different courses, books to get, bones to rent, chemicals and breakages to pay for, board and laundry bills and the like, that we cut down on all else as rigorously as possible. I remember how my heart would sink at some new item of expense coming up at the College, and how I dreaded to write home about it, knowing well what a sacrifice it meant there. But to occasional expressed misgivings of mine, that I had undertaken anything requiring such an outlay, Father would always write reassuringly: “We shall manage somehow; don’t worry. One of these days you will be where you can earn money, and then we shall be glad you undertook it.” How often these cheery messages came to me during those years!

One evening we sallied forth to a shoe store and bought a long, narrow pine box for ten or fifteen cents. “Where will you have it sent?” the man asked.

“We will take it ourselves,” we replied, much to the man’s amazement and amusement. And Belle and I merrily carried the long box two or three blocks to our boarding-place. People turned and looked at us; street urchins guyed us, asking if it was our coffin; but to their jibes we answered good-humouredly--it was sport for us as well as for them. Standing the thing up on end, and making shelves of the lid, we covered it with blue paper-cambric, and when our medical books were in it, we were as proud as any girls in Boston; and it cost us about thirty cents!

We had the diversion of gymnasium practice one evening a week, after which we would come down to our room for quizzes, sitting around in our “gym” suits, which rather embarrassed Miss Wilkins, and correspondingly tickled us. Miss Thorndike did it, too, so she couldn’t very well criticize it openly.

Some evenings, sitting in our rooms studying, we would hear the street cry, “Swee-et cidah, five cents a glahss!” We feared it would be frowned upon by the staid matron if we succumbed to this enticing call, but as the cries came nearer our mouths watered. One night, deciding to risk it, seizing the hot-water pitcher and some change, down the stairs I stole, and sliding out the side door, lurked in the shadow of the building till the man and his cart came close to the curb, when, guiltily making the purchase, I stole upstairs. Safe in the room, we had our spree, becoming as exhilarated as though it had been champagne. Such simple pleasures--how they come back as I recall those student days!

One evening Belle and I closed our transom tight and lit a cigar which one of the men students had given me at college, daring me to smoke it. (And for a girl to smoke in those days was--well, most unusual.) How it smarted the lips! I didn’t like it a bit, but smoked it to the bitter end. And then we were scared, fearing the odour would penetrate the hall. Quickly airing the room, we sat down with our books and our bones; and none too soon; for down the hall came the matron, sniffing and declaring she smelled cigar smoke. We heard her high-pitched voice, heard her tapping on the doors and making the inquiry; but when she came to ours we were bending over our big books, one with a skull in her hand, the other with a long bone which was receiving close scrutiny as, in answer to her knock, we said “Come,” and looked up with feigned annoyance at the interruption. Startled at what she saw, she made a hasty retreat, or would surely have noticed that the smell of smoke was stronger there than elsewhere.

Another escapade promised to be more serious: One Sunday afternoon while reading in our room a light flashed in our window; it came again and again. We soon discovered, in a building about two blocks away, a young man with a hand-mirror and another with opera glasses. We dodged back whenever they tried to use the glasses, but as the flash kept coming, we drew our shades for an instant, piled our skull and cross-bones on the window-sill, then lifted the shade. Such antics as they went through! They were certainly taken aback. Feeling that we had checked them, we resumed our reading. Soon again came the flash and, looking out, to our amazement we saw on their window-sill also a skull and cross-bones! They were doubtless Harvard “medics.” But just as we were elated over the discovery and the curious coincidence, we heard the matron and housekeeper’s voice as they came down the hall on an investigation tour.

“It must be in one of these rooms, right along here, either on this floor or on the next,” we heard the matron say, and her fussy little tap was heard on door after door. When she came to ours no bones were in sight; one girl sat quietly writing a letter, the other was apparently taking a nap. A low “Come” from the one writing, and a hand held up in warning as the head peeped in, lest the sleeping room-mate be disturbed, satisfied the guileless matron that we were innocent. Explaining that some young ladies on that floor, or the floor above, had evidently been answering signals of some young men across the way, and that she was anxious to find out who it was, and put a stop to it, else it would bring disrepute upon our building, she left us, apologizing for the interruption. Thus ended the flirtation between the Boston University skull and the skull from Harvard!

The first real sorrow of my life came to me that year: One forenoon, as we all piled out from the lecture room and rushed to the mail-rack for our home letters, a tall blond youth who was usually on hand to lift down my microscope and sharpen my dissecting knives handed me the home letter which was always too high on the rack for me to reach--the letter which never failed to come on Tuesday noon. Running with it to the cloak room, eager for the home news, I read:

Grandpa is very ill. The Doctor says he cannot get well. “Tell
Eugenie I shall never see her again,” he said last night. Perhaps
you can write him a letter we can read to him. You better not try
to come home. It is too far, would cost so much, and would break
into your studies so.

How the sunshine vanished as my thoughts flew to that little bedroom where he lay--my dear, touchy, indulgent grandfather! I did not go to the lecture that afternoon, but stayed in the library and wrote him a farewell letter. I should like to see that letter now. I wonder what I wrote; I know nothing more genuine and tender ever went from one soul to another. Besides a loving farewell, which his approaching death made possible for me to express, reticent as I was by nature and training, it contained, I know, a passionate assurance that it would be well with him where he was going. I knew that Mother was praying and thinking, “Oh, if he were only prepared to go!” Something of this might be in his own heart, too. I thought of his ungodly life, of his profanity; but against these I weighed his uprightness and his big loving heart, and _I knew_ that these would count--count with _what_ I was no wise sure; but I knew that it was right thus to try to ease the terrors of his last hours, if such were troubling him. It was the passionate protest of my struggling mind, becoming tinctured with Unitarianism and Universalism, against the suffering that I knew was Mother’s (if, indeed, it was not Grandpa’s also), with her Methodist way of looking at things. Somehow, I could see my grandfather, sturdy to the last, scorning weakly to repent, even to escape the terrors of the Unknown into which he must soon go.

He never saw that letter. Whether he became unconscious before it reached there; or whether Mother in her zeal felt that it might prevent his last chance of repentance; or whether, because of its passionate, perhaps hysterical, character, it was deemed by my parents better withheld, I never knew. I was unwilling to inquire when, months later, I reached home. Mother said it seemed best only to tell him of my good-bye. Perhaps it was; but I wonder if he didn’t know without seeing it--I felt very near him that hour in the library framing my farewell, and learning for the first time what it means when Death comes to our own.

After some months, Belle and I took a larger room at the Y. W. C. A., and a girl in the class ahead of us joined us--a quiet, amiable girl who acted as a kind of buffer between us, after which we got on much more comfortably.

One evening she took me with her to a confinement case on which she and a senior student were engaged. It was my first experience in dispensary quarters, and the sordid surroundings, the mean tenements, the poverty and misery were a revelation to me. Everything was untidy and unclean. I could not bear even to sit on the chairs. The night was long; the groans of the woman were painful to hear. Being only a junior, with no knowledge of obstetrics, I had little intelligent interest in the case. I gathered from the low conferences of the students, after their frequent examinations, that all was not progressing satisfactorily; and some time after midnight they told me they would need to call in the professor in obstetrics, since it promised to be a case for instrumental interference. Undergraduates were not allowed to assume charge of such cases unaided.

The senior student and I went for the professor. I had never been on the street at so late an hour, and felt a pleasurable excitement in the adventure. I dreaded most those mean streets through which we had to go before reaching the more respectable quarters. We had gone only a short way when our progress was arrested by a night-prowler, though no more formidable one than a goat. On nearing Boylston Street we met a few men and saw an occasional policeman. Everyone we passed showed more or less curiosity, and one policeman halted near us, but said nothing, Miss Farnsworth’s obstetric bag perhaps indicating to him and others that we were out on some legitimate errand.

Presently my heart almost stopped: A man stepping alongside Miss Farnsworth had caught step and was walking by her side without a word. Glancing up at her in apprehension, I saw her face was pale and stern, but she looked straight ahead, apparently oblivious of his presence. Soon I felt her crowding me, and saw he was pushing close to her side; but she neither slackened her pace nor betrayed awareness of him. My heart was going like a trip-hammer, but somehow I felt secure, she seemed so unmoved. Soon the man ceased crowding, lifted his hat, and in a deferential tone said, “I beg your pardon, ladies,” and walked on. We walked on, too, not speaking till he had disappeared from sight; then the imperturbable young woman, with trembling voice, told me she had heard that that was the best way to treat such an encounter, but that it was the first time she had had to test the advice.

Professor S---- went back with us and delivered the child.

I heard Lowell lecture two or three times that first year--conversational talks and readings from the early English dramatists. I liked his scholarly face and voice, and felt the charm of his manner, but recall almost nothing of his talks. In reading he pronounced ocean “o-ce-an.”

One day in walking down Tremont Street, as we halted at Miss Thorndike’s boarding-house, we saw a stout, middle-aged woman in the window, who nodded pleasantly to Miss Thorndike: “That is the poet, Lucy Larcom,” she whispered, to our awed surprise.

We used to go to King’s Chapel just to see Dr. Holmes, who always sat in the same place in the gallery--the little old man, looking somewhat sleepy and very remote, but very fitting in that quaint old meeting-house. I first read his books in Boston, and it was such a delight in walking across the Common to realize that it was amid these very scenes that he had written the “Autocrat” and the “Professor.”

It was a notable day when we went to Cambridge and visited Harvard University, the Old Craigie House, the Washington Elm, and Mount Auburn. Then there were the trips to Charlestown and Bunker Hill, and the Navy Yard--these soon after our arrival there--it all seemed like stepping out of real life into a novel. What a glamour there was over everything! I remember my awed feeling on gaining admission to Longfellow’s home, when, standing in the darkened study, we saw his table, his books and papers, they said, just as he had left them. I had then scarcely emerged from the spell of his poems, and, as we looked on the River Charles that afternoon, and thought of the poet standing in the very places where we stood; then, on returning to Boston across the long bridge, saw the lights reflected in the dark waters, and the stream of people hurrying to and fro, it all seemed a beautiful, sacred experience, linked as it was, with the Sunday afternoons at home, when I used to sing Father to sleep with “The Bridge” and “The Day Is Done.” “The Bridge” may have meant London Bridge, but to me it will ever be that long bridge spanning the Charles, over which we returned to Boston after our pilgrimage to the poet’s home.

Mary A. Livermore’s lecture on Harriet Martineau was an event of that _annus mirabilis_; I sent reports of it home to our village paper, having previously written up several of our noteworthy excursions in and around Boston. This had begun by Brother letting the editor of the paper read one of my home letters, which he subsequently published, my first intimation of it being its discovery in the paper.

I heard Joseph Cook lecture on the Indians, and heard Will Carlton read some of his own poems, and tried to be impressed with each, but was not. But I heard Beecher and was impressed without trying. He lectured on the Conscience; he said some persons’ consciences were like livery horses--they kept them all saddled and bridled and ready to let, but never used them themselves.

My first play in Boston was Booth in “Hamlet,” and I was a bit disappointed, having expected to be swept off my feet; instead, I found myself coolly watching it all, interested, but calmly, almost critically so, if a girl at her first real play _can be_ critically interested. But when I saw J. Wilson Barrett in “The Poet Chatterton” I _was_ moved, and forgot everything but the woes of that ill-fated youth whose suffering and tragic death Barrett made so real. My throat ached and the tears fell fast as the frenzied poet on his knees before an old chest frantically destroyed his rejected manuscripts. I wonder if the same thing would not seem melodramatic now.

Toward the close of our first year several of the students were invited to Cambridge to visit the Agassiz Museum, and take supper with one of our class-mates. It was the first time I had been in a home in all that year, and I shall never forget the feeling that came over me after those months spent in a large institution with its huge dining room, and a hundred or more girls at table: to sit down in a real home once more, and see a real mother pouring tea; to hear “Anna” called by her given name, and see all the intimate home life, was a precious experience. Until then I had not realized how homesick I had been. I wondered if they knew how beautiful it all was--they seemed so calm about it, so unconcerned, while in spite of all I could do my tears were crowding fast. No one but Belle had called me by my given name since I had left home, eight long months before; that “Anna” in the mother’s voice made me hungry to hear my own name. I recall how odd it sounded to hear them speak of “Mr.” Longfellow, and “Mr. Agassiz,” as they recounted every-day things about them. From their talk one would think they came and went around Cambridge like ordinary persons! It seemed as if this casual manner of speaking of these great men must be assumed.

Among the revelations of that first year were the vehement women friendships we saw in Boston. Of course I had known of extravagant girl friendships, schoolgirls, but these were women, and they acted like lovers. There was something unpleasant in it to me, even before I learned, as I did in later years, that such companionships sometimes degenerate into perverted associations. Not that this was the case in any of the women I knew, but I had no liking for the peculiar, absorbing feminine intimacies I saw at the College, at the Association, and wherever I had near views of the lives of New England women. Even “Our Caddie” had a beautiful senior student who adored her--a tall, dark dignified maiden. They were said to be inseparable outside of college precincts; a strange contrast, this pair! There were several “pairs” in the senior class, and among the “middlers,” and even with the juniors they sprang up like mushrooms. They gazed at each other soulfully; they lived and thought in unison, communicating by glances rather than by the crudity of the spoken word. I felt inclined to ridicule them, yet there were some who were restrained in conduct, and who seemed so unmistakably congenial that their attention for each other, singular as it was to me, commanded respect. Still I was wont to say that if ever I did fall in love, it would be with a man.

It seemed to surprise the students of both sexes when it dawned upon them that Belle and I were not that kind of friends. Miss Thorndike, our Buffalo friend, attracted the prim Miss Wilkins in this same way. It amused Belle and me to see Miss Wilkins actually blush at little attentions from Miss Thorndike; but Belle herself soon succumbed to the strange attraction: One night after a quiz held at Miss Thorndike’s room, Belle having lingered behind a little, on joining me, grasped my hand and fervently whispered, “Genie! Miss Thorndike kissed me good night!” I could feel only pitying amusement at such extravagance. Miss Thorndike evidently enjoyed such triumphs; she tried to get me under her spell. The more I saw of her, I saw that certain girls and women were always falling a victim to her. Years later a sickly, neurotic girl became so absorbed in her as to become almost estranged from her family; she lived merely to bask in the Doctor’s presence--distinctly an unhealthy relation. My own instincts from the first led me to avoid such associations. In the years that followed, coming upon such attachments, I clearly saw how it hampered women in their work, the “vinewoman” acting like a parasite to the more rugged, energetic personality; the latter having a multiplicity of interests, while the clinging vine would be wretched at any interests in which she did not have the lion’s share; in fact, was always chary of sharing her inamorata with others to any degree.

There was a lackadaisical girl in our class, several years older than I, who had been thus inclined toward me. I did not understand it at first. She followed me about, trying to absorb my time and attention, eager to do all sorts of little services for me; but I quickly put a stop to it, though having to seem unkind in doing it. And there was a married woman in our class who attempted a like attachment. One night when several of us were discussing this topic, I must have spoken of myself as bullet proof, as I ridiculed such folly. Suddenly this student seized and kissed me, not once or twice, but several times, fiercely, almost brutally. Surprised and indignant, I was actually weak and unresisting for a moment, the others looking and laughing while this aggressive creature triumphed and sparkled as she said, “There! that is the way I would make you love me!” There were but two ways to treat her assault--as a jest, or an indignity--I chose the former, and shunned her throughout the rest of the course. I had disliked her glittering black eyes and her personality anyhow, and this incident only strengthened my instinctive repugnance.

Still another student, one of the juniors when I was “middler,” showed a romantic inclination toward me: I had befriended her in little ways because she seemed forlorn, and because I remembered every little kindness shown me during the first year. She was of the pronounced masculine type and seemed to glory in it, was careless in dress; unprepossessing, and with a heavy voice. She was docile as a lamb with me, and I succeeded in getting her to abandon some of her mannish ways, and to be more mindful of her appearance. She would have been my willing slave; but her devotion was irksome and I nipped it in the bud; I neither wanted to adore, nor to be adored. Even at their best, these inordinate attachments seem like outlets into a false channel--the natural one being impeded. They affect me much as does a woman’s silly devotion to a pet dog when, failing to find its natural outlet, her maternal love degenerates, descending to the dog-kennel, instead of blessing the nursery.

The religious qualms and questions of my school days were still actively disturbing during that first college year, and I did not cease trying to get on comfortable footing concerning them, though knowing it could never be on the old footing. Miss Wilkins, a good orthodox Congregationalist, listening sympathetically to my doubts and difficulties, attempted to help me, finally urging me to let the doubts go and just pray. I tried hard to follow her advice. On my knees alone I prayed earnestly, but could get no awareness of a listening Father; still I prayed, but soon, to my shame and sorrow (and, yes, to my amusement, too), my mind having wandered, I found myself repeating the branches of the axillary artery which I had been studying that evening! I arose with a helpless feeling, convinced that it was useless to try further. The next day when I told Miss Wilkins, grieved, but a bit amused, too, she shook her head--at a loss whether to scold or to pet me.

As soon as our first-year “exams” were over I was wild to get home. Shall I ever look forward to anything with the eagerness I looked to that first home-going? Belle, who had gone at the Christmas holidays, was less eager. I had set the date of arrival a day later than I intended reaching there, just to surprise them. When, on nearing Utica we saw the fertile Mohawk valley, in such contrast to the stony, more picturesque scenery of New England, we grew wild with delight. This was the home country; we were no longer on alien soil. And when the drumlins came in sight, we jumped from side to side of the car, hungrily regarding them. The conductor and the few passengers smiled indulgently; they knew we were going home! That final twenty-five-mile stretch was interminable, and when, at the last stop but one, three miles from our station, we saw our own drumlins, and the familiar houses and trees, my heart leaped for joy. My eyes were blinded with happy tears when the train pulled in.

There was the very platform on which I had stood in the darkness months ago and torn myself from my sister’s embrace! There was the dear old rattly “stage” and the familiar driver to take us to the village! How good everyone about the station looked! I felt like hugging everybody. Our trunks were put on; the horses started; the bells jingled; the windows rattled in the old coach as we jolted along all too slowly over the mile that lay between me and Home!

It was a beautiful summer evening. I glanced hungrily from the windows at every familiar sight--it all seemed so real, yet so incredible--here were the old scenes just as I had known them, unchanged, when so much had been happening to me! “Unchanged?” But there was a change, a glamour over everything, a light that never had been, and never could be again--the light in which one sees a dear, familiar scene on returning to it after his first absence! When we got to the “corner”--the top of the hill that leads down to our house--I climbed out and ran ahead to surprise them before they should hear the stage-bells. I can see myself now, flying down the hill in the June twilight, and running up the steps into Mother’s arms, almost before she knew who it was. Home again, among the four beings I loved best in all the world! If one wants to know how much he loves home and family, let him go away in his youth to a distant city for long months, then let him come back to that shelter and learn to the full the blessedness, the sacred joy of all that is comprised in that word “Home”!

How late we talked that night! Neighbours and friends flocked in to see the wanderer; how good they all looked! but how odd their voices sounded--every _r_ in their words stood out with such distinctness, after hearing the broad _a_’s and the softened _r_’s of the New England pronunciation. I spoke of the peculiarities of the New England speech; how funny it had seemed to hear the College professors speak of idea_r_s; how the chemistry professor talked of soda_r_ ash, and, unless she was very careful, the Maine elocutionist called her room-mate “Anna_r_”; of how affected it seemed to omit their _r_’s in words where they should be, and insert them where they did not belong. I said I had noticed a decided difference in Belle’s speech, although she had ridiculed it as much as I did when we went there. While I was speaking of this, a smile went round the family circle, finally they laughed outright.

“What are you all laughing at?” I asked, a bit nettled. They said they guessed Belle was not the only one who had taken on the Boston pronunciation.

“Do you mean me?” I asked incredulously.

“We certainly do.” They had been amused ever since I had arrived to note the change in my speech.

After we had been home a few days my mark in anatomy came. Belle and I had been so scared when we had gone into “Our Caddie’s” examination, that we had cared little about what marks we would get, if we could only squeeze through. On opening the envelope I thought there must be some mistake, for there was my name and number and my standing (in “Our Caddie’s” own handwriting)--“100 plus 1.” She had deigned to write on the card: “This means that you stood ninety-nine on your paper, and, with twenty perfect plus marks in quizzes, it makes your standing 100 plus 1. One other in the class stood the same.” Miss Thorndike was that other. It was always a puzzle to us both that she and I received this high rating from the exacting Dr. Matson, for others in the class were unquestionably better students than we were. My rejoicing, however, was keen--until I thought of what Belle would say; but she was off in the country, and I did not see her for some weeks; still there _was_ that fly in the ointment.

During that vacation I took the agency for a book called “Milestones,” and went about the village canvassing--distasteful work, but I cleared fifty dollars by the means. One day when storm-stayed in a poor little house on the east side of the town, an unforgettable experience came to me. I usually found my best customers in such houses, and rather enjoyed their rapt attention as I expatiated on the treasures in the book; for, discarding the printed tale which the publishers had advised agents to use, I adapted myself to each audience in turn, selecting for bait the pictures and articles that I thought they would best jump at. Sometimes, under their interested attention, I would wax eloquent. I always knew in advance when an order was forthcoming, but enjoyed quite as much getting my victim on the hook as securing the order. As I waited that day in the little house till the rain should cease, a big, strapping neighbour, rushing in out of the storm, puffing and red-faced, blurted out, “John Stevens’s girl’s dead--died at four o’clock.” Little did she or the others know! To them it was just a piece of village news, yet this girl was my dearest friend! I had known her death was near, but to learn of it in that squalid home, and from this loud-mouthed woman, seemed a desecration. I sat very still till the rain ceased, hearing their talk as in a dream.

Our old cat’s time had come to go that summer, and I decided that I might relieve it of its existence, at the same time that I could add to my knowledge of comparative anatomy, and give the children in our street some instruction as well. So, improvising a place in our back-yard under the Baldwin apple tree, I started out bravely to chloroform the cat. But its writhings were too much for me; and Sister and our neighbour, Walter, had to take that part off my hands; the rest I did without a qualm, instructing the big-eyed, eager children about the muscles and viscera, and enjoying the amusing questions they asked.