Chapter III: The Fever of Neopalia (3)

Into that great world of woe my little book stole forth, trembling. So far as I can remember having had any "object" at all in its creation, I wished to say something that would comfort some few--I did not think at all about comforting many, not daring to suppose that incredible privilege possible--of the women whose misery crowded the land. The smoke of their torment ascended, and the sky was blackened by it. I do not think I thought so much about the suffering of men--the fathers, the brothers, the sons--bereft; but the women--the helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted women; they whom war trampled down, without a choice or protest; the patient, limited, domestic women, who thought little, but loved much, and, loving, had lost all--to them I would have spoken.

For it came to seem to me, as I pondered these things in my own heart, that even the best and kindest forms of our prevailing beliefs had nothing to say to an afflicted woman that could help her much. Creeds and commentaries and sermons were made by men. What tenderest of men knows how to comfort his own daughter when her heart is broken? What can the doctrines do for the desolated by death? They were chains of rusty iron, eating into raw hearts. The prayer of the preacher were not much better; it sounded like the language of an unknown race to a despairing girl. Listen to the hymn. It falls like icicles on snow. Or, if it happen to be one of the old genuine outcries of the Church, sprung from real human anguish or hope, it maddens the listener, and she flees from it, too sore a thing to bear the touch of holy music.

At this time, be it said, I had no interest at all in any especial movement for the peculiar needs of women as a class. I was reared in circles which did not concern themselves with what we should probably have called agitators. I was taught the old ideas of womanhood, in the old way, and had not to any important extent begun to resent them.

Perhaps I am wrong here. Individually, I may have begun to recoil from them, but only in a purely selfish, personal way, beyond which I had evolved neither theory nor conscience; much less the smallest tendency towards sympathy with any public movement of the question.

In the course of two or three years spent in exceptional solitude, I had read a good deal in the direction of my ruling thoughts and feeling, and came to the writing of my little book, not ignorant of what had been written for and by the mourning. The results of this reading, of course, went into the book, and seemed to me, at the time, by far the most useful part of it.

How the book grew, who can say? More of nature than of purpose, surely. It moved like a tear or a sigh or a prayer. In a sense I scarcely knew that I wrote it. Yet it signified labor and time, crude and young as it looks to me now; and often as I have wondered, from my soul, why it has known the history that it has, I have at least a certain respect for it, myself, in that it did not represent shiftlessness or sloth, but steady and conscientious toil. There was not a page in it which had not been subjected to such study as the writer then knew how to offer to her manuscripts.

Every sentence had received the best attention which it was in the power of my inexperience and youth to give. I wrote and rewrote. The book was revised so many times that I could have said it by heart. The process of forming and writing "The Gates Ajar" lasted, I think, nearly two years.

I had no study or place to myself in those days; only the little room whose one window looked upon the garden cross, and which it was not expected would be warmed in winter.

The room contained no chimney, and, until I was sixteen, no fire for any purpose. At that time, it being supposed that some delicacy of the lungs had threatened serious results, my father, who always moved the sods beneath him and the skies above him to care for a sick child, had managed to insert a little stove into the room, to soften its chill when needed. But I did not have consumption, only life; and one was not expected to burn wood all day for private convenience in our furnace-heated house. Was there not the great dining-room where the children studied?

It was not so long since I, too, had learned my lessons off the dining-room table, or in the corner by the register, that it should occur to any member of the family that these opportunities for privacy could not answer my needs.

Equally, it did not occur to me to ask for any abnormal luxuries. I therefore made the best of my conditions, though I do remember sorely longing for quiet.

This, at that time, in that house, it was impossible for me to compass. There was a growing family of noisy boys--four of them--of whom I was the only sister, as I was the oldest child. When the baby did not cry (I have always maintained that the baby cried pretty steadily both day and night, but this is a point upon which their mother and I have affectionately agreed to differ), the boys were shouting about the grounds, chasing each other through the large house, up and down the cellar stairs, and through the wide halls, a whirlwind of vigor and fun. They were merry, healthy boys, and everything was done to keep them so. I sometimes doubt if there are any happier children growing anywhere than the boys and girls of Andover used to be. I was very fond of the boys, and cherished no objection to their privileges in the house. But when one went down, on a cold day, to the register, to write one's chapter on the nature of amusements in the life to come, and found the dining-room neatly laid out in the form of a church congregation, to which a certain proportion of brothers were enthusiastically performing the duties of an active pastor and parish, the environment was a definite check to inspiration.

I wonder if all Andover boys played at preaching? It certainly was the one sport in our house which never satiated.

Coming in one day, I remember, struggling with certain hopeless purposes of my own, for an afternoon's work, I found the dining-room chairs all nicely set in the order of pews; a table, ornamented with Bible and hymn-books, confronted them; behind it, on a cricket, towered the bigger brother, loudly holding forth. The little brother represented the audience--it was usually the little one who was forced to play this duller _rôle_--and, with open mouth, and with wriggling feet turned in on the rounds of the chair, absorbed as much exhortation as he could suffer.

"My text, brethren," said the little minister, "is, 'Suffer the little children to come unto me.'

"My subject is, _God; Joseph; and Moses in the bulrushes_!"

Discouraged by the alarming breadth of the little preacher's topic, I fled up-stairs again. There an inspiration did, indeed, strike me; for I remembered an old fur cape, or _pelisse_, of my mother's, out of fashion, but the warmer for that; and straightway I got me into it, and curled up, with my papers, on the chilly bed in the cold room, and went to work.

It seems to me that a good part of "The Gates Ajar" was written in that old fur cape. Often I stole up into the attic, or into some unfrequented closet, to escape the noise of the house, while at work. I remember, too, writing sometimes in the barn, on the haymow. The book extended over a wide domestic topography.

I hasten to say that no person was to blame for inconveniences of whose existence I had never complained. Doubtless something would have been done to relieve them had I asked for it; or if the idea that my work could ever be of any consequence had occurred to any of us. Why should it? The girl who is never "domestic" is trial enough at her best. She cannot cook; she will not sew. She washes dishes Mondays and Tuesdays under protest, while the nurse and parlor maid are called off from their natural avocations, and dusts the drawing-room with obedient resentment. She sits cutting out underclothes in the March vacations, when all the schools are closed, and when the heavy wagons from the distant farming region stick in the bottomless Andover mud in front of the professor's house. The big front door is opened, and the dismal, creaking sounds come in.

The kind and conscientious new mother, to whom I owe many other gentle lessons more valuable than this, teaches how necessary to a lady's education is a neat needle. The girl does not deny this elemental fact; but her eyes wander away to the cold sky above the Andover mud, with passionate entreaty. To this day I cannot hear the thick chu-chunk! of heavy wheels on March mud without a sudden mechanical echo of that wild, young outcry: "Must I cut out underclothes forever? Must I go on tucking the broken end of the thread into the nick in the spool? Is _this_ LIFE?"

I am more than conscious that I could not have been an easy girl to "bring up," and am sure that for whatever little difficulties beset the earlier time of my ventures as a writer, no person was in any fault. They were doubtless good for me, in their way. We all know that some of the greatest of brain-workers have selected the poorest and barest of spots in which to study. Luxury and bric-a-brac come to easy natures or in easy years. The energy that very early learns to conquer difficulty is always worth its price.

I used, later, to hear in Boston the story of the gentleman who once took a friend to see the room of his son at Harvard College. The friend was a man of plain life, but of rich mental achievement. He glanced at the Persian rugs and costly draperies of the boy's quarters in silence.

"Well," cried the fond father, "don't you think my son has a pretty room?"

"Sir," said the visitor, with gentle candor, "_you'll never raise a scholar on that carpet._"

Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful--the formation of fixed habits of work.

I have seldom waited for inspiration before setting about a task to be done. Life is too short for that. Broken health has too often interrupted a regimen of study which ought to have been more continuous; but, so far as I may venture to offer an opinion from personal experience, I should say that the writers who would be wise to play hide and seek with their own moods are few.

According to my custom, I said nothing (so far as I can remember) to any person about the book.

It cannot be said that I had any hope of success with it; or that, in my most irrational dreams, anything like the consequences of its publication ever occurred to my fancy. But I did distinctly understand that I had set forth upon a venture totally dissimilar to the safe and respectable careers of my dozen Sunday-school books.

I was asked only the other day why it was that, having such a rare critic at first hand as my father, I did not more often submit my manuscripts to his judgment. It would be difficult to say precisely why. The professor of rhetoric was a very busy man; and at that time the illness which condemned him to thirty years of invalid suffering was beginning to make itself manifest. I can remember more often throwing down my pen to fly out and beg the children to be quiet in the garden while the sleepless man struggled for a few moments' rest in the daytime; or stealing on tiptoe to his locked door, at any hour of the night, to listen for signs of sudden illness or need of help; these things come back more easily than the desire to burden him with what I wrote.

Yet perhaps that abnormal pride, whose existence I have admitted, had quite as much to do with this restraint.

When a thing was published, then quickly to him with it! His sympathy and interest were unfailing, and his criticism only too gentle; though it could be a sword of flame when he chose to smite.

Unknown to himself I had dedicated "The Gates Ajar" to him. In this dedication there was a slip in good English, or, at least, in such English as the professor wrote and spoke. I had used the word "nears" as a verb, instead of its proper synonym, "approaches." He read the dedication quietly, thanked me tenderly for it, and said nothing. It was left for me to find out my blunder for myself, as I did, in due time. He had not the heart to tell me of it then. Nor did he insinuate his consciousness that the dedication might seem to involve him--as it did in certain citadels of stupidity--in the views of the book.

The story was sent to its publishers, Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, and leisurely awaited their verdict. As I had written somewhat for their magazines, "The Atlantic" and "Our Young Folks," I did not come as quite a stranger. Still, the fate of the book hung upon a delicate scale. It was two years from the time the story went to its publishers before it appeared between covers. How much of this period the author was kept in suspense I cannot remember; but, I think, some time.

I have the impression that the disposal of the book, so far as that firm went, wavered for a while upon the decision of one man, whose wife shared the reading of the manuscript. "Take it," she said at last, decidedly; and the fiat went forth. The lady afterwards became a personal friend, and I hope I may not forfeit the treasure of her affection by this late and public recognition of the pleasant part she bore in the fortunes of my life.

The book was accepted, and still this piece of good luck did not make my head spin. I had lived among book-makers too much to expect the miracle. I went soberly back to my hack work, and on with my Sunday-school books.

One autumn day the customary package of gift copies of the new book made its way to Andover Hill; but: I opened it without elation, the experience being so far from my first of its kind. The usual note of thanks was returned to the publishers, and quiet fell again. Unconscious of either hope or fear, I kept on about my business, and the new book was the last thing on earth with which I concerned myself.

One morning, not many weeks after its publication, I received a letter from Mr. James T. Fields. He, who was the quickest of men to do a kindness, and surest to give to young writers the encouraging word for which they had not hope enough to listen, had hurried himself to break to me the news.

"Your book is moving grandly," so he wrote. "It has already reached a sale of four thousand copies. We take pleasure in sending you--" He enclosed a check for six hundred dollars, the largest sum on which I had ever set my startled eyes. It would not, by my contract, have been due me for six months or more to come.

The little act was like him, and like the courteous and generous house on whose list I have worked for thirty years.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR SHORT STORIES.

We find considerable difficulty in getting the two hundred first-class short stories that we require each year. We are delighted to be able to publish so many stories by eminent authors, but we should like to get more good stories from writers whose fame is yet to be made. We therefore announce a liberal policy in regard to payment, and invite contributions from every one who can write a good story. The scale of payment will be such as to please every contributor, whether he is famous or not.

We need every year about fifty stories of from four to six thousand words in length; about one hundred stories of from two to three thousand words in length, and not less than fifty stories a year for young people, about two thousand words in length. Of these stories thirty or forty are for McCLURE'S MAGAZINE, and the remainder are for the newspaper syndicates controlled by the publishers of this magazine.

A regular manuscript department has been established by the editors, and it is the intention to report upon every manuscript within a week after it is received. We also welcome contributions to every branch of literature represented in the magazine.

THE McCLURE'S "EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN."

This volume contains all the articles published in the first four Lincoln numbers of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE (November to February, inclusive). These numbers, although repeatedly reprinted, are now out of print, and the "Early Life of Lincoln" was published mainly to meet a demand we could not fill with the magazine. It contains a great deal more, both in text and pictures, than appeared in the magazine. It is mailed to any address for fifty cents; or for one dollar, if bound in cloth. We intend having our own plant, to reprint the March and subsequent numbers whenever necessary.

THE McCLURE'S NEW "LIFE OF GRANT."

We have been greatly surprised, in preparing our new "Life of Grant," to find so much new and valuable material, especially about Grant's earlier life. No more fascinating and dramatic story has ever been lived. We have been especially fortunate in securing the collaboration of Mr. Hamlin Garland to write this life of Grant. Mr. Garland was selected for this work for two reasons--first, he has always loved and admired Grant; second, he is familiar in general with the conditions of life in the middle West, and is especially qualified to tell the truth both in color and fact. The tastes and training of a realistic novelist are an admirable equipment for a biographer, provided the hero of his story and his environment appeal to the novelist.

_We propose to publish the best Life of Grant ever written._

We have collected a great quantity of pictures and other illustrations, and we ask our friends to help us as they are helping us in our "Life of Lincoln." Every one who has a contribution, either in picture or incident, to our knowledge of this great man ought to bring it before the two or three million readers that McCLURE'S will have when we begin to publish the "Life of Grant" next November.

NEW PICTURES OF LINCOLN.

Almost every week we add to our collection of Lincoln pictures. Many of these ambrotypes and photographs are of the greatest value in adding to our knowledge of Lincoln. We hope to reach one hundred before the end of the year. We had only fifty portraits last November. We have eighty now.

THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND PRACTICAL ARTS.

Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, was the scene of one of the most important of the debates between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas. The debate took place on a platform at the east end of the main college building. At this memorable debate the students carried a banner on which was inscribed "Knox for Lincoln." In April, 1860, before he was nominated for the Presidency, Knox College conferred the degree of LL.D. on Abraham Lincoln. At their recent midwinter meeting, the board of trustees unanimously voted to establish a memorial to Lincoln; and this memorial will be the scientific department of Knox College, and will be called "The Abraham Lincoln School of Science and Practical Arts."

The founders of this magazine are all alumni of Knox College, and are particularly pleased at this action of their alma mater. Knox College affords a splendid opportunity to young men and women of limited means. The editors of this magazine can afford to pay the living expenses and tuition for one year at this college of any young man or woman who secures five hundred subscribers, as proposed and explained on the second advertising page of this number of the magazine.

The editors of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE are thoroughly acquainted with Knox College, and can recommend it, knowing that students who go there will live under the best possible influences and receive a sound education. All inquiries should be addressed to the president, John Finley, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.

THE HOUSE IN WHICH LINCOLN'S PARENTS WERE MARRIED.--A CORRECTION.

The picture of the house in which Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married, printed in McCLURE'S MAGAZINE for November, 1895, was credited by mistake to the Oldroyd collection. The photograph from which the reproduction was made came from the Oldroyd collection; but this photograph is, we are informed, from a negative now in the possession of Mr. A.D. Miller of Brazil, Indiana, and credit is therefore due to Mr. Miller.

[Note: The Table of Contents and the list of illustrations were added
by the transcriber.]