Memories and Anecdotes by Kate Sanborn
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12 MEMORIES AND ANECDOTES
By
KATE SANBORN
AUTHOR OF
"ADOPTING AN ABANDONED FARM," "ABANDONING AN
ADOPTED FARM," "OLD-TIME WALL PAPERS," ETC.
_WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS_
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1915
[Illustration, _Frontispiece_:
GREETINGS AND WELCOME TO EVERY READER
(KATE SANBORN)]
To
ALL MY FRIENDS EVERYWHERE
ESPECIALLY TO MY BELOVED
"NEW HAMPSHIRE DAUGHTERS" IN MASSACHUSETTS,
MY PUPILS IN SMITH COLLEGE,
ALSO AT PACKER INSTITUTE, BROOKLYN,
AND ALL THOSE WHO HAD THE PATIENCE TO LISTEN TO MY
LECTURES,
WITH GRATEFUL REGARDS TO THOSE DARTMOUTH GRADUATES
WHO, LIKING MY FATHER, WERE ALWAYS GIVING HIS
AMBITIOUS DAUGHTER A HELPING HAND
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
My Early Days--Odd Characters in our Village--Distinguished Visitors
to Dartmouth--Two Story-Tellers of Hanover--A "Beacon Light" and a
Master of Synonyms--A Day with Bryant in his Country Home--A Wedding
Trip to the White Mountains in 1826 in "A One-Hoss Shay"--A Great
Career which Began in a Country Store
CHAPTER II
A Friend at Andover, Mass.--Hezekiah Butterworth--A Few of my Own
Folks--Professor Putnam of Dartmouth--One Year at Packer Institute,
Brooklyn--Beecher's Face in Prayer--The Poet Saxe as I Saw
him--Offered the Use of a Rare Library--Miss Edna Dean Proctor--New
Stories of Greeley--Experiences at St. Louis
CHAPTER III
Happy Days with Mrs. Botta--My Busy Life in New York--President
Barnard of Columbia College--A Surprise from Bierstadt--Professor
Doremus, a Universal Genius--Charles H. Webb, a truly funny "Funny
Man"--Mrs. Esther Herman, a Modest Giver
CHAPTER IV
Three Years at Smith College--Appreciation of Its Founder--A
Successful Lecture Tour--My Trip to Alaska
CHAPTER V
Frances E. Willard--Walt Whitman--Lady Henry Somerset--Mrs. Hannah
Whitehall Smith--A Teetotaler for Ten Minutes--Olive Thorn
Miller--Hearty Praise for Mrs. Lippincott (Grace Greenwood.)
CHAPTER VI
In and near Boston--Edward Everett Hale--Thomas Wentworth
Higginson--Julia Ward Howe--Mary A. Livermore--A Day at the Concord
School--Harriet G. Hosmer--"Dora Distria," our Illustrious Visitor
CHAPTER VII
Elected to be the First President of New Hampshire's Daughters in
Massachusetts. Now Honorary President--Kind Words which I Highly
Value--Three, but not "of a Kind"--A Strictly Family Affair--Two
Favorite Poems--Breezy Meadows
ILLUSTRATIONS
GREETINGS AND WELCOME TO EVERY READER
(KATE SANBORN) _Frontispiece_
THE STREET FRONTING THE SANBORN HOME AT HANOVER, N.H.
MRS. ANNE C. LYNCH BOTTA
PRESIDENT BARNARD OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE
PROFESSOR R. OGDEN DOREMUS
SOPHIA SMITH
PETER MacQUEEN
SAM WALTER FOSS
PINES AND SILVER BIRCHES
PADDLING IN CHICKEN BROOK
THE ISLAND WHICH WE MADE
TAKA'S TEA HOUSE AT LILY POND
THE LOOKOUT
THE SWITCH
HOW VINES GROW AT BREEZY MEADOWS
GRAND ELM (OVER TWO HUNDRED YEARS OLD)
MEMORIES AND ANECDOTES
CHAPTER I
My Early Days--Odd Characters in our Village--Distinguished Visitors
to Dartmouth--Two Story Tellers of Hanover--A "Beacon Light" and a
Master of Synonyms--A Day with Bryant in his Country Home--A Wedding
Trip to the White Mountains in 1826 in "A One Hoss Shay"--A Great
Career which Began in a Country Store.
I make no excuse for publishing these memories. Realizing that I have
been so fortunate as to know an unusual number of distinguished men
and women, it gives me pleasure to share this privilege with others.
One summer morning, "long, long ago," a newspaper was sent by my
grandmother, Mrs. Ezekiel Webster, to a sister at Concord, New
Hampshire, with this item of news pencilled on the margin:
"Born Thursday morning, July 11, 1839, 4.30 A.M., a fine little girl,
seven pounds."
I was born in my father's library, and first opened my eyes upon a
scenic wall-paper depicting the Bay of Naples; in fact I was born just
under Vesuvius--which may account for my occasional eruptions of
temper and life-long interest in "Old Time Wall-papers." Later our
house was expanded into a college dormitory and has been removed to
another site, but Vesuvius is still smoking placidly in the old
library.
Mine was a shielded, happy childhood--an only child for six years--and
family letters show that I was "always and for ever talking," asking
questions, making queer remarks, or allowing free play to a vivid
imagination, which my parents thought it wise to restrain. Father felt
called upon to write for a child's paper about Caty's Gold Fish, which
were only minnows from Mink Brook.
"Caty is sitting on the floor at my feet, chattering as usual, and
asking questions." I seem to remember my calling over the banister to
an assembled family downstairs, "Muzzer, Muzzer, I dess I dot a
fezer," or "Muzzer, come up, I'se dot a headache in my stomach." I
certainly can recall my intense admiration for Professor Ira Young,
our next door neighbour, and his snowy pow, which I called "pity wite
fedders."
As years rolled on, I fear I was pert and audacious. I once touched
at supper a blazing hot teapot, which almost blistered my fingers, and
I screamed with surprise and pain. Father exclaimed, "Stop that noise,
Caty." I replied, "Put your fingers on that teapot--and don't
kitikize." And one evening about seven, my usual bedtime, I announced,
"I'm going to sit up till eight tonight, and don't you 'spute." I know
of many children who have the same habit of questions and sharp
retorts. One of my pets, after plying her mother with about forty
questions, wound up with, "Mother, how does the devil's darning needle
sleep? Does he lie down on a twig or hang, or how?" "I don't know,
dear." "Why, mother, it is surprising when you have lived so many
years, that you know so little!"
Mr. Higginson told an absurd story of an inquisitive child and wearied
mother in the cars passing the various Newtons, near Boston. At last
the limit. "Ma, why do they call this West Newton?" "Oh, I suppose for
fun." Silence for a few minutes, then, "Ma, what _was_ the fun in
calling it West Newton?"
I began Latin at eight years--my first book a yellow paper primer.
I was always interested in chickens, and dosed all the indisposed as:
Dandy Dick
Was very sick,
I gave him red pepper
And soon he was better.
In spring, I remember the humming of our bees around the sawdust, and
my craze for flower seeds and a garden of my own.
Father had a phenomenal memory; he could recite in his classroom pages
of Scott's novels, which he had not read since early youth. He had no
intention of allowing my memory to grow flabby from lack of use. I
often repeat a verse he asked me to commit to memory:
In reading authors, when you find
Bright passages that strike your mind,
And which perhaps you may have reason
To think on at another season;
Be not contented with the sight,
But jot them down in black and white;
Such respect is wisely shown
As makes another's thought your own.
Every day at the supper table I had to repeat some poetry or prose and
on Sunday a hymn, some of which were rather depressing to a young
person, as:
Life is but a winter's day;
A journey to the tomb.
And the vivid description of "Dies Irae":
When shrivelling like a parched scroll
The flaming heavens together roll
And louder yet and yet more dread
Swells the high Trump that wakes the dead.
Great attention was given to my lessons in elocution from the best
instructors then known, and I had the privilege of studying with
William Russell, one of the first exponents of that art. I can still
hear his advice: "Full on the vowels; dwell on the consonants,
especially at the close of sentences; keep voice strong for the close
of an important sentence or paragraph." Next, I took lessons from
Professor Mark Bailey of Yale College; and then in Boston in the
classes of Professor Lewis B. Monroe,--a most interesting, practical
teacher of distinctness, expression, and the way to direct one's voice
to this or that part of a hall. I was given the opportunity also of
hearing an occasional lecture by Graham Bell. Later, I used to read
aloud to father for four or five hours daily--grand practice--such
important books as Lecky's _Rationalism_, Buckle's _Averages_, Sir
William Hamilton's _Metaphysics_ (not one word of which could I
understand), Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, and Spencer, till my head was
almost too full of that day's "New Thought."
Judge Salmon P. Chase once warned me, when going downstairs to a
dinner party at Edgewood, "For God's sake, Kate, don't quote the
_Atlantic Monthly_ tonight!" I realized then what a bore I had been.
What a treat to listen to William M. Evarts chatting with Judge Chase!
One evening he affected deep depression. "I have just been beaten
twice at 'High Low Jack' by Ben the learned pig. I always wondered why
two pipes in liquid measure were called a hogshead; now I know; it was
on account of their great capacity." He also told of the donkey's
loneliness in his absence, as reported by his little daughter.
I gave my first series of talks at Tilden Seminary at West Lebanon,
New Hampshire, only a few miles from Hanover. President Asa D. Smith
of Dartmouth came to hear two of them, and after I had given the whole
series from Chaucer to Burns, he took them to Appleton & Company, the
New York publishers, who were relatives of his, and surprised me by
having them printed.
I give an unasked-for opinion by John G. Whittier:
I spent a pleasant hour last evening over the charming little
volume, _Home Pictures of English Poets_, which thou wast kind
enough to send me, and which I hope is having a wide
circulation as it deserves. Its analysis of character and
estimate of literary merit strike me as in the main correct.
Its racy, colloquial style, enlivened by anecdote and citation,
makes it anything but a dull book. It seems to me admirably
adapted to supply a want in hearth and home.
I lectured next in various towns in New Hampshire and Vermont; as St.
Johnsbury, where I was invited by Governor Fairbanks; Bath, New
Hampshire, asked by Mrs. Johnson, a well-known writer on flowers and
horticulture, a very entertaining woman. At one town in Vermont I
lectured at the large academy there--not much opportunity for rest in
such a building. My room was just off the music room where duets were
being executed, and a little further on girls were taking singing
lessons, while a noisy little clock-ette on my bureau zigzagged out
the rapid ticks. At the evening meal I was expected to be agreeable,
also after the lecture to meet and entertain a few friends. When I at
last retired that blatant clock made me so nervous that I placed it at
first in the bureau drawer, where it sounded if possible louder than
ever. Then I rose and put it way back in a closet; no hope; at last I
partially dressed and carried it the full length of the long hall, and
laid it down to sleep on its side. And I think that depressed it. In
the morning, a hasty breakfast, because a dozen or more girls were
waiting at the door to ask me to write a "tasty sentiment" before I
left, in their autograph albums, with my autograph of course, and
"something of your own preferred, but at any rate characteristic."
My trips to those various towns taught me to be more humble, and to
admire the women I met, discovering how seriously they had studied,
and how they made use of every opportunity. I remember Somersworth,
New Hampshire, and Burlington, Vermont. I lectured twice at the Insane
Asylum at Concord, New Hampshire, invited by Dr. Bancroft. After
giving my "newspaper wits" a former governor of Vermont came up to
shake hands with me, saying frankly, "Miss Sanborn, your lecture was
just about right for us lunatics." A former resident of Hanover, in a
closed cell, greeted me the next morning as I passed, with a torrent
of abuse, profanity, and obscenity. She too evidently disliked my
lecture. Had an audience of lunatics also at the McLean Insane Asylum,
Dr. Coles, Superintendent.
I think I was the first woman ever invited to make an address to
farmers on farming. I spoke at Tilton, New Hampshire, to more than
three hundred men about woman's day on the farm. Insinuated that
women need a few days _off_ the farm. Said a good many other things
that were not applauded. Farmers seemed to know nothing of the
advantages of co-operation, and that they were as much slaves (to the
middlemen) as ever were the negroes in the South. They even tried to
escape from me at the noise of a dog-fight outside. I offered to
provide a large room for social meetings, to stock it with books of
the day, and to send them a lot of magazines and other reading. Not
one ever made the slightest response. Now they have all and more than
I suggested.
When but seventeen, I was sent for to watch with Professor Shurtleff,
really a dying man, and left all alone with him in the lower part of
the house; he begged about 2 A.M. to be taken up and placed in a
rocking-chair near the little open fire. The light was dim and the
effect was very weird. His wig hung on one bedpost, he had lost one
eye, and the patch worn over the empty eye socket had been left on the
bureau. My anxiety was great lest he should slip from the chair and
tip into the fire. I note this to mark the great change since that
time. Neighbours are not now expected to care for the sick and dying,
but trained nurses are always sought, and most of them are noble
heroines in their profession.
Once also I watched with a poor woman who was dying with cancer. I
tried it for two nights, but the remark of her sister, as I left
utterly worn out, "Some folks seem to get all their good things in
this life," deterred me from attempting it again.
Started a school a little later in the ell of our house for my friends
among the Hanover children--forty-five scholars in all. Kept it going
successfully for two years.
I dislike to tell a story so incredible and so against myself as this.
One evening father said, "I am going to my room early tonight, Katie;
do not forget to lock the back door." I sat reading until quite late,
then retired. About 2.30 A.M., I was startled to hear someone gently
open that back door, then take off boots and begin to softly ascend
the stairs, which stopped only the width of a narrow hall from my
room. I have been told that I said in trembling tones, "You're trying
to keep pretty quiet down there." Next moment I was at the head of the
stairs; saw a man whom I did not recognize on the last step but one. I
struck a heavy blow on his chest, saying, "Go down, sir," and down he
tumbled all the way, his boots clanking along by themselves. Then the
door opened, my burglar disappeared, and I went down and locked the
back door as I had promised father I would. I felt less proud of my
physical prowess and real courage when my attention was called to a
full account of my assault in the college papers of the day. The young
man was not rooming at our house, but coming into town quite late,
planned to lodge with a friend there. He threw gravel at this young
man's window in the third story to waken him, and failing thought at
last he would try the door, and if not locked he would creep up, and
disturb no one. But "Miss Sanborn knocked a man all the way
downstairs" was duly announced. I then realized my awful mistake, and
didn't care to appear on the street for some time except in recitation
hours.
The second time I lectured in Burlington, I was delayed nearly half an
hour at that dreadful Junction, about which place Professor Edward J.
Phelps, afterwards Minister to England, wrote a fierce rhyme to
relieve his rage at being compelled to waste so much precious time
there. I recall only two revengeful lines:
"I hope in hell his soul may dwell,
Who first invented Essex Junction."
Oh, yes, I do remember his idea that the cemetery near the station
contained the bodies of many weary ones who had died just before help
came and were shovelled over.
It happened that Mrs. Underwood, wife of the demented governor, who
had alluded so truthfully to my lecture, was in the audience, and
being gifted with genuine clairvoyant powers, she rose and begged the
audience not to disperse, as she could distinctly see me pacing
nervously up and down the platform at the Junction in a long sealskin
coat and hat trimmed with band of fur. I arrived at last with the
sealskin and the hat, proving her correct, and they cheered her as
well as myself.
Our little village had its share of eccentric characters, as the old
man who was impelled by the edict of the Bible to cut off his right
hand as it had "offended him." But lacking surgical facilities, the
effort left one hand hanging limp and useless. His long white beard,
how truly patriarchal!
Poor insane Sally Duget--a sad story! Her epitaph in our cemetery is
pathetic. With all her woe she was quick at repartee. A man once asked
her, "Shall you ever marry, Sally?" "Well, yes, if you and I can make
a bargain."
Elder Bawker with his difficulties in locomotion.
Rogers, who carried the students' washing home to his wife on Sunday
afternoons for a preliminary soak. The minister seeing him thus
engaged, stopped him, and inquired:
"Where do you think you will go to if you so constantly desecrate the
Holy Sabbath?"
"Guess I'll go right on doing laundry work for the boys."
The aged janitor who, in a brief scare about smallpox, was asked if he
had ever had it: "No, but I've had chances."
An old sinner who, being converted, used to serve as a lay evangelist
at the district schoolhouse where in winter religious meetings were
held. Roguish lads to test him sprinkled red pepper, a lot of it, on
the red hot stove. He almost suffocated, but burst out with: "By God,
there's enemies to religion in this house! Hist the winders!"
The rubicund butcher of that period (we had no choice) was asked by a
long-time patron how he got such a red face. "Cider apple sass." The
same patron said, "You have served me pretty well, but cheated me a
good deal." "Yes, sir, but you have no idea how much I've cheated
you."
Our one milliner, positively brilliant in her remarks, when a lady
sent back her bonnet twice on the ground that it was not becoming,
said, "Remember you have your face to contend with."
Our only and original gravedigger, manager in general of village
affairs.
After the death of a physician, his wife gave a stained-glass window
to the Episcopal Church of St. Luke, the beloved physician. She asked
Jason if he liked it. He said, "It don't strike me as a particular
speaking likeness of Dr. Tom."
To one of the new professors who ventured to make a few suggestions,
"Who be yaou anyway?"
He enjoyed buttonholing people he met in our "graveyard" and pointing
out where they "must shortly lie."
Our landlord--who that ever saw Horace Frary could forget him? If a
mother came to Hanover to see her boy on the 2.30 P.M. train, no meal
could be obtained. He would stand at the front door and explain,
"Dinner is over long ago." He cared personally for about thirty oil
lamps each day, trimmed the wicks with his fingers, and then wiped
them on his trousers. Also did the carving standing at the table and
cleaning the dull knife on the same right side--so the effect was
startling. One day when he had been ill for a short time his wife
said: "Dr. Dixi Crosby is coming this way now, I'll call him in."
"Don't let him in now," he begged, "why d---- it, I'm _sick_!"
I must not omit the strictly veracious witness who was sworn to
testify how many students were engaged in a noisy night frolic at
Norwich. "As fur as I know, there was betwixt six and seven."
"Webb Hall," who today would figure as a "down and out," made many
amusing statements. "By the way I look in these ragged clothes, you
might take me for a Democrat, but I'm a red hot Republican."
He was obsessed by the notion that he had some trouble with a judge in
Concord, New Hampshire. He said fiercely, "I will buy two guns, go to
Concord, kill Judge Stanton with one, and shoot myself with the other,
or else wait quietly till spring and see what will come of it." A
possible precursor of President Wilson's Mexican policy.
He was accused by a woman of milking a cow in her pasture; pleaded
guilty, but added, "I left a ten-cent piece on the fence."
An East Hanover man is remembered for his cheek in slyly picking
lettuce or parsley in the gardens of the professors and then selling
them at the back door to their wives.
And a farmer from Vermont who used to sell tempting vegetables from
his large farm. He was so friendly he cordially greeted the ladies who
bought from him with a kiss. Grandmother evaded this attention by
stating her age, and so was unmolested. The names of his family were
arranged in alphabetical order. "Hannah A., give Miss Kate another cup
of coffee; Noah B., pass the butter; Emma C., guess you better hand
round the riz biscuit."
Life then was a solemn business at Hanover. No dancing; no cards; no
theatricals; a yearly concert at commencement, and typhoid fever in
the fall. On the Lord's Day some children were not allowed to read the
_Youth's Companion_, or pluck a flower in the garden. But one old
working woman rebelled. "I ain't going to have my daughter Frances
brought up in no superstitious tragedy." She was far in advance of her
age.
I have always delighted in college songs from good voices, whether
sung when sitting on the old common fence (now gone) at the "sing out"
at the close of the year, or merrily trolling or tra-la-laing along
the streets. What a surprise when one glorious moonlight night which
showed up the magnificent elms then arching the street before our
house--the air was full of fragrance--I was suddenly aroused by
several voices adjuring me, a lady of beauty, to awake. I was
bewildered--ecstatic. This singing was for me. I listened intently and
heard the words of their song:
Sweet is the sound of lute and voice
When borne across the water.
Then two other sweets I could not quite catch, and the last lines sung
with fervor:
But sweeter still is the charming voice
Of Professor Sanborn's daughter.
Two more stanzas and each with the refrain:
The prettiest girl on Hanover Plain is
Professor Sanborn's daughter.
Then the last verse:
Hot is the sun whose golden rays
Can reach from heaven to earth,
And hot a tin pan newly scoured
Placed on the blazing hearth,
And hot a boy's ears boxed for doing
That which he hadn't orter,
But hotter still is the love I bear
For Professor Sanborn's daughter.
with chorus as before.
I threw down lovely flowers and timidly thanked them. They applauded,
sang a rollicking farewell, and were gone. If I could have removed my
heart painlessly, I believe that would have gone out too. They had
gone, but the blissful memory! I leaned on the window sill, and the
moon with its bounteous mellow radiance filled my room. But listen,
hark! Only two doors beyond, the same voices, the same melodious
tones, and alas, yes, the same words, every verse and the same
chorus--same masculine fervour--but somebody else's daughter.
A breakfast comment: "It's a terrible nuisance this caterwauling in
the middle of the night in front of the house!" For once I was silent.
Many distinguished men were invited to Dartmouth as orators at
commencement or on special occasions, as Rufus Choate, Edward Everett,
John G. Saxe, Wendell Phillips, Charles Dudley Warner, and Dr. Holmes,
whom I knew in his Boston study, overlooking the water and the gulls.
By the way, he looked so young when arriving at Hanover for a few
lectures to the Medical School that he was asked if he had come to
join the Freshman class.
There were also Edwin P. Whipple, the essayist, and Walt Whitman, who
was chosen one year for the commencement poet. He appeared on the
platform wearing a flannel shirt, square-cut neck, disclosing a
hirsute covering that would have done credit to a grizzly bear; the
rest of his attire all right. Joaquin Miller was another genius and
original.
Another visitor was James T. Fields of Boston, the popular publisher,
poet, author, lecturer, friend, and inimitable raconteur, who was
always one of my best friends.
When Mr. and Mrs. Fields were invited to Hanover, he and his beautiful
wife were always guests at our home. Their first visit to us was an
epoch for me. I worked hard the morning before they were to arrive,
sweeping, dusting, polishing silver, and especially brightening the
large, brass andirons in father's library. I usually scoured with
rotten stone and oil, but on this great occasion, adopting a receipt
which I had happened to see in a newspaper, I tried vinegar and
powdered pumice-stone. The result at first was fine.
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