CHAPTER IV
Three Years at Smith College—Appreciation of Its Founder—A Successful Lecture Tour—My Trip to Alaska.
"There is nothing so certain as the unexpected," and "if you fit yourself for the wall, you will be put in."
I was in danger of being spoiled by kindness in New York and the surrounding towns, if not in danger of a breakdown from constant activity, literary and social, with club interests and weekend visits at homes of delightful friends on the Hudson, when I was surprised and honoured by a call from President L. Clark Seelye of Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, who invited me to take the position of teacher of English Literature at that college.
I accepted, and remained at Northampton for three years, from 1880-1883. It was a busy life. I went on Saturday afternoons to a class of married ladies at Mrs. Terhune's (Marion Harland) in Springfield, Massachusetts, where her husband was a clergyman in one of the largest churches in that city. I also published several books, and at least two Calendars, while trying to make the students at Smith College enthusiastic workers in my department.
Mrs. Terhune was a versatile and entertaining woman, a most practical housekeeper; and she could tell the very best ghost story I ever heard, for it is of a ghost who for many years was the especial property of her father's family.
When I gave evening lectures at Mrs. Terhune's while at Smith College, I was accustomed to spend the night there. She always insisted upon rising early to see that the table was set properly for me, and she often would bring in something specially tempting of her own cooking. A picture I can never forget is that of Doctor Terhune who, before offering grace at meals, used to stretch out a hand to each of his daughters, and so more closely include them in his petition.
I used no special text-book while at Smith College, and requested my class to question me ten minutes at the close of every recitation. Each girl brought a commonplace book to the recitation room to take notes as I talked. Some of them showed great power of expression while writing on the themes provided. There was a monthly examination, often largely attended by friends out of town. I still keep up my interest in my pupils of that day. One of them told me that they thought at first I was currying popularity, I was so cordial and even affectionate, but they confessed they were mistaken.
Under President Seelye's wise management, Smith College has taken a high position, and is constantly growing better. The tributes to his thirty-seven years in service when he resigned prove how thoroughly he was appreciated. I give a few extracts:
We wish to record the fact that this has been, in a unique degree, your personal work. If you had given the original sum which called the College into being, and had left its administration to others, you would have been less truly the creator of the institution than you have been through your executive efficiency. Your plans have seldom been revised by the Board of Trustees, and your selection of teachers has brought together a faculty which is at least equal to the best of those engaged in the education of women. You have secured for the teachers a freedom of instruction which has inspired them to high attainment and fruitful work. You, with them, have given to the College a commanding position in the country, and have secured for it and for its graduates universal respect. The deep foundations for its success have been intellectual and spiritual, and its abiding work has been the building up of character by contact with character.
Fortunate in her location, fortunate in her large minded trustees, fortunate in the loyal devotedness of her faculty and supremely fortunate has our College been in the consecrated creative genius of her illustrious president. Bringing to his task a noble ideal, with rare sagacity as an administrator; with financial and economic skill rarely found in a scholar and idealist, but necessary to foster into fullest fruitfulness the slender pecuniary resources then at hand; with tact and suavity which made President Seelye's "no," if no were needed, more gracious than "yes" from others; with the force which grasps difficulties fearlessly; with dignified scholarship and a courtly manner, the master builder of our College, under whose hand the little one has become a thousand and the small one a strong republic, has achieved the realization of his high ideal and is crowned with honour and affection.
He has made one ashamed of any but the highest motives, and has taught us that sympathy and love for mankind are the traits for which to strive. The ideals of womanly life which he instilled will ever be held high before us.
There are many distinguished qualities which a college president must possess. He must be idealist, creator, executor, financier, and scholar. President Seelye—is all these—but he had another and a rarer gift which binds and links these qualities together, as the chain on which jewels are strung—President Seelye had immense capacity for work and patient attention for details. It is this unusual combination which has given us a great College, and has given to our president a unique position among educators.
I realize that I must at times have been rather a trying proposition to President Seelye for I was placed in an entirely new world, and having been almost wholly educated by my father, by Dartmouth professors, and by students of the highest scholarship, I never knew the mental friction and the averaging up and down of those accustomed to large classes. I gained far more there than I gave, for I learned my limitations, or some of them, and to try to stick closely to my own work, to be less impulsive, and not offer opinions and suggestions, unasked, undesired, and in that early stage of the college, objectionable. Still, President Seelye writes to me: "I remember you as a very stimulating teacher of English Literature, and I have often heard your pupils, here and afterwards, express great interest in your instruction."
The only "illuminating" incident in my three years at Smith College was owing to my wish to honour the graduating reception of the Senior class. I pinned my new curtains carefully away, put some candles in the windows, leaving two young ladies of the second year to see that all was safe. The house was the oldest but one in the town; it harboured two aged paralytics whom it would be difficult, if not dangerous, to remove. Six students had their home there. As my fire-guards heard me returning with my sister and some gentlemen of the town, they left the room, the door slammed, a breeze blew the light from the candles to the curtains, and in an instant the curtains were ablaze.
And now the unbelievable sequel. The room seemed all on fire in five minutes. Next, the overhead beam was blazing. I can tell you that the fire was extinguished by those gentlemen, and no one ever knew we had been so near a conflagration until three years later when the kind lady of the house wrote to me: "Dear Friend, did you ever have a fire in your room? In making it over I found some wood badly scorched." I have the most reliable witnesses, or you would never have believed it. In the morning my hostess said to the girls assembled at breakfast: "Miss Sanborn is always rather noisy when she has guests, but I never did hear such a hullabaloo as she made last evening."
It is certain that President Seelye deserves all the appreciation and affectionate regard he received. He has won his laurels and he needs the rest which only resignation could bring. The college is equally fortunate in securing as his successor, Marion LeRoy Burton, who in the coming years may lead the way through broader paths, to greater heights, always keeping President Seelye's ideal of the truly womanly type, in a distinctively woman's college.
As the Rev. Dr. John M. Greene writes me (the clergyman who suggested to Sophia Smith that she give her money to found a college for women, and who at eighty-five years has a perfectly unclouded mind): "I want to say that my ambition for Smith College is that it shall be a real women's college. Too many of our women's colleges are only men's colleges for women."
I desire now to add my tribute to that noble woman, Sophia Smith of Hatfield, Massachusetts.
On April 18, 1796, the town of Hatfield, in town meeting assembled, "voiced to set up two schools, for the schooling of girls four months in the year." The people of that beautiful town seemed to have heard the voice of their coming prophetess, commissioned to speak a word for woman's education, which the world has shown itself ready to hear.
In matters of heredity, Sophia Smith was fortunate. Her paternal grandmother, Mary Morton, was an extraordinary woman. After the death of her husband, she became the legal guardian of her six sons, all young, cared for a large farm, and trained her boys to be useful and respected in the community.
Sophia Smith was born in Hatfield, August 27, 1796; just six months before Mary Lyon was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, about seventeen miles distant. Sophia remembered her grandmother and said: "I looked up to my grandmother with great love and reverence. She, more than once, put her hands on my head and said, 'I want you should grow up, and be a good woman, and try to make the world better.'" And her mother was equally religious, efficient, kind to the poor, sympathetic but not impulsive. Sophia lived in a country farmhouse near the Connecticut River for sixty-eight years. She was sadly hampered physically. One of the historians of Hatfield writes me:
Her infirmity of deafness was troublesome to some extent when she was young, making her shy and retiring. At forty she was absolutely incapable of hearing conversation. She also was lame in one foot and had a withered hand. In spite of this, I think she was an active and spirited girl, about like other girls. She was very fond of social intercourse, especially later in life when my father knew her, but this intercourse was confined to a small circle. Doctor Greene speaks of her timidity also. I know of no traditions about her girlhood. As an example of the thrift of the Smiths, or perhaps I should say, their exactness in all business dealings, my father says that Austin Smith never asked his sisters to sew a button or do repairs on his clothing without paying them a small sum for it, and he always received six cents for doing chores or running errands. No doubt this was a practice maintained from early youth, for when Sophia Smith was born, in 1796, the family was in very moderate circumstances. The whole community was poor for some time after the Revolution, and everyone saved pennies.
As to her education, she used to sit on the doorsteps of the schoolhouse and hear the privileged boys recite their lessons. She also had four or five months of instruction in the schoolhouse, and was a student in Hopkins Academy for a short time and, when fourteen years old, attended school at Hartford, Connecticut, for a term of twelve weeks.
SOPHIA SMITH
Then a long, uneventful, almost shut-in life, and in 1861 her brother Austin left her an estate of about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Hon. George W. Hubbard of Hatfield was her financial adviser. He advised her to found an academy for Hatfield, which she did; and after Doctor Greene had caused her to decide on a college for women, Mr. Hubbard insisted on having it placed at Northampton, Massachusetts, instead of Hatfield, Massachusetts. With her usual modesty, she objected to giving her full name to the college, as it would look as if she were seeking fame for herself. She gave thirty thousand dollars to endow a professorship in the Andover Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts.
She grew old gracefully, never soured by her infirmities, always denying herself to help others and make the world better for her living in it.
Her name must stand side by side with the men who founded Vassar, Wellesley, and Barnard, and that of Mary Lyon to whom women owe the college of Mt. Holyoke.
As Walt Whitman wrote:
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
She was a martyr physically, and mentally a heroine. Let us never fail to honour the woman who founded Smith College.
Extracts from a letter replying to my question: "Is there a full-length portrait of Sophia Smith, now to be seen anywhere in the principal building at Smith College, Northampton?"
How I wish that some generous patron of Smith College might bestow upon it two thousand dollars for a full-length portrait of Sophia Smith to be placed in the large reading room, at the end of which is a full-length portrait of President Seelye. The presence of such a commanding figure seen by hundreds of girls every day would be a subtle and lasting influence.
I like to nibble at a stuffed date, but do not enjoy having my memory stuffed with dates, though I am proud rather than sensitive in regard to my age.
Lady Morgan was unwilling her age should be known, and pleads:
What has a woman to do with dates—cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates—new style, old style, precession of the equinoxes, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of reference in woman's autobiography. Plutarch sets the example of dropping dates in favour of incidents; and an authority more appropriate, Madame de Genlis, who began her own memoires at eighty, swept through nearly an age of incident and revolution without any reference to vulgar eras signifying nothing (the times themselves out of joint), testifying to the pleasant incidents she recounts and the changes she witnessed. I mean to have none of them!
I hesitate to allude to my next experience after leaving Smith College, for it was so delightful that I am afraid I shall scarcely be believed, and am also afraid that my readers will consider me a "swell head" and my story only fit for a "Vanity Box." Yet I would not leave out one bit of the Western lecture trip. If it were possible to tell of the great kindness shown me at every step of the way without any mention of myself, I would gladly prefer to do that.
After leaving Smith College, I was enjoying commencement festivities in my own home—when another surprising event! Mr. George W. Bartholomew, a graduate of Dartmouth, who was born and brought up in a neighbouring Vermont town, told me when he called that he had established a large and successful school for young ladies in Cincinnati, Ohio, taking a few young ladies to live in his pleasant home. He urged me to go to his school for three months to teach literature, also giving lectures to ladies of the city in his large recitation hall. And he felt sure he could secure me many invitations to lecture in other cities.
Remembering my former Western experience with measles and whooping-cough, I realized that mumps and chicken-pox were still likely to attack me, but the invitation was too tempting, and it was gladly accepted, and I went to Cincinnati in the fall of 1884.
Mrs. Bartholomew I found a charming woman and a most cordial friend. Every day of three months spent in Cincinnati was full of happiness. Mrs. Broadwell, a decided leader in the best social matters, as well as in all public spirited enterprises, I had known years before in Hanover, N.H. Her brother, General William Haines Lytle, had been slain at Chickamauga during the Civil War, just in the full strength and glory of manhood. He wrote that striking poem, beginning: "I am dying, Egypt, dying." Here are two verses of his one poem:
As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian!
Glorious sorceress of the Nile,
Light the path to Stygian horrors
With the splendors of thy smile.
Give the Cæsar crowns and arches,
Let his brow the laurel twine;
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.
I am dying, Egypt, dying;
Hark! the insulting foeman's cry,
They are coming! quick, my falchion!
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah! no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell—
Isis and Osiris guard thee!
Cleopatra, Rome, farewell!
He was engaged to Miss Sarah Doremus, a sister of Professor Doremus of New York. After the terrible shock of his sudden death she never married, but devoted her life to carrying out her sainted mother's missionary projects, once taking a trip alone around the world to visit the missionary stations started by her mother.
As soon as I had arrived at Mr. Bartholomew's, Mrs. Broadwell gave me a dinner. Six unmarried ladies and seven well-known bachelors were the guests, as she wished to give me just what I needed, an endorsement among her own friends. The result was instant and potent.
Everyone at that dinner did something afterwards to entertain me. I was often invited to the opera, always had a box (long-stemmed roses for all the ladies), also to dinner and lunches. If anyone in the city had anything in the way of a rare collection, from old engravings to rare old books, an evening was devoted to showing the collection to me with other friends. One lady, Miss Mary Louise McLaughlin, invited me to lunch with her alone. Her brother, a bachelor lawyer, had at that time the finest private library in the city. She was certainly the most versatile in her accomplishments of anyone I have ever known. She had painted the best full-length portrait of Judge Longworth, father of the husband of Alice Roosevelt. She was a china painter to beat the Chinese, and author of four books on the subject. She was an artist in photography; had a portfolio of off-hand sketches of street gamins, newsboys, etc., full of life and expression. She brought the art of under glaze in china-firing to this country and had discovered a method of etching metal into fine woods for bedroom furniture. She was an expert at wood-carving, taking lessons from Ben Pitman. Was fond of housekeeping and made a success of it in every way. Anything else? Yes, she showed me pieces of her exquisite embroidery and had made an artistic and wholly sane "crazy-quilt" so much in vogue at that time. Her own beautiful china was all painted and finished by herself. As I left her, I felt about two feet high, with a pin head. And yet she was free from the slightest touch of conceit.
Miss Laura MacDonald (daughter of Alexander MacDonald, the business man who took great risks with Mr. John D. Rockefeller in borrowing money to invest largely in oil fields) was my pupil in the school, and through her I became acquainted with her lovely mother, who invited me to her home at Clifton, just out of Cincinnati, to lecture to a select audience of her special friends.
My lectures at Mr. Bartholomew's school were very well attended. Lists of my subjects were sent about widely, and when the day came for my enthusiastic praise of Christopher North (John Wilson), a sweet-faced old lady came up to the desk and placed before me a large bunch of veritable Scotch heather for which she had sent to Scotland.
In Cleveland, where I gave a series of talks, President Cutler, of Adelbert University, rose at the close of the last lecture and, looking genially towards me, made this acknowledgment: "I am free to confess that I have often been charmed by a woman, and occasionally instructed, but never before have I been charmed and instructed by the same woman."
Cleveland showed even then the spirit of the Cleveland of today, which is putting that city in the very first rank of the cities not only of the United States but of the world in civic improvement and municipal progress, morally and physically. Each night of my lectures I was entertained at a different house while there, and as a trifle to show their being in advance of other cities, I noticed that the ladies wore wigs to suit their costumes. That only became the fashion here last winter, but I saw no ultra colours such as we saw last year, green and pink and blue, but only those that suited their style and their costume.
At Chicago I was the guest of Mrs. H.O. Stone, who gave me a dinner and an afternoon reception, where I met many members of various clubs, and the youngest grandmothers I had ever seen. At a lunch given for me by Mrs. Locke, wife of Rev. Clinton B. Locke, I met Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. Wayne MacVeagh, and Mrs. Williams, wife of General Williams, and formerly the wife of Stephen Douglas. Mrs. Locke was the best raconteur of any woman I have ever heard. Dartmouth men drove me to all the show places of that wonderful city. Lectured in Rev. Dr. Little's church parlors. He was not only a New Hampshire man, but born in Boscawen, New Hampshire, where my grandfather lived, and where my mother lived until her marriage.
It is pleasant to record that I was carried along on my lecture tour, sometimes by invitation of a Dartmouth man, again by college girls who had graduated at Smith College; then at Peoria, Illinois; welcomed there by a dear friend from Brooklyn, New York, wife of a business man of that city. I knew of Peoria only as a great place for the manufacture of whisky, and for its cast-iron stoves, but found it a city, magnificently situated on a series of bold bluffs. And when I reached my friend's house, a class of ladies, who had been easily chatting in German, wanted to stay and ask me a few questions. These showed deep thought, wide reading, and finely disciplined minds. Only one reading there in the Congregational Church, where there was such a fearful lack of ventilation that I turned from my manuscript and quoted a bit from the "Apele for Are to the Sextant of the Old Brick Meetinouse by A. Gasper," which proved effectual.
I give this impressive exhortation entire as it should be more generally known.
A APELE FOR ARE TO THE SEXTANT
BY ARABELLA WILSON
O Sextant of the meetinouse which sweeps
And dusts, or is supposed to! and makes fiers,
And lites the gas, and sumtimes leaves a screw loose,
In which case it smells orful—wus than lampile;
And wrings the Bel and toles it, and sweeps paths;
And for these servaces gits $100 per annum;
Wich them that thinks deer let 'em try it;
Gittin up before starlite in all wethers, and
Kindlin fiers when the wether is as cold
As zero, and like as not green wood for kindlins,
(I wouldn't be hierd to do it for no sum;)
But o Sextant there are one kermodity
Wuth more than gold which don't cost nuthin;
Wuth more than anything except the Sole of man!
I mean pewer Are, Sextant, I mean pewer Are!
O it is plenty out o dores, so plenty it doant no
What on airth to do with itself, but flize about
Scatterin leaves and bloin off men's hats;
In short its jest as free as Are out dores;
But O Sextant! in our church its scarce as piety,
Scarce as bankbills when ajunts beg for mishuns,
Which sum say is purty often, taint nuthin to me,
What I give aint nuthing to nobody; but O Sextant!
You shet 500 men women and children
Speshily the latter, up in a tite place,
Sum has bad breths, none of em aint too sweet,
Sum is fevery, sum is scroflus, sum has bad teeth
And sum haint none, and sum aint over clean;
But evry one of em brethes in and out and in
Say 50 times a minnet, or 1 million and a half breths an hour;
Now how long will a church full of are last at that rate?
I ask you; say fifteen minnets, and then what's to be did?
Why then they must brethe it all over agin,
And then agin and so on, till each has took it down
At least ten times and let it up agin, and what's more,
The same individible doant have the privilege
Of brethin his own are and no one else,
Each one must take wotever comes to him.
O Sextant! doant you know our lungs is belluses
To bio the fier of life and keep it from
Going out: and how can bellusses blo without wind?
And aint wind are? I put it to your konshens,
Are is the same to us as milk to babies,
Or water is to fish, or pendlums to clox,
Or roots and airbs unto an Injun doctor,
Or little pills unto an omepath.
Or Boze to girls. Are is for us to brethe.
What signifize who preaches ef I can't brethe?
What's Pol? What's Pollus to sinners who are ded?
Ded for want of breth! Why Sextant when we dye
Its only coz we cant brethe no more—that's all.
And now O Sextant! let me beg of you
To let a little are into our cherch
(Pewer are is sertin proper for the pews);
And dew it week days and on Sundys tew—
It aint much trobble—only make a hoal,
And then the are will come in of itself
(It loves to come in where it can git warm).
And O how it will rouze the people up
And sperrit up the preacher, and stop garps
And yorns and fijits as effectool
As wind on the dry boans the Profit tels
Of.
I went as far as Omaha, and then was asked if I were not going West. The reason for this charming reception was that it was a novelty then to hear a young woman talk in a lively way on striking themes which had been most carefully prepared, and a light touch added, with frequent glints of humour. Byron declared that easy writing was very hard reading. I reversed that method, always working hard over each lecture. For instance, I spent two months in preparing "Bachelor Authors," cramming and condensing, and passing quickly over dangerous ground. With my vocal training I could easily be heard by an audience of five hundred.
A friend was eager to go to Alaska by Seattle; then, after our return, visit Yellowstone Park and San Francisco. She urged me so eloquently to accompany her, that I left my home in Metcalf, Massachusetts, taking great risks in many ways, but wonderful to relate, nothing disastrous occurred.
We scurried by fastest trains across the country to Seattle, just in time to take the Steamer Topeka from Seattle on August 8, 1899, the last boat of the season, and the last chance tourists ever had to see the Muir Glacier in its marvellous glory, as it was broken badly before the next summer.
My friend advised me kindly to ask no questions of the captain, as she knew well what a bore that was. I promised to be exceedingly careful. So, next morning, when that tall and handsome Captain Thompson came around the deck, with a smiling "Good morning," and bowing right and left, I was deeply absorbed in a book; the next time I was looking at a view; another time I played I was fast asleep. He never spoke to me, only stopped an instant before me and walked on. At last, a bow-legged pilot came directly from the captain's office to my open window, bringing to Miss Sanborn a bowl of extra large and luscious strawberries from Douglas Island, quite famous on account of the size and sweetness of this berry. With this gift came a note running thus:
Dear Miss Sanborn:
I am a little puzzled by your frigid manner. Have you any personal prejudice against me? Walter Raymond wrote me before he sailed, to look you up, and do what I could for you, as you were quite a favourite on the Eastern coast, and any kindness shown to you would be considered a personal favour to him, and that he only wished he could take the trip with us.
I was amazed and mortified. I had obeyed my directions too literally, and must and did explain and apologize. After that, such pleasant attentions from him! Invited to call at his office with my friends, to meet desirable passengers, something nice provided for refreshment, and these gentlemen were always ready for cards or conversation. But the great occasion was when I had no idea of such an honour, that the captain said:
"We are soon to pass through the Wrangel Narrows, a dangerous place, and the steering through zigzag lines must be most careful. I am going to smuggle you on to the bridge to see me steer and hear me give my orders that will be repeated below. But as it is against the rule to take a woman up there at such a time, promise me to keep perfectly silent. If you make one remark you lose your life."
I agreed and kept my mouth shut without a muzzle. That "memory" is as clear today as if it had happened yesterday.
One day while reading in my fine stateroom, a lady came to the open door and asked me if I would go out with her on the deck that pleasant afternoon and meet some friends of hers. I thanked her, but refused as I was reading one of Hon. Justin McCarthy's books, and as I had the honour of meeting him and his most interesting wife in New York City at the home of Mrs. Henry M. Field, I was much engrossed in what he wrote. Again, another person came and entreated me to go to the deck; not suspecting any plot to test me, I went with her, and found a crowd gathered there, and a good-looking young man seemed to be haranguing them. He stopped as we came along and after being introduced went on with: "As I was saying, Miss Sanborn, I regard women as greatly our inferiors; in fact, essentially unemotional,—really bovine. Do you really not agree to that?" I almost choked with surprise and wrath, but managed to retort: "I am sorry to suppose your mother was a cow, but she must have been to raise a calf like you." And I walked away to the tune of great applause. It seems someone had said that I was never at a loss when a repartee was needed, and it was proposed to give me an opportunity. Next surprise: a call as we were nearing Seattle from a large and noticeable lady who introduced herself saying:
"I am the president of a club which I started myself, and feel bound to help on. I have followed you about a good deal, and shall be much obliged if you will jot down for me to read to this club everything you have said since you came on board. I know they will enjoy it." I was sorry my memory failed me entirely on that occasion. Still it was a great compliment!
But the Muir Glacier! We had to keep three and a half miles away, lest the steamer be injured by the small icebergs which broke off the immense mass into the water with a thunderous roar. A live glacier advances a certain distance each day and retreats a little. Those who visited the glacier brought back delicate little blue harebells they found growing in the clefts of ice. No description of my impressions? Certainly not! Too much of that has been done already.
We saw curious sights along the way, such as the salmon leaping into a fenced-in pool to deposit their spawn; there they could be easily speared, dried, and pitched into wagons as we pitch hay in New England. I saw the Indians stretching the salmon on boards put up in the sun, their color in the sun a brilliant pinkish red.
I saw bears fishing at the edge of water, really catching fish in their clumsy paws. Other bears were picking strawberries for their cubs. As I watched them strolling away, I thought they might be looking for a stray cow to milk to add flavour to the berries.
We stopped at Wrangel to look at the totem poles, many of which have since been stolen as the Indians did not wish to sell them; our usual method of business with that abused race. Totem poles are genealogical records, and give the history of the family before whose door they stand. No one would quietly take the registered certificates of Revolutionary ancestors searched for with great care from the Colonial Dames or members of the New England Society, and coolly destroy them. I agree with Charles Lamb who said he didn't want to be like a potato, all that was best of him under ground.
At Sitka the brilliant gardens and the large school for Indian girls were the objects of interest. It is a sad fact that the school which teaches these girls cleanly habits, the practical arts of sewing, and cooking simple but appetizing dishes, has made the girls unwilling to return to their dirty homes and the filthy habits of their parents. That would be impossible to them. So they are lured to visit the dance halls in Juneau, where they find admirers of a transient sort, but seldom secure an honest husband.
We called at Skagway, and the lady who was known by us told us there was much stress there placed upon the most formal attention to rigid conventionalities, calls made and returned, cards left and received at just the right time, more than is expected in Boston. And yet that town was hardly started, and dirt and disorder and chaos reigned supreme.
A company of unlucky miners came home in our steamer; no place for them to sleep but on deck near the doors of our stateroom, and they ate at one of the tables after three other hungry sets had been satisfied. A few slept on the tables. All the poultry had been killed and eaten. We found the Chinese cooks tried to make tough meat attractive by pink and yellow sauces. We were glad to leave the steamer to try the ups and downs of Seattle.