ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD.
AUTHOR OF “GATES AJAR!”
HIS is said to be a practical age and there is much talk about the materialistic tendencies of the time and the absorption of the people in affairs of purely momentary and transient importance. It is nevertheless true that the books which attract the most attention are the most widely read, and best beloved are those which deal with the great questions of life and of eternity. It was upon “The Gates Ajar” that Elizabeth Stuart Phelps founded her reputation. It dealt entirely with the questions of the future life treating them in a way remarkably fresh and vigorous, not to say daring, and its reception was so favorable that it went through twenty editions during its first year.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was the daughter of a professor in the Andover Theological Seminary. She had been christened with another name; but on the death of her mother, in 1852, she took her name in full. She had been publishing sketches and stories since her thirteenth year, her writings being largely related to charitable, temperance and other reform work. She has written a long series of books beginning with “Ellen’s Idol” in 1864, and including a number of series—“The Tiny Series,” “The Gypsy Series,” etc., intended for Sunday-school libraries, and some fifteen or twenty stories and books of poems. Besides these, she has written sketches, stories and poems in large numbers for the current magazines.
In 1888 she became the wife of Rev. Herbert D. Ward. Their summer home is at East Gloucester, Massachusetts, while in winter they live at Newton Highlands. Thoughtfulness and elevation of spirit mark all Mrs. Ward’s literary work. The philanthropic purpose is evident in every one of them, and she contributes to the cause of humanity, not only through her books, but in the time, labor and money which she freely bestows. Mrs. Ward may be taken as a practical example of that noble type of American women who combine literary skill, broad intelligence, and love of mankind with a high degree of spirituality and whose work for humanity is shown in the progress of our people. Her purpose has always been high and the result of her work ennobling. In her books the thought of man and the thought of God blend in a harmony very significant of the spirit of the time, a spirit which she has done much to awaken and to promote.
THE HANDS AT HAYLE AND KELSO’S.[¹]
(FROM “THE SILENT PARTNER.”)
[¹] Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
F you are one of the “hands,” then in Hayle and Kelso you have a breakfast of bread and molasses probably; you are apt to eat it while you dress. Somebody is heating the kettle, but you cannot wait for it. Somebody tells you that you have forgotten your shawl; you throw it over one shoulder and step out, before it is fastened, into the sudden raw air. You left lamplight indoors, you find moonlight without. The night seems to have overslept itself; you have a fancy for trying to wake it—would like to shout at it or cry through it, but feel very cold, and leave that for the bells to do by-and-by.
You and the bells are the only waking things in life. The great brain of the world is in serene repose; the great heart of the world lies warm to the core with dreams; the great hands of the world, the patient, the perplexed—one almost fancies at times, just for fancy—seeing you here by the morning moon, the dangerous hands alone are stirring in the dark.
You hang up your shawl and your crinoline, and understand, as you go shivering by gaslight to your looms, that you are chilled to the heart, and that you were careless about your shawl, but do not consider carefulness worth your while by nature or by habit; a little less shawl means a few less winters in which to require shawling. You are a godless little creature, but you cherish a stolid learning, in those morning moons, towards making an experiment of death and a wadded coffin.
By the time the gas is out, you cease perhaps—though you cannot depend upon that—to shiver, and incline less and less to the wadded coffin, and more to a chat with your neighbor in the alley. Your neighbor is of either sex and any description as the case may be. In any event—warming a little with the warming day—you incline more and more to chat.
If you chance to be a cotton weaver, you are presently warm enough. It is quite warm enough in the weaving-room. The engines respire into the weaving-room; with every throb of their huge lungs you swallow their breath. The weaving-room stifles with steam. The window-sills are gutted to prevent the condensed [♦]steam from running in streams along the floor; sometimes they overflow, and the water stands under the looms. The walls perspire profusely; on a damp day drops will fall from the roof. The windows of the weaving-room are closed. They must be closed; a stir in the air will break your threads. There is no air to stir; you inhale for a substitute a motionless hot moisture. If you chance to be a cotton weaver, it is not in March that you think most about your coffin.
[♦] ‘stream’ replaced with ‘steam’
Being a “hand” in Hayle and Kelso, you are used to eating cold luncheon in the cold at noon; or you walk, for the sake of a cup of soup or coffee, half-a-mile, three-quarters, a mile and a-half, and back. You are allowed three-quarters of an hour to do this. You go and come upon the jog-trot.
From swearing you take to singing; both perhaps, are equal relief—active and diverting. There is something curious about that singing of yours. The tune, the place, the singers, characterize it sharply; the waning light, the rival din, the girls with tired faces. You start some little thing with a refrain, and a ring to it. A hymn, it is not unlikely; something of a River and of Waiting, and of Toil and Rest, or Sleep, or Crowns, or Harps, or Home, or Green Fields, or Flowers, or Sorrow, or Repose, or a dozen other things; but always, it will be noticed, of simple spotless things, such as will surprise the listener who caught you at your oath of five minutes past. You have other songs, neither simple nor spotless, it may be; but you never sing them at your work when the waning day is crawling out from spots beneath your loom, and the girls lift up their tired faces to catch and keep the chorus in the rival din.
You are singing when the bell strikes, and singing still when you clatter down the stairs. Something of the simple spotlessness of the little song is on your face when you dip into the wind and dusk.
