I made no further dissent. I only reflected how many of my homes I had seen torn to pieces, and scattered wide, and I wondered why this experience seemed obligatory. Then it struck me, that there might be a psychic side to the circumstance—that to break up my dwelling place, and send me on some far off journey was perhaps the best, the only thing my angel could do, in order to save me and my children from “Him that followeth after.” For I know well, that the breaking up of existing conditions, is often the only salvation; that we are sent long, unexpected, and often unpleasant journeys because it is the best way to defeat disaster; that we are often 356 prevented from taking journeys we have planned and prepared for, because they would be fatal; yea, that we are often stripped as Job was stripped, in order to make possible the two-fold blessing of Job.
I felt the long, dirty, monotonous journey to Denver very much. But the children were happy. They made friends with an United States General and his charming wife and daughter, and were half sorry not to accept their invitation to go on with them to the frontier station which was their home.
We arrived in Denver on the twenty-first of July, 1878, after five days’ travel; and the next day we rented a small furnished house belonging to Miss Sargent, a writer of that day whose stories were much liked both in England and America. We made the place pretty and comfortable, and then took time to consider what we had done. I felt painfully the extreme rarity of the atmosphere. It affected my ears, and gave me a peculiar headache; but it is not fair to describe the Denver of that date, for it was the point to which all consumptives past hope were then sent. It was full of the sick and the dying, yet withal a busy town; but I saw at once that we should never like it, and my heart turned to New York with a home-sickness impossible to describe.
However, the great total eclipse of the sun was to be noted there in perfection on the twenty-ninth of the month, and we were glad to have an opportunity to witness what we should never see again in this incarnation. The day was clear, unnaturally still, and tenuous; and there was a sense of something supernatural about to occur. As the sun was gradually darkened, and the earth lay passive in that unearthly gloom, a dead silence prevailed, but the moment of totality, or the moment after it, was saluted with the shouts and huzzas of the crowd watching the marvelous event. It was no doubt the most sincere way in which the unlearned thousands could express their feelings, but it was not the awful wonder and worship that seemed fitting.
My old pupil, Mr. William Libbey, called afterwards. He with many other young men and students from the different universities had come purposely to observe the eclipse, and Mrs. Jackson, the beloved H. H. of the literary world, quickly found 357 us out. But no kindness could reconcile us to a life full of strange conditions. Mary went back to New York with some returning friends in a month; I, as soon as I could bear the journey, and Lilly and Alice as quickly as the bitter cold of winter was over, and it was safe for Alice to cross the plains.
Thankfully I close this chapter with our happy reunion in some pleasant rooms in the St. Stephens, a very quiet respectable hotel on Eleventh Street and University Place. Many of my Rutherford friends stayed there when in town for a few days, and it was also the resort of at least three ministers whom I knew well. We lived there a long time, for among its many advantages was its proximity to the Astor and the Mercantile Libraries.
The day after my return to New York I went back to my sunny quiet alcove in the Astor, and found the paper and pencils I had left on its table untouched. I lifted them with affection, and tears sprang to my eyes as I looked around the hall, and from far and near received a smile and a nod of welcome. For I was the familiar of most of the alcove students, and always ready to give them the help of my own index in finding the material they wanted. All day long, I had little visits and pleasant words, and at the lunch hour Dr. Strasneky, the superintendent, came and chatted with me about my journey. He said he was glad to see me in my place again. “Every one missed you,” he continued, “we all liked to look up and see you sitting here, as happy and busy as if writing was the most blessed work in the world.”
“So it is, Doctor,” I answered. “If we write good words, and write them well, it is the work God gives to His beloved.”
“You talk mystically,” he said, “but you write plain enough. Don’t go away again.”
As he left me, a tall, pale young man brought his lunch in his hand, and sat down to eat it beside me. It was Wolcott Balestier, the brother of the young lady whom Rudyard Kipling married, and no mean writer of fiction. He was employed in the Patent Department, and he never told me he was writing. He liked to eat his lunch beside me, and discuss the people around, and what they were doing. Sometimes he gave me some 358 of his marshmallows, and I gave him half of my apple. We always had a happy moment over these exchanges, and he used to banter me for being so extravagant as to buy apples, when they were five cents each. Well, when I first came to New York, I had sometimes hesitated between the apple and the ride home. If I got my apple, I had to walk up to Eighteenth Street, if I could do without my apple I could afford the cars home. Always the apple won, for I told myself, “I ought to walk home after sitting so long. It is really a question of health, and not of apples.” I wonder how it would have affected me, if I had been then made sure, that the day was coming when I would have apple trees of many kinds, that were all my own, and apples without stint to eat, and to sell, and to give away. Would it have been good for me to know this? No. It would not. Every one’s experience will teach them that much.