Memories grave and gay

by Florence Howe Hall

In the Presidential election of 1856 we were greatly interested. I remember a political procession in which a dead deer was borne aloft with the device, “Old Buck Is Dead.” The result of the election was not certain for some time. We held on to hope as long as we could. From California no word could come for ten days! I asked my father whether the result there might not change the result. He said, “No. There is enough to settle the hash without California.” James Buchanan, the last President of the slavery era, had indeed been elected.

My father was deeply interested in the struggle for freedom in Kansas. When the colonists from the free states were almost overpowered by the border ruffians, he again called a Faneuil Hall meeting where money was raised and sent to help the settlers. He himself went out there, with great risk to his life.

In the spring of 1857 my mother and I accompanied him on one of his trips to Kansas, but, as I became ill at Louisville, he went on without us. Part of our journey was made on the large steamboats of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Great was the horror of the other women when my mother took out a pack of cards to amuse me. This was owing to the prevalence of gambling in that section of the country. Many years later, in traveling through the Middle West, I found this prejudice had not wholly died out.

There was little to do during the long spring days when the steamboats sailed along the great, quiet rivers. It seemed very strange that every one rushed so to get through the meals quickly. As the service was table d’hôte, it is possible that people hurried in order to get all that they could before the food was removed. My mother always made a practice of eating slowly; hence her excellent digestion.

On this trip our mother purchased a red toy balloon for brother Harry. It was then a novelty and cost something like a dollar. As it was affixed to the tail of one of our dogs, it did not long survive. We had supposed this fascinating object would be a lasting investment.

On our outward journey we stopped overnight at Harper’s Ferry. I remember climbing the hill and looking down upon the valley where the Judas tree was in blossom. Did it bloom in somber foreboding of the blood to be shed there, a little later, in the John Brown raid and in the Civil War?

I remember too vast engines with which we climbed the terrifying slopes of the Alleghanies. No sleeping-cars were then to be seen, but only cars with reclining chairs. Hence the advisability of traveling by water whenever possible.

At Cincinnati, then the principal city of that part of the country and much larger than Chicago, we stayed with Mr. and Mrs. William Greene, the former a cousin of Grandfather Ward. We visited the observatory and the Longworths’ wine-cellar, where I was discovered in a corner, a glass of champagne tilted up against my nose. At the age of eleven I saw no reason why I should not partake of the wine, since they were kind enough to offer it to me.

My memories of Louisville, Kentucky, are sinister. Here we were shown the spot where several negroes had been lynched. We also went to court, where a man was on trial for the murder of his wife. From the appearance of his face, I fancy he must have committed the crime while drunk.

We stayed also at the house of my father’s great friend, Horace Mann, then president of Antioch College, a coeducational institution of Ohio. Mrs. Mann believed in using cream in cooking, rather than butter. If you had no cream, you thickened milk with flour! The Manns were “so glad to see us they almost ate us up”! Mrs. Mann was a woman of intellectual tastes and interested in good works. She was the sister of the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne and of Miss Elizabeth Peabody, who first introduced the kindergarten in America.