Memories grave and gay

by Florence Howe Hall

He must have been very young when he assured his sister that the pump had a very agreeable taste on a frosty morning. The confiding girl followed his suggestion, but found it difficult to remove her tongue from the cold iron.

Among his many pranks at college, the most original was a nocturnal visit to a fellow-collegian who had a store of good things in his room. “Sam” Howe entered the window as a ghost and carried off a turkey. When the unfortunate owner of the feast waked up and looked out of the window, he saw a dim white figure rising in the air. Later on, the bones of the bird neatly picked were laid in front of his door. The boy was greatly worried and fully convinced that some supernatural being had visited his room. The affair so preyed on his mind that his fellow-students finally explained the joke.

Strange to say, my father did not have much patience with his son when brother Harry displayed at Harvard the same kind of mischievous ingenuity. They had both inherited this quality from Grandfather Howe if we may judge by the following story.

Having promised to pay Sammy a penny for every rat he caught, the old gentleman surreptitiously withdrew the rodents from the trap. But Sammy was quite equal to the occasion. He parried by making the same animal serve for several mornings, until his father exclaimed, “Sammy, that rat begins to smell!”

Grandfather Howe was very fond of building, a taste inherited by his descendants. When there was a question of his erecting a house on her property, his second wife said to him, “But your children would never permit it.” The old gentleman’s wavering resolve at once became fixed. He had no notion of listening to dictation from his sons and daughters. So he built the house, which, of course, became the property of our step-grandmother and went ultimately to her heirs, instead of to his own descendants, the Howes.

My father always cherished the memory of his own mother, Patty Gridley, who was a very beautiful woman, of a lovely and sympathetic nature.

He liked to see his daughters sitting at their needlework. “It reminds me of my mother,” he would say. He could not bear to see bread wasted, because of her early teachings of thrift. On the top of his father’s house, there had been a cask or vat into which the lees of wine were thrown and left to ferment into vinegar.

With our mother, also, we had a delightful comradeship. Having been brought up with undue strictness herself, she resolved that her children should not suffer in the same way. Hence we had a happy familiarity with our parents; yet we felt their superiority to ourselves. Mother taught us many things, after the fashion of mothers—lessons in the conduct of life and in social observance, of course. To be considerate of others, to enjoy small and simple pleasures, to take good things in moderation—these were a part of her philosophy. If we made a noise after the baby was asleep, we instantly heard her whispered warning, “Hush!” Indeed, it was an offense in her eyes to disturb any one’s rest.

Her efforts to teach us punctuality were not altogether successful. There were dreadful moments when sister Julia and I were so late in dressing for a party that Mamma would be reduced almost to despair. Sister Laura saw these things and, being a wise little maiden, resolved that when her turn came to go into society she would be punctual. She carried out her resolution.

When we were old enough, our mother took us to the Church of the Disciples, by my father’s desire. He himself went only occasionally, but then Papa had a church of his own, which we sometimes attended. In the great hall of the Institution for the Blind, he held at six o’clock every morning a brief service for the pupils. The deep reverence of his voice as he read a lesson from the Bible, the solemn tones of the organ, the sweetness and beauty of the fresh young voices as the blind larks suddenly burst forth into their morning hymn of praise, were things never to be forgotten. Truly Papa’s church was not like any other!