With a glory in His bosom which transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on!
Julia Ward Howe cannot yet vote in America. But her words will be an inspiration to the youth of America on many a hard-fought field for liberty many a century after her successors will vote.
I am faithfully yours,
George F. Hoar.
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell.
In the journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson we find this tribute to his friend, Julia Ward Howe:
“I honour the author of the ‘Battle Hymn’ and of ‘The Flag.’ She was born in the city of New York. I could well wish she were a native of Massachusetts. We have had no such poetess in New England.”
The little bit of State pride voiced in the regret that my mother was not a native of the old Bay State, surprises us in a man of such wide sympathies as Mr. Emerson. In Whittier’s early poems also the local feeling is strongly pronounced. We should remember, however, that during the nineteenth century a good deal of sectional feeling still existed in the different States. The twentieth century finds us more closely united as a people than we have ever been before.