And so I was roused to try "Our Rab and His Friends," which was kindly mailed by Miss Phelps to Mr. Ford, the editor, with a wish that he accept the little story, which he did, sending a welcome check and asking for more contributions. I kept a place there for several years.
In Miss Phelps's case, one must believe in heredity and partly in Huxley's statement that "we are automata propelled by our ancestors." Her grandfather, Moses Stuart, was Professor of Sacred Literature at Andover, a teacher of Greek and Latin, and a believer in that stern school of theology and teleology. It was owing perhaps to a combination of severity in climatic and in intellectual environment that New England developed an austere type of scholars and theologians. Their mental vision was focused on things remote in time and supernatural in quality, so much so that they often overlooked the simple and natural expression of their obligation to things nearby. It sometimes happened that their tender and amiable characteristics were better known to learned colleagues with whom they were in intellectual sympathy, than to their own wives and children. Sometimes their finer and more lovable qualities were first brought to the attention of their families when some distinguished professor or divine feelingly pronounced a funeral eulogy.
It's a long way from the stern Moses Stuart, who believed firmly in hell and universal damnation and who, with Calvin, depicted infants a span long crawling on the floor of hell, to his gifted granddaughter, who, although a member of an evangelical church, wrote: "Death and heaven could not seem very different to a pagan from what they seem to me." Her heart was nearly broken by the sudden death of her lover on the battlefield. "Roy, snatched away in an instant by a dreadful God, and laid out there in the wet and snow—in the hideous wet and snow—never to kiss him, never to see him any more." Her Gates Ajar when it appeared was considered by some to be revolutionary and shocking, if not wicked. Now, we gently smile at her diluted, sentimental heaven, where all the happy beings have what they most want; she to meet Roy and find the same dear lover; another to have a piano; a child to get ginger snaps. I never quite fancied the restriction of musical instruments in visions of heaven to harps alone. They at first blister the fingers until they are calloused. The afflicted washerwoman, whose only daughter had just died, was not in the least consoled by the assurance that Melinda was perfectly happy, playing a harp in heaven. "She never was no musicianer, and I'd rather see her a-settin' by my tub as she used to set when I was a-wringin' out the clothes from the suds, than to be up there a-harpin'." Very different, as a matter of fact, were the instruments, more or less musical, around which New England families gathered on Sunday evenings for the singing of hymns and "sacred songs." Yet there was often real faith and sincere devotion pedalled out of the squeaking old melodeon.
Professor Stuart's eldest daughter, Elizabeth Stuart, married Austin Phelps in 1842; who was then pastor of Pine Street Church in Boston. Their daughter was born in Boston in 1844, and named Mary Gray Phelps. They moved to Andover in 1848, where two sons were born. Mrs. Phelps, who died when Mary was seven years old, was bright, interesting, unusual. She wrote Tales of New England, chiefly stories of clerical life; also Sunnyside Sketches, remarkably popular at the time. Her nom de plume was "Trusta." Professor Phelps married her sister Mary, for his second wife. She lived only a year, and it was after her death that Mary changed her name to that of her mother, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Professor Phelps had a most nervous temperament, so much so that he could not sleep if a cricket chirped in his bedroom, and the stamping of a horse in a nearby stable destroyed all hope of slumber.
Miss Phelps inherited her mother's talent for writing stories, also her humour and her sensitive, loving nature, as is seen by her works on Temperance Reforms, Abuses of Factory Operators, and her arraignment of the vivisectionist. Later, when I was living at the "Abandoned Farm," she had a liking for the farm I now own, about half a mile farther on from my first agricultural experiment. She called on me, and begged me as woman for woman in case she bought the neighbouring farm, to seclude all my animals and fowls from 5 P.M. till 10 A.M. each morning, as she must get her sleep, for, like her father, she was a life-long sufferer from insomnia. I would have done this if it were possible to repress the daybreak cries natural to a small menagerie which included chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese, besides two peacocks and four guinea fowls.
But to return to the Youth's Companion. When I found it impossible to write regularly for Mr. Ford, he made a change for the better, securing Mr. Hezekiah Butterworth, a poet, historian, and author of the Zigzag Series, which had such large sales. Happening to be in Boston, I called at the office and said to Mr. Ford: "It grieves me a bit to see my column taken by someone else, and what a strange pen name—'Hezekiah Butterworth.'"
"But that is his own name," said the editor.
"Indeed; I am afraid I shall hate that Hezzy."
"Well, just try it; come with me to his work-room."
When we had gone up one flight, Mr. Ford opened a door, where a gentle, sweet-faced young man of slender build was sitting at a table, the floor all around him literally strewn with at least three hundred manuscripts, each one to be examined as a possible winner in a contest for a five-hundred-dollar prize story. Both English and American authors had competed. He was, as De Quincey put it, "snowed up." Then my friend said with a laugh, "Miss Sanborn has come to see Hezzy whom she fancies she shall hate." A painfully awkward introduction, but Mr. Butterworth laughed heartily, and made me very welcome, and from that time was ever one of my most faithful friends, honouring my large Thanksgiving parties by his presence for many years.