After leaving Smith College, I was enjoying commencement festivities in my own home—when another surprising event! Mr. George W. Bartholomew, a graduate of Dartmouth, who was born and brought up in a neighbouring Vermont town, told me when he called that he had established a large and successful school for young ladies in Cincinnati, Ohio, taking a few young ladies to live in his pleasant home. He urged me to go to his school for three months to teach literature, also giving lectures to ladies of the city in his large recitation hall. And he felt sure he could secure me many invitations to lecture in other cities.
Remembering my former Western experience with measles and whooping-cough, I realized that mumps and chicken-pox were still likely to attack me, but the invitation was too tempting, and it was gladly accepted, and I went to Cincinnati in the fall of 1884.
Mrs. Bartholomew I found a charming woman and a most cordial friend. Every day of three months spent in Cincinnati was full of happiness. Mrs. Broadwell, a decided leader in the best social matters, as well as in all public spirited enterprises, I had known years before in Hanover, N.H. Her brother, General William Haines Lytle, had been slain at Chickamauga during the Civil War, just in the full strength and glory of manhood. He wrote that striking poem, beginning: "I am dying, Egypt, dying." Here are two verses of his one poem:
As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian!
Glorious sorceress of the Nile,
Light the path to Stygian horrors
With the splendors of thy smile.
Give the Cæsar crowns and arches,
Let his brow the laurel twine;
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.
I am dying, Egypt, dying;
Hark! the insulting foeman's cry,
They are coming! quick, my falchion!
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah! no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell—
Isis and Osiris guard thee!
Cleopatra, Rome, farewell!
He was engaged to Miss Sarah Doremus, a sister of Professor Doremus of New York. After the terrible shock of his sudden death she never married, but devoted her life to carrying out her sainted mother's missionary projects, once taking a trip alone around the world to visit the missionary stations started by her mother.
As soon as I had arrived at Mr. Bartholomew's, Mrs. Broadwell gave me a dinner. Six unmarried ladies and seven well-known bachelors were the guests, as she wished to give me just what I needed, an endorsement among her own friends. The result was instant and potent.
Everyone at that dinner did something afterwards to entertain me. I was often invited to the opera, always had a box (long-stemmed roses for all the ladies), also to dinner and lunches. If anyone in the city had anything in the way of a rare collection, from old engravings to rare old books, an evening was devoted to showing the collection to me with other friends. One lady, Miss Mary Louise McLaughlin, invited me to lunch with her alone. Her brother, a bachelor lawyer, had at that time the finest private library in the city. She was certainly the most versatile in her accomplishments of anyone I have ever known. She had painted the best full-length portrait of Judge Longworth, father of the husband of Alice Roosevelt. She was a china painter to beat the Chinese, and author of four books on the subject. She was an artist in photography; had a portfolio of off-hand sketches of street gamins, newsboys, etc., full of life and expression. She brought the art of under glaze in china-firing to this country and had discovered a method of etching metal into fine woods for bedroom furniture. She was an expert at wood-carving, taking lessons from Ben Pitman. Was fond of housekeeping and made a success of it in every way. Anything else? Yes, she showed me pieces of her exquisite embroidery and had made an artistic and wholly sane "crazy-quilt" so much in vogue at that time. Her own beautiful china was all painted and finished by herself. As I left her, I felt about two feet high, with a pin head. And yet she was free from the slightest touch of conceit.
Miss Laura MacDonald (daughter of Alexander MacDonald, the business man who took great risks with Mr. John D. Rockefeller in borrowing money to invest largely in oil fields) was my pupil in the school, and through her I became acquainted with her lovely mother, who invited me to her home at Clifton, just out of Cincinnati, to lecture to a select audience of her special friends.
My lectures at Mr. Bartholomew's school were very well attended. Lists of my subjects were sent about widely, and when the day came for my enthusiastic praise of Christopher North (John Wilson), a sweet-faced old lady came up to the desk and placed before me a large bunch of veritable Scotch heather for which she had sent to Scotland.