Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson never failed me. Once only I ventured alone into the Authors' Club Saturday meeting, and none of my own friends happened to be there. Evidently I was not known. Mr. Higginson saw the situation at once, and coming quickly to me escorted me to a comfortable seat. He ordered two cups of tea with wafers, and beckoned to some delightful men and women to whom he introduced me as his friend Miss Sanborn, thus putting me at my ease. He was also ever patient about my monomania of trying to prove that women possess both wit and humour. He spoke of his first wife as the wittiest woman he had ever known, giving convincing proof. A few men were on my side, but they could be counted on one hand omitting the thumb. But I worked on this theme until I had more than sufficient material for a good-sized volume. If a masculine book reviewer ever alluded to the book, it was with a sneer. He generally left it without a word, as men still ignore the fact when a woman wins in an essay-writing competition against men in her class or gets the verdict for her powers in a mixed debate. At last Mr. Higginson wrote me most kindly to stop battering on that theme. "If any man is such a fool as to insist that women are destitute of wit or humour, then he is so big a fool that it is not worth while to waste your good brains on him. T.W. Higginson." That reproof chilled my ardour. Now you can hardly find any one who denies that women possess both qualities, and it is generally acknowledged that not a few have the added gift of comedy.
As most biographers of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe dwell on her other gifts as philanthropist, poet, and worker for the equality of women with men, I call attention to her effervescent, brilliant wit. Julia Ward Howe was undeniably witty. Her concurrence with a dilapidated bachelor, who retained little but his conceit, was excellent. He said: "It is time now for me to settle down as a married man, but I want so much; I want youth, health, wealth, of course; beauty, grace—" "Yes," she interrupted sympathetically, "you poor man, you do want them all."
Of a conceited young man airing his disbelief at length in a magazine article, she said: "Charles evidently thinks he has invented atheism." After dining with a certain family noted for their chilling manners and lofty exclusiveness, she hurried to the house of a jolly friend, and, seating herself before the glowing fire, sought to regain a natural warmth, explaining: "I have spent three hours with the Mer de Glace, the Tête-Noire, and the Jungfrau, and am nearly frozen."
Pathos and humour as twins are exemplified by her tearful horror over the panorama of Gettysburg, and then by her saying, when urged by Mrs. Livermore to dine with her: "O no! my dear, it's quarter past two, and Mr. Howe will be wild if he does not get—not his burg—but his dinner."
Mrs. Howe's wit never failed her. I once told her I was annoyed by seeing in big headlines in the morning's paper, "Kate Sanborn moralizes," giving my feeble sentiments on some subject which must have been reported by a man whom I met for the first time the evening before at a reception, though I was ignorant of the fact that I was being interviewed. She comforted me by saying: "But after all, how much better that was than if he had announced, 'Kate Sanborn demoralizes.'" Or when Charles Sumner refusing to meet some friends of hers at dinner explained languidly: "Really, Julia, I have lost all my interest in individuals." She retorted, "Why, Charles, God hasn't got as far as that yet!" Once walking in the streets of Boston with a friend she looked up and read on a public building, "Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary." She said: "I did not know there were any charitable eyes and ears in Boston." She showed indomitable courage to the last. A lady in Boston, who lived opposite Mrs. Howe's home on Beacon Street, was sitting at a front window one cold morning in winter, when ice made the steps dangerous. A carriage was driven up to Mrs. Howe's door to take her to the station to attend a federation at Louisville. She came out alone, slipped on the second step, and rolled to the pavement. She was past eighty, but picked herself up with the quickness of a girl, looked at her windows to see if anyone noticed it, then entered the carriage and drove away.
Was ever a child as unselfish as Mary Rice, afterwards Mary Livermore? Sliding on ice was for her a climax of fun. Returning to the house after revelling in this exercise, she exclaimed: "Splendid, splendid sliding." Her father responded: "Yes, Mary, it's great fun, but wretched for shoes."
Those words kept ringing in her ears, and soon she thought how her father and mother had to practise close economy, and she decided: "I ought not to wear out my shoes by sliding, when shoes cost so much," and she did not slide any more. There was no more fun in it for her.
She would get out of bed, when not more than ten years old, and beseech her parents to rise and pray for the children. "It's no matter about me," she once said to them, "if they can be saved, I can bear anything."
She was not more than twelve years old, when she determined to aid her parents by doing work of some kind; so it was settled that she should become a dressmaker. She went at once into a shop to learn the trade, remained for three months, and after that was hired at thirty-seven cents a day to work there three months more. She also applied for work at a clothing store, and received a dozen red flannel shirts to make up at six and a quarter cents a piece. When her mother found this out, she burst into tears, and the womanly child was not allowed to take any more work home. We all know Mrs. Livermore's war record and her power and eloquence as an orator.
I would not say she was a spiritualist, but she felt sure that she often had advice or warning on questions from some source, and always listened, and was saved from accidents and danger. And she said that what was revealed to her as she rested on her couch, between twilight and dusk, would not be believed, it was so wonderful.