Here life circled ever faster and faster, fuller and fuller. Our father, though beginning to feel the weight of years, had not yet begun to "take in sail," but continued to pile labor on labor, adding the new while never abandoning the old. For our mother clubs, societies, studies were multiplying, while for both family cares and interests were becoming more and more complicated. The children were now mostly grown. To the mother's constant thought and anxiety about their teeth, their hair, their eyes, their music, their dancing—to say nothing of the weightier matters of the law—was added the consideration of their ball dresses, their party slippers, their partners. She went with the daughters to ball and assembly; if they danced, she was happy; if not, there was grief behind the cheerful smile, and a sigh was confided to the Journal next day.
Romance hovered over No. 32 Mount Vernon Street. The Greek lessons which were to mean so much to Julia and Laura were brought to a sudden end by the engagement of Julia to the Greek teacher, Michael Anagnos. Florence (who was now housekeeper, lightening our mother's cares greatly) was already engaged to David Prescott Hall; while Laura's engagement to Henry Richards was announced shortly after Julia's.
The three marriages followed at intervals of a few months. Meantime Harry, whose youthful pranks had been the terror of both parents, had graduated from Harvard, and was now, after two years[69] at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, beginning his chosen work as a metallurgist.
She wrote of this beloved son:—
God gave my son a palace,
And a kingdom to control;
The palace of his body,
The kingdom of his soul.
In childhood and boyhood this "palace" was inhabited by a tricksy sprite. At two years Harry was pulling the tails of the little dogs on the Roman Pincio; at eighteen he was filling the breasts of the college authorities with the same emotions inspired by his father in the previous generation.
"Howe," said the old President of Brown University, when the Chevalier called to pay his respects on his return from Greece, "I am afraid of you now! There may be a fire-cracker under my chair at this moment!"
Once out of college, it fared with the son as with the father. The current of restless energy hitherto devoted to "monkey shines" (as the Doctor called them) was now turned into another channel. Work, hardly less arduous and unremitting than his father's, became the habit of his life. Science claimed him, and her he served with the same singleness of purpose, the same intensity of devotion with which his parents served the causes that claimed them. He married, in 1874, Fannie, daughter of Willard Gay, of Troy, New York.
We love to recall the time at this house on Beacon Hill. We remember it as a cheerful house, ringing with song and laughter, yet with a steady undercurrent of work and thought; the "precious time," not to be interrupted; the coming and going of grave men and earnest women, all bent on high and hopeful errands, all seeking our two Wise Ones for counsel, aid, sympathy; the coming and going also of a steady stream of "lame ducks" of both sexes and all nationalities, all requiring help, most of them getting it; yet, as ever, the father leaving State Charities and Reforms, the mother flying from Fichte or Xenophon, at any real or fancied need of any child. It is thus that we love to think of No. 32 Mount Vernon Street, the last of the many homes in which we were all together.