"'The social what?' asked my father.
"'The social tie, sir.'
"'I make small account of that,' said the elder gentleman.
"'I will die in defence of it!' impetuously rejoined the younger.
"My father was so amused at this sally that he spoke of it to an intimate friend: 'He will die in defence of the social tie, indeed!'"
Julia's girlhood evenings were mostly spent at home, with books, needlework, and music, varied by an occasional lecture or concert, or a visit to some one of the uncles' houses in the street, which ought, one would think, to have been called "Ward Street," since at this time almost the whole family connection lived there.
Much as Julia loved her home, her books and music, she longed for some of the gayety which her brothers were enjoying. "I seemed to myself," she says, "like a young damsel of olden times, shut up within an enchanted castle. And I must say, that my dear father, with all his noble generosity and overweening affection, sometimes appeared to me as my jailer."
Once she expostulated with him, begging to be allowed more freedom in going out, and in receiving visits from the friends of her brothers. It may have been on the occasion when he refused to allow the late Louis Rutherford, of venerated memory, to be invited to the house, "because he belonged to the fashionable world."
Her father told her that he had early recognized in her a temperament and imagination over-sensitive to impressions from without, and that his wish had been to guard her from exciting influences until she should appear to him fully able to guard and guide herself.
Alas! the tender father meant to cherish a vestal flame in a vase of alabaster; in reality, he was trying to imprison the lightning in the cloud. When our mother wrote the words above quoted, on the power of music over sensitive natures, she was recalling these days, and perhaps remembering how, denied the society of her natural mates, her sixteen-year-old heart went out in sympathy and compassion to the young harper who came to take part in the trios and quartets, and who fell desperately in love with her and was summarily dismissed in consequence.