| Page | ||
| [Green Peace] | [Frontispiece] | |
| [Maud] | [43] | |
| [Laura was found in the Sugar-Barrel] | [53] | |
| [Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe] | [79] | |
| [The Doctor to the Rescue!] | [97] | |
| [Julia Ward and her Brothers, as Children] | [109] | |
| (From a miniature by Miss Anne Hall.) | ||
| [Lieut.-Colonel Samuel Ward] | [117] | |
| (Born Nov. 17, 1756; Died Aug. 16, 1832.) | ||
| [Julia Ward] | [125] | |
| [Julia Ward Howe] | [131] | |
| [Julia Romana Howe] | [149] | |
| [Julia Ward Howe] | [157] | |
| (From a recent photograph.) | ||
| [Laura E. Richards] | [177] | |
WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE.
CHAPTER I.
OURSELVES.
There were five of us. There had been six, but the Beautiful Boy was taken home to heaven while he was still very little; and it was good for the rest of us to know that there was always one to wait for and welcome us in the Place of Light to which we should go some day. So, as I said, there were five of us here,—Julia Romana, Florence, Harry, Laura, and Maud. Julia was the eldest. She took her second name from the ancient city in which she was born, and she was as beautiful as a soft Italian evening,—with dark hair, clear gray eyes, perfect features, and a complexion of such pure and wonderful red and white as I have never seen in any other face. She had a look as if when she came away from heaven she had been allowed to remember it, while others must forget; and she walked in a dream always, of beauty and poetry, thinking of strange things. Very shy she was, very sensitive. When Flossy (this was Florence’s home name) called her “a great red-haired giant,” she wept bitterly, and reproached her sister for hurting her feelings. Julia knew everything, according to the belief of the younger children. What story was there she could not tell? She it was who led the famous before-breakfast walks, when we used to start off at six o’clock and walk to the Yellow Chases’ (we never knew any other name for them; it was the house that was yellow, not the people) at the top of the long hill, or sometimes even to the windmill beyond it, where we could see the miller at work, all white and dusty, and watch the white sails moving slowly round. And on the way Julia told us stories, from Scott or Shakspere; or gave us the plot of some opera, “Ernani” or “Trovatore,” with snatches of song here and there. “Ai nostri monti ritornaremo,” whenever I hear this familiar air ground out by a hand-organ, everything fades from my eyes save a long white road fringed with buttercups and wild marigolds, and five little figures, with rosy hungry faces, trudging along, and listening to the story of the gypsy queen and her stolen troubadour.
Julia wrote stories herself, too,—very wonderful stories, we all thought, and, indeed, I think so still. She began when she was a little girl, not more than six or seven years old. There lies beside me now on the table a small book, about five inches square, bound in faded pink and green, and filled from cover to cover with writing in a cramped, childish hand. It is a book of novels and plays, written by our Julia before she was ten years old; and I often think that the beautiful and helpful things she wrote in her later years were hardly more remarkable than these queer little romances. They are very sentimental; no child of eight, save perhaps Marjorie Fleming, was ever so sentimental as Julia,—“Leonora Mayre; A Tale,” “The Lost Suitor,” “The Offers.” I must quote a scene from the last-named play.
Scene I.
Parlor at Mrs. Evans’s. Florence Evans alone.
Enter Annie.
A. Well, Florence, Bruin is going to make an offer, I suppose.