CHAPTER XVII
Interesting adventure leading to acquaintance with Ralph Waldo Emerson—Marie receives the degree of M.D.—The faculty presents her, as a gift, with the note which she had given in payment for her lecture fees—Reflections: direct benefit which the men students derived from co-education; tribute to her college teachers, especially Drs. Delamater and Kirtland. (Twenty-six years of age: 1856.)
This second year of my stay in Cleveland was therefore a most valuable episode of my life, turning all my views topsy-turvy, uprooting me, so to say, from all German conservatism and throwing me into this chaotic medley of contradictions.
However, the one straight aim of preparing myself for the examinations leading to a medical diploma kept me from any alarming detour in my progress of evolution, and the year closed without any other than the usual events in the course of life, as, for instance, the birth of a nephew which arrived in December and which I superintended, my brother-in-law defraying my expenses to and from New York.
But I did have one very interesting adventure. And one daughter, Virginia Vaughan, who had been really the means of my being asked to become the guest of the house, was the leader in this. Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson had lectured in Cleveland and he was as usual a guest of Mrs. Vaughan; she had been his pupil when a young lady and at school in Boston and quite an intimacy existed between them. From Cleveland, Mr. Emerson went to Hudson, ten miles away, the real seat of the Western Reserve College, and he was advertised to lecture there at six in the evening.
Virginia, anxious to hear Mr. Emerson again, came to the medical college which closed at four in the afternoon, and proposed our going to Hudson on the half-past four o’clock train to return on the one leaving there at nine. On arriving at the Hudson lecture hall, we found a notice posted on the door informing the public that the lecture would be at seven o’clock.
We went back to the station intending to return to Cleveland and there we found there was no train until the one at nine o’clock. The station was a crude, cold room, having only an insignificant little stove, so Virginia proposed that we find Mr. Emerson who, she knew, was at the house of his cousin, Professor Emerson, a member of the college faculty.
It was a cold, bitter day with plenty of snow everywhere, so we could do nothing better than seek the house of the Professor. There we were made so cordially welcome by Mrs. Emerson that we forgot even our very improper appearance in our common everyday working attire. These kind hosts would not allow us to return in that last train but telegraphed to the family in Cleveland of our whereabouts, insisting that we remain with them over Sunday, there being no trains till Monday morning at eight o’clock.
That evening, after returning from the lecture and while partaking of a cup of hot tea, we noticed a bright rosy light upon the parlor windows. Thinking it was an exhibition of “northern lights,” we all started for the door. Alas! it was a great conflagration of magnificent hues of dark red flame.
We went to see the spectacle from a little hill between the house and the fire where hundreds of people were already assembled, all of whom were warmed and pleased by the wonderful flames, without any one making any effort to extinguish them or to try to prevent their spreading from the burning cheese storehouse to the adjacent factory. Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson asked in astonishment of the men standing nearest, “Why don’t you try to extinguish the fire?” One replied in a very phlegmatic way, “Because we have no firemen or machines.” While another added, “Even if we had, there would be no use for them as we have no water.” The little town of Hudson, with its pretty streets and with a college aspiring to become soon a university, was without water. This seemed impossible to believe, yet it was true, as Professor Emerson assured us.