Julia Ward Howe
At this time he was doing pioneer work in the education of the blind. As director of the Perkins Institution, in Boston, he was not only laboring to make more efficient this first school for the blind in America, but he was also going about through the country with his pupils to show something of what might be done in the way of practical training, in order to induce the legislatures of the several States to provide similar institutions for those deprived of sight. In particular, Dr. Howe's success in teaching Laura Bridgman, a blind deaf-mute, was the marvel of the civilized world.
One day, when Longfellow and Sumner were calling upon Miss Ward, they suggested driving over to the Perkins Institution. When they arrived the hero of the hour—and the place—was absent. Before they left, however, Mr. Sumner, who had been looking out of the window, suddenly exclaimed, "There is Howe now on his black horse!" Miss Ward looked with considerable eagerness in her curiosity, and saw, as she afterward said, "a noble rider on a noble steed."
In this way the Chevalier rode into the life of the fair lady. As the knight of the ballad swung the maiden of his choice to the croup of his charger and galloped off with her in the face of her helpless kinsmen, so this serious philanthropist and reformer carried off the lovely society favorite, in spite of the fact that he cared not at all for her gay, care-free world, and was, moreover, twenty years her senior. The following portion of a letter which Miss Ward wrote to her brother Sam shows how completely she was won:
The Chevalier says truly—I am the captive of his bow and spear. His true devotion has won me from the world and from myself. The past is already fading from my sight; already I begin to live with him in the future, which shall be as calmly bright as true love can make it. I am perfectly satisfied to sacrifice to one so noble and earnest the day-dreams of my youth.
Dr. Howe and his bride went to Europe on their wedding-trip—on the same steamer with Horace Mann and his newly made wife, Mary Peabody, the sister of Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne. The teacher of Laura Bridgman was well known in England through Dickens's "American Notes," and people were anxious to do him honor. Dickens not only invited the interesting Americans to dinner, but he offered to pilot Dr. Howe and his brother reformer, Horace Mann, about darkest London and show them the haunts of misery and crime which no one knew better than the author of "Oliver Twist," "Little Dorrit," and "Bleak House." The following note, written in Dickens's characteristic hand, shows the zest with which the great novelist undertook these expeditions and his boyish love of fun:
My dear Howe,—Drive to-night to St. Giles's Church. Be there at half past 11—and wait. Somebody will put his head into the coach after a Venetian and mysterious fashion, and breathe your name. Follow that man. Trust him to the death.
So no more at present from
Ninth June, 1843. The Mask.
It had been the plan to go from England to Berlin; but Dr. Howe, who had once incurred the displeasure of the king of Prussia by giving aid to certain Polish refugees, and had, indeed, been held for five weeks in a German prison, was now excluded from the country as a "dangerous person." This greatly amused Horace Mann, who remarked, "When we consider that His Majesty has 200,000 men constantly under arms, and can in need increase the number to two million, we begin to appreciate the estimation in which he holds your single self." When, some years later, the king sent Dr. Howe a medal in recognition of his work for the blind, the Chevalier declared laughingly: "It is worth just what I was obliged to pay for board and lodging while in the Berlin prison. His Majesty is magnanimous!"
After traveling through Switzerland, Italy, and France, the Howes stopped for a second visit to England, where they were entertained for a time by the parents of Florence Nightingale. A warm attachment sprang up between them and the earnest young woman of twenty-four.