“He lies upon a prison bed
With sabre gashes on his head;”
“But, Mother, say what has he done?
Has he not robbed or murdered one?”
“My darling, he has injured none.
To free the wretched slaves
He led a band of chosen men,”
“O, Mother! let us go this day
To that sad prison, far away;
Some comfort we can bring him, sure:
And is he locked up so secure,
We could not get him out?”
“No, darling, he is closely kept.”
Then nearer to my heart she crept,
And, hiding there her beauty, wept
For human misery.
So it is something to be thankful for, that at the age of five I volunteered for active service, in the forlorn hope of rescuing John Brown.
Charles Sumner, dear as a brother to my father, is a very distinct figure in the Twilight of the Gods, towering in mind, character, and stature above other men.
Some ancestral trait of worldliness must have “got by” my parents (the most unworldly people I have ever known) and down to me, for I was rather a mundane youngster. I was much impressed by a certain dignified splendor in Mr. Sumner’s bearing and clothing, which, together with his single eyeglass, like those of “swells” in Punch, made me regard him as the social superior of most of our intimates.
What a contrast to Charles Sumner was John Albion Andrew, the great war governor of Massachusetts and one of Mr. Lincoln’s firm supporters in the darkest days of the Civil War! To me, he was “Edith Andrew’s father”, the cherubic, adorable parent of my intimate friend. The mention of his name evokes memories of the Andrew house at 110 Charles Street. The living room, with its worn leathern sofa where the children were always welcome, was on the ground floor next the dining room. The drawing-room was up one flight; it contained some fine old pieces of colonial furniture, some good pictures, a strong charcoal drawing by William Hunt, a brilliant painting of a troubadour by Babcock, a genre by Elihu Vedder, a number of Japanese cabinets and bibelots.
There were four Andrew children: Bessie, who looked like her father, a studious girl and a good musician; Forrester, a slender blond youth, who later married Hattie Thayer and died young, leaving two charming daughters; Edith, my friend and playmate, who looked like her pretty mother; and a younger son, Harry. Governor Andrew was short and stout, with very curly brown hair and a florid complexion. He had round eyeglasses, from behind which shone kind blue eyes like a baby’s. He wore a black soft felt hat and a black Inverness cape, with a military cord and tassel that took my fancy. I shared many privileges with the Andrew children, among them Sunday-morning excursions to the School Ship, a training ship for juvenile offenders, where we looked curiously at the young sailor boys and wished it was not forbidden to make friends with them. We had the run of the State House, where we spent happy hours romping in the Senate Chamber, under the big codfish. The Seal of State was familiar to us; and one long rainy afternoon, when we waited while the Governor and my father held an endless conference with other serious looking men, we made free with the official pencils and notepaper and made archaic drawings of men and horses. How lightly we flitted and frolicked about the halls and corridors! And yet we had a certain sense of the tense situations which every day faced the Governor and those who labored with him for State and country. Andrew had no easy task, for the pacifists were busy in those days as in these. A letter to “Frank” Bird from my father, written at the time when war was imminent but not declared, contains this sentence:
“Andrew is like a noble horse, harnessed in with mules; how long he will retain his virility, I know not.”