This was the mating season for my sisters and brother, the serious business of life for the young. That day, when I went down the harbor to meet the returning family, I saw for the first time Michael Anagnostopoulos, the young Greek my father brought from Athens as his secretary. I see now the dark bearded face, the brilliant oriental eyes of Anagnos, so we afterwards called him, as he stood on the deck of the steamer, wrapped in a black and white plaid shawl after the fashion of his country. Pale from the long voyage, the dreadful seasickness, his great eyes dwelt pensively now on the fast approaching shore, now on the face of Julia. There was no one in our circle wise enough to foresee what the next few years were to bring about. Anagnos taught my mother Greek, served my father faithfully, ended by marrying “our eldest”, and becoming the assistant and successor of my father as Director of the Institution for the Blind. While he became an American citizen, he ranked as leader among the Greeks of Boston.
Flossie’s engagement was a boy-and-girl affair. When David Hall was fourteen he declared he would marry Flossie Howe. The news of their engagement was broken to me during the family’s absence. I took it hard, as Flossie now represented home, family, all I held dear. In the shock of discovery, I felt a desperate sense that I had lost my last friend, but as I was very fond of David, I soon made up my mind to accept the new order. As long as he lived he was my stanch friend, one of the people I leaned upon, one who never failed me in any difficult moment.
In the winter of 1868 we were living in our Boylston Place house, Number 19, when the family fire occurred on the coldest night of the year. All the household had gone to bed save Mama, who, just as she was about to put out her light, “thought she smelt smoke.” She roused my father; he soon discovered that this time the house really was on fire. Harry now came in from a dance and ran out in his dress suit, without an overcoat, to give the alarm. Laura and I dressed quickly and came down from our room at the top of the house. There came a violent ringing of the doorbell; Laura ran to answer it. I can see her now flying down the stairs, her long dark hair, a dusky veil, hanging about her. She opened the door to find our neighbors, the five Richards brothers, who, having smelt the smoke, came to give the alarm. They were all fine looking men, Frank the paper miller, George the lawyer, John the soldier, Robert the scientist, and Henry the youngest, a Harvard student in our own Harry’s class.
What follows is confused. I see one of the Richards brothers whirling an ax above his head, smiting asunder the dividing wall; see all of them serviceable and energetic in saving our house and their own from destruction. I remember best the boyish face of Henry the youngest. It is impressed upon my memory that the night he and his brothers put out our fire, a flame was kindled in his heart that has kept it warm and tender from that day to this.
Among the pleasures of this time were frequent journeys with my father to the public institutions which, as Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities, it was his duty to visit. I have slept in almost every poorhouse and insane asylum in the State. Our visits were unannounced. As his days were so busy, we left Boston when work was over, took an afternoon train, arriving at our destination in the early evening. This gave my father the chance to see the institution in its lying down and getting up, a time when shortcomings are more evident than during hours when trustees and visitors may safely be expected. I have the pleasantest recollection of these trips and the institutions visited. Tewkesbury Almshouse was a source of a good deal of worry to my father; we were there often and at the Asylum for the Insane at Taunton. While Papa was inspecting buildings and talking with the inmates, I was left with the matron. I knew every scholar at the School for the Blind, was on familiar terms with all the inmates of the School for Idiots, of which my father was director. He kept me from contact with the inmates of these other institutions, for two reasons, I fancy. First, for their own sakes, he would have shielded them from a child’s frank brutal curiosity; secondly he would avoid my receiving any painful impression from forlorn paupers or tragic lunatics. It was different with the idiots: they were his special charge; that was a family matter. When people who know little of my father ask me to tell them about him, I hesitate and stammer; there is so much to tell, the story of his life and his service to God’s weakest creatures is almost phenomenal! Of all his manifold services to humanity, for me the greatest was his care for the feeble-minded children of New England, a care from which only death released him.
Among certain faded old papers I came lately upon a sheet in my own immature handwriting, kept all these years by Laura; it proved to be the first article I ever wrote for publication. I am quite sure, however, that it never saw the light. The article is an appreciation of a certain English opera company playing in Boston during the season of 1867.
I think it must have been in the year 1871 that I spent a week at the White House during the presidency of General Grant. At this time my father was much in Washington to consult with the President touching the proposed annexation of the Republic of Santo Domingo to the United States. The proposal of annexation had come from the Dominican President, Baez, in the year 1869. Grant favored the plan and appointed a commission to visit the island and report to Congress upon its condition and the feeling of the people about the proposed annexation. The three Commissioners were my father, the Honorable Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, and Andrew D. White, President of Cornell University. My father was the leading spirit of the trio, and it was he who wrote the interesting report of their investigations.
I had accompanied my parents to Washington, and Mrs. Grant kindly invited me to stay at the White House, where I played happily with Nellie Grant, who was about my age. The experience was deeply interesting. Unfortunately I have preserved no notes of this visit and have only my memory to depend upon. What comes back to me was the kindness and simplicity of General Grant, the simple wholesome family life I found at the White House. Nellie was a pretty and charming girl. I have only the pleasantest memories of her. A day at Mt. Vernon was one of the interesting experiences. General Horace Porter was at that time the President’s private secretary; he was very kind in helping to arrange various expeditions which I greatly enjoyed.
My clearest memory of General Grant is of one rainy evening which he passed quietly at home. He sat at a desk smoking a big cigar, and I noticed that he kept continually writing what seemed a short sentence on a series of cards which he placed in a box before him. Mrs. Grant explained to me that whenever he had a spare moment he wrote his name, so that his secretary always had a good supply of autographs to send to people who asked for them. He was very tired that night; his strong, kind, shy face showed lines of deep fatigue; faithful even in little things, he wrote card after card for the relentless autograph fiends.
The honest collector is a useful person, but let all distinguished people, especially in old age, beware of the dishonest one. During my mother’s last years she was systematically “worked” for signed verses of her “Battle Hymn”, which I have since seen offered for sale. When I remember the labor with which she painfully wrote out the verses in the years when her waning strength was so precious, I grow savage against the whole sponging tribe.