Three Years at Smith College--Appreciation of Its Founder--A
Successful Lecture Tour--My Trip to Alaska.
"There is nothing so certain as the unexpected," and "if you fit
yourself for the wall, you will be put in."
I was in danger of being spoiled by kindness in New York and the
surrounding towns, if not in danger of a breakdown from constant
activity, literary and social, with club interests and weekend visits
at homes of delightful friends on the Hudson, when I was surprised and
honoured by a call from President L. Clark Seelye of Smith College,
Northampton, Massachusetts, who invited me to take the position of
teacher of English Literature at that college.
I accepted, and remained at Northampton for three years, from
1880-1883. It was a busy life. I went on Saturday afternoons to a
class of married ladies at Mrs. Terhune's (Marion Harland) in
Springfield, Massachusetts, where her husband was a clergyman in one
of the largest churches in that city. I also published several books,
and at least two Calendars, while trying to make the students at Smith
College enthusiastic workers in my department.
Mrs. Terhune was a versatile and entertaining woman, a most practical
housekeeper; and she could tell the very best ghost story I ever
heard, for it is of a ghost who for many years was the especial
property of her father's family.
When I gave evening lectures at Mrs. Terhune's while at Smith College,
I was accustomed to spend the night there. She always insisted upon
rising early to see that the table was set properly for me, and she
often would bring in something specially tempting of her own cooking.
A picture I can never forget is that of Doctor Terhune who, before
offering grace at meals, used to stretch out a hand to each of his
daughters, and so more closely include them in his petition.
I used no special text-book while at Smith College, and requested my
class to question me ten minutes at the close of every recitation.
Each girl brought a commonplace book to the recitation room to take
notes as I talked. Some of them showed great power of expression while
writing on the themes provided. There was a monthly examination,
often largely attended by friends out of town. I still keep up my
interest in my pupils of that day. One of them told me that they
thought at first I was currying popularity, I was so cordial and even
affectionate, but they confessed they were mistaken.
Under President Seelye's wise management, Smith College has taken a
high position, and is constantly growing better. The tributes to his
thirty-seven years in service when he resigned prove how thoroughly he
was appreciated. I give a few extracts:
We wish to record the fact that this has been, in a unique
degree, your personal work. If you had given the original sum
which called the College into being, and had left its
administration to others, you would have been less truly the
creator of the institution than you have been through your
executive efficiency. Your plans have seldom been revised by
the Board of Trustees, and your selection of teachers has
brought together a faculty which is at least equal to the best
of those engaged in the education of women. You have secured
for the teachers a freedom of instruction which has inspired
them to high attainment and fruitful work. You, with them, have
given to the College a commanding position in the country, and
have secured for it and for its graduates universal respect.
The deep foundations for its success have been intellectual and
spiritual, and its abiding work has been the building up of
character by contact with character.
Fortunate in her location, fortunate in her large minded
trustees, fortunate in the loyal devotedness of her faculty and
supremely fortunate has our College been in the consecrated
creative genius of her illustrious president. Bringing to his
task a noble ideal, with rare sagacity as an administrator;
with financial and economic skill rarely found in a scholar and
idealist, but necessary to foster into fullest fruitfulness the
slender pecuniary resources then at hand; with tact and suavity
which made President Seelye's "no," if no were needed, more
gracious than "yes" from others; with the force which grasps
difficulties fearlessly; with dignified scholarship and a
courtly manner, the master builder of our College, under whose
hand the little one has become a thousand and the small one a
strong republic, has achieved the realization of his high ideal
and is crowned with honour and affection.
He has made one ashamed of any but the highest motives, and has
taught us that sympathy and love for mankind are the traits for
which to strive. The ideals of womanly life which he instilled
will ever be held high before us.
There are many distinguished qualities which a college
president must possess. He must be idealist, creator, executor,
financier, and scholar. President Seelye--is all these--but he
had another and a rarer gift which binds and links these
qualities together, as the chain on which jewels are
strung--President Seelye had immense capacity for work and
patient attention for details. It is this unusual combination
which has given us a great College, and has given to our
president a unique position among educators.
I realize that I must at times have been rather a trying proposition
to President Seelye for I was placed in an entirely new world, and
having been almost wholly educated by my father, by Dartmouth
professors, and by students of the highest scholarship, I never knew
the mental friction and the averaging up and down of those accustomed
to large classes. I gained far more there than I gave, for I learned
my limitations, or some of them, and to try to stick closely to my own
work, to be less impulsive, and not offer opinions and suggestions,
unasked, undesired, and in that early stage of the college,
objectionable. Still, President Seelye writes to me: "I remember you
as a very stimulating teacher of English Literature, and I have often
heard your pupils, here and afterwards, express great interest in your
instruction."
The only "illuminating" incident in my three years at Smith College
was owing to my wish to honour the graduating reception of the Senior
class. I pinned my new curtains carefully away, put some candles in
the windows, leaving two young ladies of the second year to see that
all was safe. The house was the oldest but one in the town; it
harboured two aged paralytics whom it would be difficult, if not
dangerous, to remove. Six students had their home there. As my
fire-guards heard me returning with my sister and some gentlemen of
the town, they left the room, the door slammed, a breeze blew the
light from the candles to the curtains, and in an instant the curtains
were ablaze.
And now the unbelievable sequel. The room seemed all on fire in five
minutes. Next, the overhead beam was blazing. I can tell you that the
fire was extinguished by those gentlemen, and no one ever knew we had
been so near a conflagration until three years later when the kind
lady of the house wrote to me: "Dear Friend, did you ever have a fire
in your room? In making it over I found some wood badly scorched." I
have the most reliable witnesses, or you would never have believed it.
In the morning my hostess said to the girls assembled at breakfast:
"Miss Sanborn is always rather noisy when she has guests, but I never
did hear such a hullabaloo as she made last evening."
It is certain that President Seelye deserves all the appreciation and
affectionate regard he received. He has won his laurels and he needs
the rest which only resignation could bring. The college is equally
fortunate in securing as his successor, Marion LeRoy Burton, who in
the coming years may lead the way through broader paths, to greater
heights, always keeping President Seelye's ideal of the truly womanly
type, in a distinctively woman's college.
As the Rev. Dr. John M. Greene writes me (the clergyman who suggested
to Sophia Smith that she give her money to found a college for women,
and who at eighty-five years has a perfectly unclouded mind): "I want
to say that my ambition for Smith College is that it shall be a real
women's college. Too many of our women's colleges are only men's
colleges for women."
I desire now to add my tribute to that noble woman, Sophia Smith of
Hatfield, Massachusetts.
On April 18, 1796, the town of Hatfield, in town meeting assembled,
"voiced to set up two schools, for the schooling of girls four months
in the year." The people of that beautiful town seemed to have heard
the voice of their coming prophetess, commissioned to speak a word for
woman's education, which the world has shown itself ready to hear.
In matters of heredity, Sophia Smith was fortunate. Her paternal
grandmother, Mary Morton, was an extraordinary woman. After the death
of her husband, she became the legal guardian of her six sons, all
young, cared for a large farm, and trained her boys to be useful and
respected in the community.
Sophia Smith was born in Hatfield, August 27, 1796; just six months
before Mary Lyon was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, about seventeen
miles distant. Sophia remembered her grandmother and said: "I looked
up to my grandmother with great love and reverence. She, more than
once, put her hands on my head and said, 'I want you should grow up,
and be a good woman, and try to make the world better.'" And her
mother was equally religious, efficient, kind to the poor, sympathetic
but not impulsive. Sophia lived in a country farmhouse near the
Connecticut River for sixty-eight years. She was sadly hampered
physically. One of the historians of Hatfield writes me:
Her infirmity of deafness was troublesome to some extent when
she was young, making her shy and retiring. At forty she was
absolutely incapable of hearing conversation. She also was lame
in one foot and had a withered hand. In spite of this, I think
she was an active and spirited girl, about like other girls.
She was very fond of social intercourse, especially later in
life when my father knew her, but this intercourse was confined
to a small circle. Doctor Greene speaks of her timidity also. I
know of no traditions about her girlhood. As an example of the
thrift of the Smiths, or perhaps I should say, their exactness
in all business dealings, my father says that Austin Smith
never asked his sisters to sew a button or do repairs on his
clothing without paying them a small sum for it, and he
always received six cents for doing chores or running errands.
No doubt this was a practice maintained from early youth, for
when Sophia Smith was born, in 1796, the family was in very
moderate circumstances. The whole community was poor for some
time after the Revolution, and everyone saved pennies.
As to her education, she used to sit on the doorsteps of the
schoolhouse and hear the privileged boys recite their lessons. She
also had four or five months of instruction in the schoolhouse, and
was a student in Hopkins Academy for a short time and, when fourteen
years old, attended school at Hartford, Connecticut, for a term of
twelve weeks.
[Illustration: SOPHIA SMITH]
Then a long, uneventful, almost shut-in life, and in 1861 her brother
Austin left her an estate of about four hundred and fifty thousand
dollars.
Hon. George W. Hubbard of Hatfield was her financial adviser. He
advised her to found an academy for Hatfield, which she did; and after
Doctor Greene had caused her to decide on a college for women, Mr.
Hubbard insisted on having it placed at Northampton, Massachusetts,
instead of Hatfield, Massachusetts. With her usual modesty, she
objected to giving her full name to the college, as it would look as
if she were seeking fame for herself. She gave thirty thousand dollars
to endow a professorship in the Andover Theological Seminary at
Andover, Massachusetts.
She grew old gracefully, never soured by her infirmities, always
denying herself to help others and make the world better for her
living in it.
Her name must stand side by side with the men who founded Vassar,
Wellesley, and Barnard, and that of Mary Lyon to whom women owe the
college of Mt. Holyoke.
As Walt Whitman wrote:
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
She was a martyr physically, and mentally a heroine. Let us never fail
to honour the woman who founded Smith College.
Extracts from a letter replying to my question: "Is there a
full-length portrait of Sophia Smith, now to be seen anywhere in the
principal building at Smith College, Northampton?"
How I wish that some generous patron of Smith College might
bestow upon it two thousand dollars for a full-length portrait
of Sophia Smith to be placed in the large reading room, at the
end of which is a full-length portrait of President Seelye. The
presence of such a commanding figure seen by hundreds of girls
every day would be a subtle and lasting influence.
I like to nibble at a stuffed date, but do not enjoy having my memory
stuffed with dates, though I am proud rather than sensitive in regard
to my age.
Lady Morgan was unwilling her age should be known, and pleads:
What has a woman to do with dates--cold, false, erroneous,
chronological dates--new style, old style, precession of the
equinoxes, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at
their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy,
calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of
reference in woman's autobiography. Plutarch sets the example
of dropping dates in favour of incidents; and an authority more
appropriate, Madame de Genlis, who began her own memoires at
eighty, swept through nearly an age of incident and revolution
without any reference to vulgar eras signifying nothing (the
times themselves out of joint), testifying to the pleasant
incidents she recounts and the changes she witnessed. I mean to
have none of them!
I hesitate to allude to my next experience after leaving Smith
College, for it was so delightful that I am afraid I shall scarcely be
believed, and am also afraid that my readers will consider me a "swell
head" and my story only fit for a "Vanity Box." Yet I would not leave
out one bit of the Western lecture trip. If it were possible to tell
of the great kindness shown me at every step of the way without any
mention of myself, I would gladly prefer to do that.
After leaving Smith College, I was enjoying commencement festivities
in my own home--when another surprising event! Mr. George W.
Bartholomew, a graduate of Dartmouth, who was born and brought up in a
neighbouring Vermont town, told me when he called that he had
established a large and successful school for young ladies in
Cincinnati, Ohio, taking a few young ladies to live in his pleasant
home. He urged me to go to his school for three months to teach
literature, also giving lectures to ladies of the city in his large
recitation hall. And he felt sure he could secure me many invitations
to lecture in other cities.
Remembering my former Western experience with measles and
whooping-cough, I realized that mumps and chicken-pox were still
likely to attack me, but the invitation was too tempting, and it was
gladly accepted, and I went to Cincinnati in the fall of 1884.
Mrs. Bartholomew I found a charming woman and a most cordial friend.
Every day of three months spent in Cincinnati was full of happiness.
Mrs. Broadwell, a decided leader in the best social matters, as well
as in all public spirited enterprises, I had known years before in
Hanover, N.H. Her brother, General William Haines Lytle, had been
slain at Chickamauga during the Civil War, just in the full strength
and glory of manhood. He wrote that striking poem, beginning: "I am
dying, Egypt, dying." Here are two verses of his one poem:
As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian!
Glorious sorceress of the Nile,
Light the path to Stygian horrors
With the splendors of thy smile.
Give the Cæsar crowns and arches,
Let his brow the laurel twine;
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.
I am dying, Egypt, dying;
Hark! the insulting foeman's cry,
They are coming! quick, my falchion!
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah! no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell--
Isis and Osiris guard thee!
Cleopatra, Rome, farewell!
He was engaged to Miss Sarah Doremus, a sister of Professor Doremus of
New York. After the terrible shock of his sudden death she never
married, but devoted her life to carrying out her sainted mother's
missionary projects, once taking a trip alone around the world to
visit the missionary stations started by her mother.
As soon as I had arrived at Mr. Bartholomew's, Mrs. Broadwell gave me
a dinner. Six unmarried ladies and seven well-known bachelors were the
guests, as she wished to give me just what I needed, an endorsement
among her own friends. The result was instant and potent.
Everyone at that dinner did something afterwards to entertain me. I
was often invited to the opera, always had a box (long-stemmed roses
for all the ladies), also to dinner and lunches. If anyone in the city
had anything in the way of a rare collection, from old engravings to
rare old books, an evening was devoted to showing the collection to me
with other friends. One lady, Miss Mary Louise McLaughlin, invited me
to lunch with her alone. Her brother, a bachelor lawyer, had at that
time the finest private library in the city. She was certainly the
most versatile in her accomplishments of anyone I have ever known. She
had painted the best full-length portrait of Judge Longworth, father
of the husband of Alice Roosevelt. She was a china painter to beat the
Chinese, and author of four books on the subject. She was an artist
in photography; had a portfolio of off-hand sketches of street gamins,
newsboys, etc., full of life and expression. She brought the art of
under glaze in china-firing to this country and had discovered a
method of etching metal into fine woods for bedroom furniture. She was
an expert at wood-carving, taking lessons from Ben Pitman. Was fond of
housekeeping and made a success of it in every way. Anything else?
Yes, she showed me pieces of her exquisite embroidery and had made an
artistic and wholly sane "crazy-quilt" so much in vogue at that time.
Her own beautiful china was all painted and finished by herself. As I
left her, I felt about two feet high, with a pin head. And yet she was
free from the slightest touch of conceit.
Miss Laura MacDonald (daughter of Alexander MacDonald, the business
man who took great risks with Mr. John D. Rockefeller in borrowing
money to invest largely in oil fields) was my pupil in the school, and
through her I became acquainted with her lovely mother, who invited me
to her home at Clifton, just out of Cincinnati, to lecture to a select
audience of her special friends.
My lectures at Mr. Bartholomew's school were very well attended. Lists
of my subjects were sent about widely, and when the day came for my
enthusiastic praise of Christopher North (John Wilson), a sweet-faced
old lady came up to the desk and placed before me a large bunch of
veritable Scotch heather for which she had sent to Scotland.
In Cleveland, where I gave a series of talks, President Cutler, of
Adelbert University, rose at the close of the last lecture and,
looking genially towards me, made this acknowledgment: "I am free to
confess that I have often been charmed by a woman, and occasionally
instructed, but never before have I been charmed and instructed by the
same woman."
Cleveland showed even then the spirit of the Cleveland of today, which
is putting that city in the very first rank of the cities not only of
the United States but of the world in civic improvement and municipal
progress, morally and physically. Each night of my lectures I was
entertained at a different house while there, and as a trifle to show
their being in advance of other cities, I noticed that the ladies wore
wigs to suit their costumes. That only became the fashion here last
winter, but I saw no ultra colours such as we saw last year, green and
pink and blue, but only those that suited their style and their
costume.
At Chicago I was the guest of Mrs. H.O. Stone, who gave me a dinner
and an afternoon reception, where I met many members of various
clubs, and the youngest grandmothers I had ever seen. At a lunch given
for me by Mrs. Locke, wife of Rev. Clinton B. Locke, I met Mrs. Potter
Palmer, Mrs. Wayne MacVeagh, and Mrs. Williams, wife of General
Williams, and formerly the wife of Stephen Douglas. Mrs. Locke was the
best _raconteur_ of any woman I have ever heard. Dartmouth men drove
me to all the show places of that wonderful city. Lectured in Rev. Dr.
Little's church parlors. He was not only a New Hampshire man, but born
in Boscawen, New Hampshire, where my grandfather lived, and where my
mother lived until her marriage.
It is pleasant to record that I was carried along on my lecture tour,
sometimes by invitation of a Dartmouth man, again by college girls who
had graduated at Smith College; then at Peoria, Illinois; welcomed
there by a dear friend from Brooklyn, New York, wife of a business man
of that city. I knew of Peoria only as a great place for the
manufacture of whisky, and for its cast-iron stoves, but found it a
city, magnificently situated on a series of bold bluffs. And when I
reached my friend's house, a class of ladies, who had been easily
chatting in German, wanted to stay and ask me a few questions. These
showed deep thought, wide reading, and finely disciplined minds. Only
one reading there in the Congregational Church, where there was such a
fearful lack of ventilation that I turned from my manuscript and
quoted a bit from the "Apele for Are to the Sextant of the Old Brick
Meetinouse by A. Gasper," which proved effectual.
I give this impressive exhortation entire as it should be more
generally known.
A APELE FOR ARE TO THE SEXTANT
BY ARABELLA WILSON
O Sextant of the meetinouse which sweeps
And dusts, or is supposed to! and makes fiers,
And lites the gas, and sumtimes leaves a screw loose,
In which case it smells orful--wus than lampile;
And wrings the Bel and toles it, and sweeps paths;
And for these servaces gits $100 per annum;
Wich them that thinks deer let 'em try it;
Gittin up before starlite in all wethers, and
Kindlin fiers when the wether is as cold
As zero, and like as not green wood for kindlins,
(I wouldn't be hierd to do it for no sum;)
But o Sextant there are one kermodity
Wuth more than gold which don't cost nuthin;
Wuth more than anything except the Sole of man!
I mean pewer Are, Sextant, I mean pewer Are!
O it is plenty out o dores, so plenty it doant no
What on airth to do with itself, but flize about
Scatterin leaves and bloin off men's hats;
In short its jest as free as Are out dores;
But O Sextant! in our church its scarce as piety,
Scarce as bankbills when ajunts beg for mishuns,
Which sum say is purty often, taint nuthin to me,
What I give aint nuthing to nobody; but O Sextant!
You shet 500 men women and children
Speshily the latter, up in a tite place,
Sum has bad breths, none of em aint too sweet,
Sum is fevery, sum is scroflus, sum has bad teeth
And sum haint none, and sum aint over clean;
But evry one of em brethes in and out and in
Say 50 times a minnet, or 1 million and a half breths an hour;
Now how long will a church full of are last at that rate?
I ask you; say fifteen minnets, and then what's to be did?
Why then they must brethe it all over agin,
And then agin and so on, till each has took it down
At least ten times and let it up agin, and what's more,
The same individible doant have the privilege
Of brethin his own are and no one else,
Each one must take wotever comes to him.
O Sextant! doant you know our lungs is belluses
To bio the fier of life and keep it from
Going out: and how can bellusses blo without wind?
And aint wind are? I put it to your konshens,
Are is the same to us as milk to babies,
Or water is to fish, or pendlums to clox,
Or roots and airbs unto an Injun doctor,
Or little pills unto an omepath.
Or Boze to girls. Are is for us to brethe.
What signifize who preaches ef I can't brethe?
What's Pol? What's Pollus to sinners who are ded?
Ded for want of breth! Why Sextant when we dye
Its only coz we cant brethe no more--that's all.
And now O Sextant! let me beg of you
To let a little are into our cherch
(Pewer are is sertin proper for the pews);
And dew it week days and on Sundys tew--
It aint much trobble--only make a hoal,
And then the are will come in of itself
(It loves to come in where it can git warm).
And O how it will rouze the people up
And sperrit up the preacher, and stop garps
And yorns and fijits as effectool
As wind on the dry boans the Profit tels
Of.
I went as far as Omaha, and then was asked if I were not going West.
The reason for this charming reception was that it was a novelty then
to hear a young woman talk in a lively way on striking themes which
had been most carefully prepared, and a light touch added, with
frequent glints of humour. Byron declared that easy writing was very
hard reading. I reversed that method, always working hard over each
lecture. For instance, I spent two months in preparing "Bachelor
Authors," cramming and condensing, and passing quickly over dangerous
ground. With my vocal training I could easily be heard by an audience
of five hundred.
A friend was eager to go to Alaska by Seattle; then, after our return,
visit Yellowstone Park and San Francisco. She urged me so eloquently
to accompany her, that I left my home in Metcalf, Massachusetts,
taking great risks in many ways, but wonderful to relate, nothing
disastrous occurred.
We scurried by fastest trains across the country to Seattle, just in
time to take the Steamer _Topeka_ from Seattle on August 8, 1899, the
last boat of the season, and the last chance tourists ever had to see
the Muir Glacier in its marvellous glory, as it was broken badly
before the next summer.
My friend advised me kindly to ask no questions of the captain, as she
knew well what a bore that was. I promised to be exceedingly careful.
So, next morning, when that tall and handsome Captain Thompson came
around the deck, with a smiling "Good morning," and bowing right and
left, I was deeply absorbed in a book; the next time I was looking at
a view; another time I played I was fast asleep. He never spoke to me,
only stopped an instant before me and walked on. At last, a bow-legged
pilot came directly from the captain's office to my open window,
bringing to Miss Sanborn a bowl of extra large and luscious
strawberries from Douglas Island, quite famous on account of the size
and sweetness of this berry. With this gift came a note running thus:
DEAR MISS SANBORN:
I am a little puzzled by your frigid manner. Have you any
personal prejudice against me? Walter Raymond wrote me before
he sailed, to look you up, and do what I could for you, as you
were quite a favourite on the Eastern coast, and any kindness
shown to you would be considered a personal favour to him, and
that he only wished he could take the trip with us.
I was amazed and mortified. I had obeyed my directions too literally,
and must and did explain and apologize. After that, such pleasant
attentions from him! Invited to call at his office with my friends, to
meet desirable passengers, something nice provided for refreshment,
and these gentlemen were always ready for cards or conversation. But
the great occasion was when I had no idea of such an honour, that the
captain said:
"We are soon to pass through the Wrangel Narrows, a dangerous place,
and the steering through zigzag lines must be most careful. I am going
to smuggle you on to the bridge to see me steer and hear me give my
orders that will be repeated below. But as it is against the rule to
take a woman up there at such a time, promise me to keep perfectly
silent. If you make one remark you lose your life."
I agreed and kept my mouth shut without a muzzle. That "memory" is as
clear today as if it had happened yesterday.
One day while reading in my fine stateroom, a lady came to the open
door and asked me if I would go out with her on the deck that pleasant
afternoon and meet some friends of hers. I thanked her, but refused as
I was reading one of Hon. Justin McCarthy's books, and as I had the
honour of meeting him and his most interesting wife in New York City
at the home of Mrs. Henry M. Field, I was much engrossed in what he
wrote. Again, another person came and entreated me to go to the deck;
not suspecting any plot to test me, I went with her, and found a crowd
gathered there, and a good-looking young man seemed to be haranguing
them. He stopped as we came along and after being introduced went on
with: "As I was saying, Miss Sanborn, I regard women as greatly our
inferiors; in fact, essentially unemotional,--really bovine. Do you
really not agree to that?" I almost choked with surprise and wrath,
but managed to retort: "I am sorry to suppose your mother was a cow,
but she must have been to raise a calf like you." And I walked away to
the tune of great applause. It seems someone had said that I was never
at a loss when a repartee was needed, and it was proposed to give me
an opportunity. Next surprise: a call as we were nearing Seattle from
a large and noticeable lady who introduced herself saying:
"I am the president of a club which I started myself, and feel bound
to help on. I have followed you about a good deal, and shall be much
obliged if you will jot down for me to read to this club everything
you have said since you came on board. I know they will enjoy it." I
was sorry my memory failed me entirely on that occasion. Still it was
a great compliment!
But the Muir Glacier! We had to keep three and a half miles away, lest
the steamer be injured by the small icebergs which broke off the
immense mass into the water with a thunderous roar. A live glacier
advances a certain distance each day and retreats a little. Those who
visited the glacier brought back delicate little blue harebells they
found growing in the clefts of ice. No description of my impressions?
Certainly not! Too much of that has been done already.
We saw curious sights along the way, such as the salmon leaping into a
fenced-in pool to deposit their spawn; there they could be easily
speared, dried, and pitched into wagons as we pitch hay in New
England. I saw the Indians stretching the salmon on boards put up in
the sun, their color in the sun a brilliant pinkish red.
I saw bears fishing at the edge of water, really catching fish in
their clumsy paws. Other bears were picking strawberries for their
cubs. As I watched them strolling away, I thought they might be
looking for a stray cow to milk to add flavour to the berries.
We stopped at Wrangel to look at the totem poles, many of which have
since been stolen as the Indians did not wish to sell them; our usual
method of business with that abused race. Totem poles are genealogical
records, and give the history of the family before whose door they
stand. No one would quietly take the registered certificates of
Revolutionary ancestors searched for with great care from the Colonial
Dames or members of the New England Society, and coolly destroy them.
I agree with Charles Lamb who said he didn't want to be like a potato,
all that was best of him under ground.
At Sitka the brilliant gardens and the large school for Indian girls
were the objects of interest. It is a sad fact that the school which
teaches these girls cleanly habits, the practical arts of sewing, and
cooking simple but appetizing dishes, has made the girls unwilling to
return to their dirty homes and the filthy habits of their parents.
That would be impossible to them. So they are lured to visit the dance
halls in Juneau, where they find admirers of a transient sort, but
seldom secure an honest husband.
We called at Skagway, and the lady who was known by us told us there
was much stress there placed upon the most formal attention to rigid
conventionalities, calls made and returned, cards left and received at
just the right time, more than is expected in Boston. And yet that
town was hardly started, and dirt and disorder and chaos reigned
supreme.
A company of unlucky miners came home in our steamer; no place for
them to sleep but on deck near the doors of our stateroom, and they
ate at one of the tables after three other hungry sets had been
satisfied. A few slept on the tables. All the poultry had been killed
and eaten. We found the Chinese cooks tried to make tough meat
attractive by pink and yellow sauces. We were glad to leave the
steamer to try the ups and downs of Seattle.