Craigie House, where General George Washington had once stayed. And when
he was married to a Boston girl, her father gave them Craigie House for
a wedding present. Longfellow was so happy as the years went on, that he
wrote better than ever. You will like his "Hiawatha", which tells about
the Indians, his "Evangeline", and the story of Myles Standish. Do not
forget to read "The Children's Hour." Longfellow was never too busy to
play with his children and saw to it that they were kept happy. Once
when he took the three girls to England, Charles Dickens, the great
English writer, asked them to visit at his grand place, Gads Hill. He
sent a wonderful coach, all glittering with gold trimmings and driven by
men in scarlet livery, to the station for them, and had a Swiss chalet
in his garden for them to use as a playhouse. Many great people gave
them dinners and parties. But what pleased them most of all was the
respect shown their father. One of the daughters still lives in Craigie
House, which is often visited by people who love Longfellow's poems and
who wish to see the rooms in which he lived.
Longfellow could sell his verses as fast as he wrote them. A New York
editor once paid Longfellow three thousand dollars for one short poem.
And imagine how proud his wife and children must have been to overhear
people saying: "I wonder if Mr. Longfellow has written anything lately.
If he has, I must read it!" Imagine how happy it made his father that he
had kept his word: "If you will let me have my way, I will promise to be
famous in something." And surely all the Americans who were on that
steamer and heard the Russian, the Greek, and other foreigners reciting
Longfellow's poems must have been proud that a man from their own
country had won the name of "The Poet of Every Land."
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER
It was about seventy-five years ago that the Emperor of Russia, Nicolas
I., made up his mind that he wanted a railroad between Moscow and St.
Petersburg. He meant to have it one of the best in the world. So he
called an officer into his council chamber and said: "Now take plenty of
time to look about in the different countries, have all the men you want
to help you, but find me, somewhere, an engineer that will lay out a
perfect railroad line." Men appointed by this colonel traveled some
months. They visited many cities, wrote letters, and asked advice. Then
the colonel went back to the emperor and said: "The man you need to do
this piece of work lives in the United States of America."
"What's his name?" asked Nicolas.
"He is Major George Washington Whistler. He is one of the founders of
the city in which he lives, Lowell, Massachusetts. He is a
distinguished army officer and a fine engineer."
"He is named for a great officer," answered Nicolas, remembering our
General Washington, and he dispatched a letter to the Lowell engineer.
The major made haste to start for Russia, because the honor was great,
and the payment would be generous. He left his boys and his wife behind,
because he did not know just how comfortable he could make them in the
far-off country, but he told the boys to be good and to mind their
mother.
These boys were named James McNeill, William, and Charles. Their mother
was a fine woman, but sometimes they wished she would not be quite so
strict. She used to say on Saturday afternoons: "Come, boys, empty your
pockets and gather up your toys; we will put the knives and marbles away
and get ready for Sunday." All day Sunday they were not allowed to read
any book but the Bible. But James liked the stories he found there, and
when he was only nine could say almost half the Bible by heart.
James was the oldest in the family. He was born in Lowell and was such a
cunning baby that everybody wanted his picture. One of his uncles, who
loved him dearly, used to say: "It's enough to make Sir Joshua Reynolds
(this was a great English painter, who had died years before) come out
of his grave to paint Jimmie asleep!" Jimmie had delicate features and
long, silky, brown curls that hung about his face. In among these was
one white lock that dropped straight down over his forehead. This looked
like a tiny feather. More than all his playthings he liked a pencil and
paper. From the time he could scribble at all he drew pictures of
everybody and everything in sight. These pictures were very good, and
when he was large enough to go to school the other children were apt to
ask him to make animals and birds for them on the blackboard.
Major Whistler soon sent for his family to join him in Russia. It was a
long, hard voyage there, and poor little Charlie died on the way. The
two other boys were better sailors and were as well as could be when
they met their father. They did enjoy the strange sights in St.
Petersburg! They were not long in getting acquainted with the little
Russian children or in learning the language. They went skating, dressed
in handsome furs; they learned the folk and fancy dances, joined in the
winter sports, and voted Russia a fine country. Still their parents did
not let them forget they were little Americans.
The climate did not agree with James, and every time he caught cold he
had touches of rheumatism, so that often he had to stay in the house and
have his feet put in hot water. Instead of making a fuss about this, he
used to call for pencil and paper and practise drawing feet until he
could make very perfect ones. Major Whistler sent him to the Art Academy
in St. Petersburg, where he was praised by his teachers. That old,
tiresome rheumatism kept bothering him, and by and by he had a long
rheumatic fever. He was a dear, patient boy, however, and afterwards
declared he was almost glad he had it because some one who pitied the
small invalid sent him a book of Hogarth's engravings. I want you to be
sure and remember about this gentleness and patience, because when he
was older people often accused him of being cross and rude. But at this
time I am sure no one could have been nicer.
James was very careful of his mother, too. One evening she had taken the
boys in a carriage to see a big illumination. Bands were playing and
rockets flying. The horses next their carriage were frightened, and
reared and plunged as if they would hit the Whistler party. James shoved
his mother down on the seat behind him, and standing in front of her,
beat the horses back from them. He always was as polite to her as if she
were the emperor's wife.
The major worked too hard on the great railway and died before James was
fifteen. The emperor was fond of the two boys and wanted them to stay on
in Russia and be trained in the school for pages of the Court. But their
mother said they must grow up in America and hurried back to her own
land. She did not have much money to spend but thought James should go
to West Point to get the military training his father had had. At this
academy he found he did not like to draw maps and forts nearly as well
as he did human figures and faces. Once, when he had been sent to
Washington to draw maps for the Coast Survey, he forgot what he was
about and filled up the nice, white margins with pert little dancing
folks. He was well scolded for this, I can tell you.
James was a tall, handsome young fellow at this time, and liked to go
about to dancing-parties in the evening. He earned very little making
maps and could not afford to buy the real, narrow-tailed coat which was
proper. So he used to take his frock coat that he wore all day and pin
it back to look like a dress coat and start off for big balls, where
nobody was much shocked, because he was always doing droll things and
was so lively that he was welcome in any dress.
In Paris strangers used to ask who the young artist was who had the
snow-white lock among his black curls, for the brown curls had grown as
black as jet, and the map-drawing had grown so tiresome that James had
given up West Point and settled down to painting and etching in Paris.
He had decided that there was nothing in the world which suited him but
the life of an artist. He worked quite steadily and people began to say:
"I think young Whistler is going to do great things some day." But
suddenly he packed up and went to London.
In this city he was praised even more, but he did not sell enough
pictures to pay his bills, and once, when he had kept men waiting a long
time for money that he owed them, officers came and took everything away
but his pictures. The room looked so bare and homely that Whistler
painted a very good imitation of furniture round the walls of his room.
So good, in fact, that a rich man who came to look at the pictures sat
down in one of the imitation chairs and found himself on the floor.
It was fortunate that James could go a long time without food, for it
took nearly all he could earn from his pictures to buy paint and canvas
for others. I dare say that quite often when it was said: "James
McNeill Whistler is growing rude and cross," the real truth of the
matter was that James McNeill Whistler was hungry and worried.
However, he began to make money at last, and just as life seemed bright,
an art critic, Mr. John Ruskin, declared that the Whistler pictures,
which were being bought at big prices, were poor--very poor! Mr. Ruskin
spoke, and what was worse, printed his opinion. "I never expected," he
wrote, "to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of
paint in the public's face!" Well, it did not look for a while as if
there was any more good luck in the world for James Whistler. He did not
lose any time in getting a lawyer to sue Mr. Ruskin for spoiling the
sale of his pictures. There was a trial in London, and the court-room
was crowded. Some were there because they already owned Whistler
pictures and wanted to find out if they had paid good money for bad
pictures; others because they were warm friends of the artist or the
critic; but even more men and women went to hear the sharp questions of
the lawyers and the clever answers of Ruskin and Whistler. Whistler won
the case. When the judge awarded one farthing for damages (this is only
a quarter of a cent in our money!), Whistler laughed and hung the
English farthing on his watch-chain for a charm. Mr. Ruskin had to pay
the costs of the trial, which had mounted up to nineteen hundred
dollars. Some of his friends insisted on raising that sum for him. One
of them said it was worth nineteen hundred dollars to have heard the
talk that went on in the court-room.
Later, Mr. Whistler received much more than two hundred guineas for a
single picture. Two famous ones, of which we often see prints, are
"Portrait of my Mother" and the Scotch writer, "Carlyle." James
Whistler's mother lived to be an old woman, as one can guess from the
picture, and her son loved her just as dearly as he did when he beat the
prancing horses away from her, in Russia. The French nation bought this
portrait, and it hangs in the Luxembourg Museum, Paris. The Scotch
people wanted to own the portrait of Carlyle, and the city of Glasgow
was glad to pay five thousand dollars for it.
Mr. Whistler married a woman who was herself an artist, and she was very
proud of him. "The Duet", one of his pictures, shows his wife and her
sister at the piano. Two portraits by this American artist hang in the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, but most of them are owned in England.
James Whistler was always kind to young artists and liked to have them
sit by him while he worked. They were very proud to be noticed by him,
for long before he died he had received all kinds of honors and medals
from foreign academies; and France, Germany, and Italy made him an
Officer of the Legion of Honor, a Commander, and a Chevalier. He loved
art so well that he made water-colors, pastels, etchings, and
lithographs, as well as oil paintings. He did not get his fame without
much hard work. You remember how many times he copied his own foot when
he was a child. Well, he was just as patient and thorough when he was
older. For a long time he made a practice of drawing a picture of
himself every night before he went to bed. He traveled a great deal,
painting views in many countries and studying the pictures of other
artists. But Hogarth was his favorite, and it is interesting to know
that James McNeill Whistler lies buried very near Hogarth, in London,
for he had thought him a model ever since his boyhood days in St.
Petersburg.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
You can't think how hard fathers and mothers used to work and plan to
get their children educated in the old days when there were no public
schools. The Emersons did some planning, I can assure you.
All the pictures of Ralph Waldo Emerson that I have happened to see show
him as a man of middle age, with very smooth hair, and plain but very
nice-looking clothes. He looks in these pictures as nurse Richards used
to say of my father,--"as if he had just come out of the top bureau
drawer."
Well, Ralph Emerson did not always wear fine clothes, but I would not be
a bit surprised if he always looked middle-aged. Boys who had as little
fun as the Emerson boys had when they were growing up would not be
expected to look young.
In the end, Ralph became a minister, as well as a writer, and a
lecturer, and a philosopher. His father and his grandfather had
been ministers, too. I fancy it was trying to send all these
minister-Emersons to school and college that kept each set of parents so
poor.
Ralph's father, William Emerson, did not care to be a minister. He
wanted to live in a city and teach school, play his bass viol, and
belong to musical or singing clubs. But his mother looked ready to cry
when he told her this and said: "Why, William, it has taken all the
money I had to send you through Harvard College. What good will it do
you, if you do not become a preacher?" So, rather than grieve his
mother, he agreed to fit himself for preaching. How he hoped he might be
sent to some large town! But instead of that, he settled in a small
place where neighbors lived two or three miles from each other. He was
as lonesome as he could be. He was too poor to buy a horse and too busy
to spend half his time walking, so he could not get very well acquainted
with the families that came to hear him preach. Besides, his pay was
small, and if the kind-hearted farmers had not brought him a ham, a leg
of lamb, or a load of wood now and then, I don't see how he would have
managed.
In spite of all these hindrances, William saved a little money in five
years. He bought a small farm and got married. As the years went by and
there were children to feed, his preaching did not bring half the money
they needed, so he taught school, his wife took boarders, and
he--even--sold--his--beloved bass viol. And I do not think they felt
that anything was too hard if only these children could go to college.
Mrs. Emerson was very proud of her husband when he stood in the pulpit
on Sundays, and used to shut her eyes and try to imagine how their boys
would look in a pulpit.
Finally good luck came their way. Mr. Emerson was asked to preach in
Boston. Then he had the city life he loved, he heard good music, and
could call on his friends three times a day if he wished, and the boys
had fine schools.
None of the children were over ten when this good man, Minister William,
died. And then came the widow's struggle to educate them. The church
members were kind to her; she took boarders again, and sewed and mended
with never a complaint, so long as the boys could go to the Latin
School. They saw how tired she got and kept wishing they could grow up
faster, so they could earn money and let her rest. They helped her wash
dishes, and they chopped wood and cleaned vegetables, while the other
school-boys played ball, or swam, or skated. There were no play hours
for them. They had but one overcoat between them. So they took turns
wearing it. Some of the mean, cruel boys at school used to taunt them
about it, singing out, when they came in sight: "Well, who is wearing
the coat to-day?"
A spinster aunt, Miss Mary Emerson, came to see the family often. She
urged the boys to stand high in their classes and thought it would not
hurt them to do without play. She read all the fine books aloud to them
that she could borrow. Once a caller found her telling the boys stories
of great heroes, late at night, so that they might forget that they had
been without food for a day and a half! They were as poor as that!
Ralph began to go to school when he was three and so was able to enter
Harvard College when he was fourteen. He did not have to pay for his
room at the president's house because he did errands for him. And to pay
for his meals, he waited on tables. That was working to get an
education, wasn't it?
Ralph did not find fault because he had to work all the time that he was
not studying; he was thinking of his mother. When he won a prize of
thirty dollars for declaiming well, he sent it to his mother as fast as
the mails could take it and asked her to buy a shawl for herself. But
she had to take it to buy food for the smaller children! Ralph used to
tell his brothers that he could not think of anything in this world that
would make him so happy as to be able some day to buy a house for his
dear mother and to see her living easily.
The other boys,--Waldo, Charles, Buckley, and Edward,--proved to be fine
scholars, like Ralph, but they were never strong. They were always
having to hurry south, or across the ocean to get over some illness. The
truth is they did not have enough to eat when they were little. Old maid
aunts can tell stories of heroes every night in the year, but that will
never take the place of bread and potatoes, eggs and milk.
Ralph's mother was very happy that he became a minister, and like his
father, preached in Boston. After some years of preaching, he traveled
in Europe. Then he lectured. He had a beautiful, clear voice, and all
the things he told were so interesting that his name became famous, even
before he wrote books. He settled in Concord, where Thoreau and Louisa
May Alcott lived. He knew so much that by and by people called him "The
Sage of Concord." He said he could never think very well sitting down.
So when he wanted to write a poem, or sermon, or essay, (and you can
hardly step into a New England home where there is not a book called
_Emerson's Essays_) he put on his hat and went out for a walk. When he
had walked three or four hours, he had usually decided just what he
wanted to write down. On this account he generally went out alone. It
was after a stroll in the woods near Concord, where the squirrels are
thick, that he wrote the fable about the mountain and the squirrel. It
begins this way:
"The Mountain and the Squirrel
Had a quarrel.
The Mountain called the Squirrel 'Little Prig'--"
[Illustration: He generally went out alone. _Page 221._]
It is rather nice to remember that after William Emerson had sold his
bass viol, after all the pinching and saving of Mrs. William, and after
going with half a coat, Ralph Waldo Emerson proved, in the end, to be
such an uncommon man and scholar that his name is known the world over.
Perhaps if all of us were as willing to study and work, and to keep
studying and working, as the Sage of Concord was, there would be ever so
many more famous Americans than there are to-day.
JANE ADDAMS
When Jane Addams was a little girl about seven years old, out in
Cedarville, Illinois, her father used to wonder why she got up in the
morning so much earlier than the other children. She explained to him
politely that it was because she had so much to do. Her mother was dead,
but her father looked after the children very carefully, and to make
sure that Jane read something besides fairy stories, gave her five cents
every time she could tell him about a new hero from _Plutarch's Lives_
and fifteen cents for every volume of Irving's _Life of Washington_. She
would have read what he asked her to without a cent of pay, for she
almost worshiped him. He was tall and handsome and a man of great
importance in the west. Jane was very proud of him, and as she was
plain, toed in when she walked, and had rather a crooked back, she
imagined that he must really be ashamed of her, only he was too kind to
say so. So she tried to keep out of his way.
The Honorable John Addams (her father) taught a Bible class in
Sunday-school, and Jane was so afraid it would mortify him if she walked
home with him that she always ran ahead with an uncle, urging him to
hurry. "My," she used to say, "he would be too ashamed to hold his head
up again, if I should speak to him on the street." No one knew she felt
this way, and she had been dodging him some years when one morning, over
in the neighboring town, she saw him coming down the steps of a bank
building across the street from her. There was no place to hide, so she
stood there blushing and breathing pretty hard. But he lifted his tall
silk hat to her, smiled, and waved his hand. He looked so pleased to see
her that she never worried any more about meeting him on the street.
Across the road from Jane's house was a nice green common, and beyond
this a narrow path led to her father's mills. He owned two, a flour-mill
and a sawmill. In the sawmill great trees from the Illinois forests
were sawed into lumber. Jane used to sit on a log that was every minute
being drawn nearer the great teeth of the saw and jump off it when she
was within a few inches of the saw.
Jane and the other children had great fun in the flour-mill, too. They
made believe the bins were houses, and down in the basement played on
the tall piles of bran and shorts as they would on sand piles.
Jane's home was pretty and all the stores where she bought candy and
toys were fascinating places. She fancied the whole world was pleasant
and gay. She supposed that everybody in Cedarville had as good a home as
she, until one day she went down in the part of the town where the mill
hands lived. There the houses were shabby and untidy, the children
ragged and dirty. They looked hungry, too. Jane ran home, and when her
father came to dinner she asked him why any one had to live in such a
pitiful way. He could not explain it so that she felt any better about
it. "When I grow up," she declared, "I will build a lovely house right
in the middle of those poor huts, so that the children may have
something beautiful to look at; and I will see that they have clean
clothes and good food."
Only a few Sundays later Jane dashed into her father's room ready for
church. "See my new cloak," she called, "isn't it handsome?"
Her father admired it and then answered: "Yes, it is so much nicer than
any other girl has that it may make some of the poorer ones unhappy.
Perhaps you had better wear your old one."
Jane was a child that could not bear to hurt another's feelings, so she
hung the new coat away and wore the other. But as she walked to church,
she asked her father why every child could not have the same kind of
things. He told her probably there would always be a difference in the
clothing families wore, but in religion and education there was no
reason why all should not have equal chances. "And, Jane dear," he
added, "I think it is a mistake ever to make other people unhappy by
dressing too much."
Jane never dropped her plan to have a fine house in the midst of poor
ones. The back gave her a good deal of trouble as she grew older, and
sometimes she had to lie still in bed for a year at a time. But she
managed to fit for college and to graduate. Then she traveled abroad.
But never for a day had she given up that house she had planned when she
was a child of seven.
Jane started to study medicine but was not strong enough to become a
doctor. So she traveled some more, but she could never find a city where
poor people were not suffering. It saddened her, and she said: "I can't
wait any longer. I must have a few people made happy." So with a girl
friend she went to the big city of Chicago and hired a fine old house
that had been built by a millionaire, a Mr. Hull. This house had a wide
hall, open fireplaces, a lot of windows for the sun to stream through,
and was on Halstead Street. This street is thirty-two miles long, and in
it live people from about every country in the world.
Jane Addams made the house so cheerful and pretty that it was a joy to
peep into it. Miss Addams and her friend asked the people about there
to come in and have coffee and cocoa, read books aloud to them, taught
the poor children to sew and cook, visited the sick, and made them
understand--all these poor, tired, discouraged people--that at Hull
House there were friends who wanted to help them in every way.
By and by there were clubs for boys at Hull House, kindergartens for
children, parties for old folks, and Halstead Street began to look
cleaner, for Miss Addams went up and down those thirty-two miles of
street and made it understood that she was there to help people grow
healthy and clean. All the time, she was helping to nurse the sick and
urging the rich people at their end of the city to come down to Halstead
Street to see how the poor lived. At Hull House an idiot child or a
drunken woman was helped as quickly and willingly as if they had been a
clean member of the royal family.
The more Miss Addams found out about what goes on in big cities, the
harder she worked. She remembered what her father said about every one
in this world deserving an equal chance, and she tried to help factory
workers, mill hands, girls and boys who had done wrong, ignorant mothers
who did not know how to keep house and take care of their children, men
who were out of work, and the blind and crippled.