conditions. No one who has not experienced the combination of continued
cold, hunger, and loneliness in a great, strange, indifferent city can
realize how it undermines the victim's nerves and even tears at the
moral fiber. The self-humiliation I experienced was also intense. I had
worked my way in the Northwest; why could I not work my way in Boston?
Was there, perhaps, some lack in me and in my courage? Again and again
these questions rose in my mind and poisoned my self-confidence. The
one comfort I had in those black days was the knowledge that no
one suspected the depth of the abyss in which I dwelt. We were
all struggling; to the indifferent glance--and all glances were
indifferent--my struggle was no worse than that of my classmates whose
rooms and frugal meals were given them.
After a few months of this existence I was almost ready to believe that
the Lord's work for me lay outside of the ministry, and while this fear
was gripping me a serious crisis came in my financial affairs. The day
dawned when I had not a cent, nor any prospect of earning one. My stock
of provisions consisted of a box of biscuit, and my courage was flowing
from me like blood from an opened vein. Then came one of the quick turns
of the wheel of chance which make for optimism. Late in the afternoon
I was asked to do a week of revival work with a minister in a local
church, and when I accepted his invitation I mentally resolved to let
that week decide my fate. My shoes had burst open at the sides; for lack
of car-fare I had to walk to and from the scene of my meetings, though I
had barely strength for the effort. If my week of work brought me enough
to buy a pair of cheap shoes and feed me for a few days I would, I
decided, continue my theological course. If it did not, I would give up
the fight.
Never have I worked harder or better than during those seven days, when
I put into the effort not only my heart and soul, but the last flame of
my dying vitality, We had a rousing revival--one of the good old-time
affairs when the mourners' benches were constantly filled and the air
resounded with alleluias. The excitement and our success, mildly aided
by the box of biscuit, sustained me through the week, and not until
the last night did I realize how much of me had gone into this final
desperate charge of mine. Then, the service over and the people
departed, I sank, weak and trembling, into a chair, trying to pull
myself together before hearing my fate in the good-night words of the
minister I had assisted. When he came to me and began to compliment me
on the work I had done, I could not rise. I sat still and listened with
downcast eyes, afraid to lift them lest he read in them something of my
need and panic in this moment when my whole future seemed at stake.
At first his words rolled around the empty church as if they were
trying to get away from me, but at last I began to catch them. I was, it
seemed, a most desirable helper. It had been a privilege and a pleasure
to be associated with me. Beyond doubt, I would go far in my career.
He heartily wished that he could reward me adequately. I deserved fifty
dollars.
My tired heart fluttered at this. Probably my empty stomach fluttered,
too; but in the next moment something seemed to catch my throat and stop
my breath. For it appeared that, notwithstanding the enthusiasm and
the spiritual uplift of the week, the collections had been very
disappointing and the expenses unusually heavy. He could not give me
fifty dollars. He could not give me anything at all. He thanked me
warmly and wished me good night.
I managed to answer him and to get to my feet, but that journey down the
aisle from my chair to the church door was the longest journey I have
ever made. During it I felt not only the heart-sick disappointment of
the moment, but the cumulative unhappiness of the years to come. I was
friendless, penniless, and starving, but it was not of these conditions
that I thought then. The one overwhelming fact was that I had been
weighed and found wanting. I was not worthy.
I stumbled along, passing blindly a woman who stood on the street near
the church entrance. She stopped me, timidly, and held out her hand.
Then suddenly she put her arms around me and wept. She was an old lady,
and I did not know her, but it seemed fitting that she should cry just
then, as it would have seemed fitting to me if at that black moment all
the people on the earth had broken into sudden wailing.
"Oh, Miss Shaw," she said, "I'm the happiest woman in the world, and I
owe my happiness to you. To-night you have converted my grandson. He's
all I have left, but he has been a wild boy, and I've prayed over him
for years. Hereafter he is going to lead a different life. He has just
given me his promise on his knees."
Her hand fumbled in her purse.
"I am a poor woman," she went on, "but I have enough, and I want to make
you a little present. I know how hard life is for you young students."
She pressed a bill into my fingers. "It's very little," she said,
humbly; "it is only five dollars."
I laughed, and in that exultant moment I seemed to hear life laughing
with me. With the passing of the bill from her hand to mine existence
had become a new experience, wonderful and beautiful.
"It's the biggest gift I have ever had," I told her. "This little bill
is big enough to carry my future on its back!"
I had a good meal that night, and I bought the shoes the next morning.
Infinitely more sustaining than the food, however, was the conviction
that the Lord was with me and had given me a sign of His approval. The
experience was the turning-point of my theological career. When the
money was gone I succeeded in obtaining more work from time to time--and
though the grind was still cruelly hard, I never again lost hope. The
theological school was on Bromfield Street, and we students climbed
three flights of stairs to reach our class-rooms. Through lack of proper
food I had become too weak to ascend these stairs without sitting down
once or twice to rest, and within a month after my experience with the
appreciative grandmother I was discovered during one of these resting
periods by Mrs. Barrett, the superintendent of the Woman's Foreign
Missionary Society, which had offices in our building. She stopped,
looked me over, and then invited me into her room, where she asked me
if I felt ill. I assured her that I did not. She asked a great many
additional questions and, little by little, under the womanly sympathy
of them, my reserve broke down and she finally got at the truth, which
until that hour I had succeeded in concealing. She let me leave without
much comment, but the next day she again invited me into her office and
came directly to the purpose of the interview.
"Miss Shaw," she said, "I have been talking to a friend of mine about
you, and she would like to make a bargain with you. She thinks you are
working too hard. She will pay you three dollars and a half a week
for the rest of this school year if you will promise to give up your
preaching. She wants you to rest, study, and take care of your health."
I asked the name of my unknown friend, but Mrs. Barrett said that was to
remain a secret. She had been given a check for seventy-eight dollars,
and from this, she explained, my allowance would be paid in weekly
instalments. I took the money very gratefully, and a few years later I
returned the amount to the Missionary Society; but I never learned the
identity of my benefactor. Her three dollars and a half a week, added to
the weekly two dollars I was allowed for room rent, at once solved the
problem of living; and now that meal-hours had a meaning in my life, my
health improved and my horizon brightened. I spent most of my evenings
in study, and my Sundays in the churches of Phillips Brooks and James
Freeman Clark, my favorite ministers. Also, I joined the university's
praying-band of students, and took part in the missionary-work among the
women of the streets. I had never forgotten my early friend in Lawrence,
the beautiful "mysterious lady" who had loved me as a child, and, in
memory of her, I set earnestly about the effort to help unfortunates of
her class. I went into the homes of these women, followed them to the
streets and the dance-halls, talked to them, prayed with them, and
made friends among them. Some of them I was able to help, but many were
beyond help; and I soon learned that the effective work in that field is
the work which is done for women before, not after, they have fallen.
During my vacation in the summer of 1876 I went to Cape Cod and earned
my expenses by substituting in local pulpits. Here, at East Dennis, I
formed the friendship which brought me at once the greatest happiness
and the deepest sorrow of that period of my life. My new friend was
a widow whose name was Persis Addy, and she was also the daughter of
Captain Prince Crowell, then the most prominent man in the Cape Cod
community--a bank president, a railroad director, and a citizen of
wealth, as wealth was rated in those days. When I returned to the
theological school in the autumn Mrs. Addy came to Boston with me, and
from that time until her death, two years later, we lived together. She
was immensely interested in my work, and the friendly part she took in
it diverted her mind from the bereavement over which she had brooded for
years, while to me her coming opened windows into a new world. I was
no longer lonely; and though in my life with her I paid my way to
the extent of my small income, she gave me my first experience of
an existence in which comfort and culture, recreation, and leisurely
reading were cheerful commonplaces. For the first time I had some one
to come home to, some one to confide in, some one to talk to, listen
to, and love. We read together and went to concerts together; and it was
during this winter that I attended my first theatrical performance. The
star was Mary Anderson, in "Pygmalion and Galatea," and play and player
charmed me so utterly that I saw them every night that week, sitting
high in the gallery and enjoying to the utmost the unfolding of this new
delight. It was so glowing a pleasure that I longed to make some return
to the giver of it; but not until many years afterward, when I met
Madame Navarro in London, was I able to tell her what the experience had
been and to thank her for it.
I did not long enjoy the glimpses into my new world, for soon, and
most tragically, it was closed to me. In the spring following our first
Boston winter together Mrs. Addy and I went to Hingham, Massachusetts,
where I had been appointed temporary pastor of the Methodist Church.
There Mrs. Addy was taken ill, and as she grew steadily worse we
returned to Boston to live near the best available physicians, who for
months theorized over her malady without being able to diagnose it. At
last her father, Captain Crowell, sent to Paris for Dr. Brown-Sequard,
then the most distinguished specialist of his day, and Dr.
Brown-Sequard, when he arrived and examined his patient, discovered that
she had a tumor on the brain. She had had a great shock in her life--the
tragic death of her husband at sea during their wedding tour around
the world--and it was believed that her disease dated from that time.
Nothing could be done for her, and she failed daily during our second
year together, and died in March, 1878, just before I finished my
theological course and while I was still temporary pastor of the church
at Hingham. Every moment I could take from my parish and my studies I
spent with her, and those were sorrowful months. In her poor, tortured
brain the idea formed that I, not she, was the sick person in our family
of two, and when we were at home together she insisted that I must lie
down and let her nurse me; then for hours she brooded over me, trying to
relieve the agony she believed I was experiencing. When at last she was
at peace her father and I took her home to Cape Cod and laid her in the
graveyard of the little church where we had met at the beginning of our
brief and beautiful friendship; and the subsequent loneliness I felt
was far greater than any I had ever suffered in the past, for now I had
learned the meaning of companionship.
Three months after Mrs. Addy's death I graduated. She had planned
to take me abroad, and during our first winter together we had spent
countless hours talking and dreaming of our European wanderings. When
she found that she must die she made her will and left me fifteen
hundred dollars for the visit to Europe, insisting that I must carry out
the plan we had made; and during her conscious periods she constantly
talked of this and made me promise that I would go. After her death it
seemed to me that to go without her was impossible. Everything of beauty
I looked upon would hold memories of her, keeping fresh my sorrow and
emphasizing my loneliness; but it was her last expressed desire that I
should go, and I went.
First, however, I had graduated--clad in a brandnew black silk gown, and
with five dollars in my pocket, which I kept there during the graduation
exercises. I felt a special satisfaction in the possession of that
money, for, notwithstanding the handicap of being a woman, I was said to
be the only member of my class who had worked during the entire course,
graduated free from debt, and had a new outfit as well as a few dollars
in cash.
I graduated without any special honors. Possibly I might have won
some if I had made the effort, but my graduation year, as I have just
explained, had been very difficult. As it was, I was merely a good
average student, feeling my isolation as the only woman in my class,
but certainly not spurring on my men associates by the display of any
brilliant gifts. Naturally, I missed a great deal of class fellowship
and class support, and throughout my entire course I rarely entered my
class-room without the abysmal conviction that I was not really wanted
there. But some of the men were goodhumoredly cordial, and several of
them are among my friends to-day. Between myself and my family there
still existed the breach I had created when I began to preach. With the
exception of Mary and James, my people openly regarded me, during my
theological course, as a dweller in outer darkness, and even my mother's
love was clouded by what she felt to be my deliberate and persistent
flouting of her wishes.
Toward the end of my university experience, however, an incident
occurred which apparently changed my mother's viewpoint. She was
now living with my sister Mary, in Big Rapids, Michigan, and, on the
occasion of one of my rare and brief visits to them I was invited to
preach in the local church. Here, for the first time, my mother heard
me. Dutifully escorted by one of my brothers, she attended church that
morning in a state of shivering nervousness. I do not know what she
expected me to do or say, but toward the end of the sermon it
became clear that I had not justified her fears. The look of intense
apprehension left her eyes, her features relaxed into placidity, and
later in the day she paid me the highest compliment I had yet received
from a member of my family.
"I liked the sermon very much," she peacefully told my brother. "Anna
didn't say anything about hell, or about anything else!"
When we laughed at this handsome tribute, she hastened to qualify it.
"What I mean," she explained, "is that Anna didn't say anything
objectionable in the pulpit!" And with this recognition I was content.
Between the death of my friend and my departure for Europe I buried
myself in the work of the university and of my little church; and as if
in answer to the call of my need, Mary E. Livermore, who had given me
the first professional encouragement I had ever received, re-entered my
life. Her husband, like myself, was pastor of a church in Hingham, and
whenever his finances grew low, or there was need of a fund for some
special purpose--conditions that usually exist in a small church--his
brilliant wife came to his assistance and raised the money, while her
husband retired modestly to the background and regarded her with adoring
eyes. On one of these occasions, I remember, when she entered the pulpit
to preach her sermon, she dropped her bonnet and coat on an unoccupied
chair. A little later there was need of this chair, and Mr. Livermore,
who sat under the pulpit, leaned forward, picked up the garments, and,
without the least trace of selfconsciousness, held them in his lap
throughout the sermon. One of the members of the church, who appeared
to be irritated by the incident, later spoke of it to him and added,
sardonically, "How does it feel to be merely 'Mrs. Livermore's
husband'?"
In reply Mr. Livermore flashed on him one of his charming smiles. "Why,
I'm very proud of it," he said, with the utmost cheerfulness. "You see,
I'm the only man in the world who has that distinction."
They were a charming couple, the Livermores, and they deserved far more
than they received from a world to which they gave so freely and so
richly. To me, as to others, they were more than kind; and I never
recall them without a deep feeling of gratitude and an equally deep
sense of loss in their passing.
It was during this period, also, that I met Frances E. Willard. There
was a great Moody revival in progress in Boston, and Miss Willard was
the righthand assistant of Mr. Moody. To her that revival must have been
marked with a star, for during it she met for the first time Miss Anna
Gordon, who became her life-long friend and her biographer. The meetings
also laid the foundation of our friendship, and for many years Miss
Willard and I were closely associated in work and affection.
On the second or third night of the revival, during one of the "mixed
meetings," attended by both women and men, Mr. Moody invited those who
were willing to talk to sinners to come to the front. I went down the
aisle with others, and found a seat near Miss Willard, to whom I was
then introduced by some one who knew us both. I wore my hair short in
those days, and I had a little fur cap on my head. Though I had been
preaching for several years, I looked absurdly young--far too young, it
soon became evident, to interest Mr. Moody. He was already moving about
among the men and women who had responded to his invitation, and one by
one he invited them to speak, passing me each time until at last I
was left alone. Then he took pity on me and came to my side to whisper
kindly that I had misunderstood his invitation. He did not want young
girls to talk to his people, he said, but mature women with worldly
experience. He advised me to go home to my mother, adding, to soften the
blow, that some time in the future when there were young girls at the
meeting I could come and talk to them.
I made no explanations to him, but started to leave, and Miss Willard,
who saw me departing, followed and stopped me. She asked why I was
going, and I told her that Mr. Moody had sent me home to grow.
Frances Willard had a keen sense of humor, and she enjoyed the joke so
thoroughly that she finally convinced me it was amusing, though at
first the humor of it had escaped me. She took me back to Mr. Moody and
explained the situation to him, and he apologized and put me to work.
He said he had thought I was about sixteen. After that I occasionally
helped him in the intervals of my other work.
The time had come to follow Mrs. Addy's wishes and go to Europe, and I
sailed in the month of June following my graduation, and traveled
for three months with a party of tourists under the direction of Eben
Tourgee, of the Boston Conservatory of Music. We landed in Glasgow, and
from there went to England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, France, and
last of all to Italy. Our company included many clergymen and a
never-to-be-forgotten widow whose light-hearted attitude toward the
memory of her departed spouse furnished the comedy of our first voyage.
It became a pet diversion to ask her if her husband still lived, for she
always answered the question in the same mournful words, and with the
same manner of irrepressible gaiety.
"Oh no!" she would chirp. "My dear departed has been in our Heavenly
Father's house for the past eight years!"
At its best, the vacation without my friend was tragically incomplete,
and only a few of its incidents stand out with clearness across the
forty-six years that have passed since then. One morning, I remember, I
preached an impromptu sermon in the Castle of Heidelberg before a large
gathering; and a little later, in Genoa, I preached a very different
sermon to a wholly different congregation. There was a gospel-ship in
the harbor, and one Saturday the pastor of it came ashore to ask if
some American clergyman in our party would preach on his ship the next
morning. He was an old-time, orthodox Presbyterian, and from the tips
of his broad-soled shoes to the severe part in the hair above his
sanctimonious brow he looked the type. I was not present when he called
at our hotel, and my absence gave my fellow-clergymen an opportunity to
play a joke on the gentleman from the gospel-ship. They assured him that
"Dr. Shaw" would preach for him, and the pastor returned to his post
greatly pleased. When they told me of his invitation, however, they did
not add that they had neglected to tell him Dr. Shaw was a woman, and I
was greatly elated by the compliment I thought had been paid me.
Our entire party of thirty went out to the gospelship the next morning,
and when the pastor came to meet us, lank and forbidding, his austere
lips vainly trying to curve into a smile of welcome, they introduced me
to him as the minister who was to deliver the sermon. He had just taken
my hand; he dropped it as if it had burned his own. For a moment he had
no words to meet the crisis. Then he stuttered something to the effect
that the situation was impossible that his men would not listen to a
woman, that they would mob her, that it would be blasphemous for a woman
to preach. My associates, who had so light-heartedly let me in for this
unpleasant experience, now realized that they must see me through it.
They persuaded him to allow me to preach the sermon.
With deep reluctance the pastor finally accepted me and the situation;
but when the moment came to introduce me, he devoted most of his time to
heartfelt apologies for my presence. He explained to the sailors that
I was a woman, and fervidly assured them that he himself was not
responsible for my appearance there. With every word he uttered he put a
brick in the wall he was building between me and the crew, until at last
I felt that I could never get past it. I was very unhappy, very lonely,
very homesick; and suddenly the thought came to me that these men,
notwithstanding their sullen eyes and forbidding faces, might be lonely
and homesick, too. I decided to talk to them as a woman and not as a
minister, and I came down from the pulpit and faced them on their own
level, looking them over and mentally selecting the hardest specimens of
the lot as the special objects of my appeal. One old fellow, who
looked like a pirate with his red-rimmed eyes, weather-beaten skin,
and fimbriated face, grinned up at me in such sardonic challenge that I
walked directly in front of him and began to speak. I said:
"My friends, I hope you will forget everything Dr. Blank has just said.
It is true that I am a minister, and that I came here to preach. But now
I do not intend to preach--only to have a friendly talk, on a text which
is not in the Bible. I am very far from home, and I feel as homesick as
some of you men look. So my text is, 'Blessed are the homesick, for they
shall go home.'"