Memories and Anecdotes Part 2

"And what was his verdict?"

"If you must know, Squire Jones he said, said he, he thought 'twas--awful shaller."

Doctor Ben's Goffstown Muster was a quicker tempo and had a better climax. 'Twas the great occasion of the annual military reviews. He graphically described boys driving colts hardly broken; mothers nursing babies, very squally; girls and their beaux sitting in the best wagon holding hands and staring about (as Warner said to me, "Young love in the country is a solemn thing"); the booths for sale of gingerbread, peanuts, cider, candies, and popcorn; the marshal of the day dashing here and there on his prancing steed. All was excitement, great crowds, and the blare of the band. Suddenly an aged pair, seemingly skeletons, so bony and wan were they, were seen tottering toward the fence, where they at last stopped. They had come from the direction of the graveyard. The marshal rushed forward calling out, "Go back, go back; this is not the general resurrection, it is only the Goffstown Muster."

Doctor Ben Crosby was one of the most admirable mimics ever known and without a suspicion of ill-nature. Sometimes he would call on us representing another acquaintance, who had just left, so perfectly that the gravest and stiffest were in danger of hysterics. This power his daughter inherited.

John Lord, the historical lecturer, was always a "beacon light" (which was the name he gave his lectures when published) as he discussed the subjects and persons he took for themes before immense audiences everywhere. His conversation was also intensely interesting. He was a social lion and a favourite guest. His lectures have still a large annual sale--no one who once knew him or listened to his pyrotechnic climaxes could ever forget him or them. It was true that he made nine independent and distinct motions simultaneously in his most intense delivery. I once met him going back to his rooms at his hotel carrying a leather bag. He stopped, opened it, showing a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and explained "I am starting in on a lecture on Moses." There was a certain simplicity about the man. Once when his right arm was in a sling, broken by a fall from a horse, he offered prayer in the old church. And unable to use his arm as usual, he so balanced his gyrations that he in some way drifted around until when he said "Amen"

his face fronted the whitewashed wall back of his pulpit. He turned to the minister standing by him, saying in a very audible whisper, "Do you think anybody noticed it?"

He was so genuinely hospitable that when a friend suddenly accepted his "come up any time" invitation, he found no one at home but the doctor, who proposed their killing a chicken. Soon one was let out, but she evaded her pursuers. "You shoo, and I'll catch," cried the kind host, but shrank back as the fowl came near, exclaiming: "Say, West, has a hen got teeth?" At last they conquered, plucked, and cooked her for a somewhat tardy meal, with some potatoes clawed up in the potato field. Once, when very absent-minded, at a hotel table in a country tavern, the waitress was astonished to watch him as he took the oil cruet from the castor and proceeded to grease his boots.

Doctor John Ordronaux, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at Dartmouth and various other colleges and medical schools, was another erudite scholar, who made a permanent impression on all he met. While yet at college, his words were so unusual and his vocabulary so full that a wag once advertised on the bulletin board on the door of Dartmouth Hall, "Five hundred new adjectives by John Ordronaux."

He was haunted by synonyms, and told me they interfered with his writing, so many clamouring for attention. He was a confirmed bachelor with very regular habits; wanted his bed to be left to air the entire day, he to make it himself at precisely 5.30 P.M., or as near as possible. His walk was peculiar, with knees stiffly bent out and elbows crooked as if to repel all feminine aggression, "a progressive porcupine" as someone described his gait. His hour for retiring was always the same; when calling leaving about 9.30. Rallied about his methodical habits, he was apt to mention many of his old friends who had indulged themselves in earthly pleasures, all of whom he had the sad pleasure of burying.

He was a great admirer of my mother for her loveliness and kind interest in the students; after her death he was a n.o.ble aid to me in many ways. I needed his precautions about spreading myself too thin, about being less flamboyantly loquacious, and subduing my excessive enthusiasm and emotional prodigality. Once after giving me a drive, he kindly said, as he helped me out, "I have quite enjoyed your cheerful prattle." Fact was, he had monologued it in his most sesquipedalian phraseology. I had no chance to say one word. He had his own way of gaining magnetism; believed in a.s.sociating with butchers. Did you ever know one that was anaemic, especially at slaughtering time? From them and the animals there and in stables, and the smell of the flowing blood, he felt that surely a radiant magnetism was gained. Those he visited "thought he was real democratic and a pleasant spoken man." He told of an opportunity he once had for regular employment, riding on the stage-coach by the side of a farmer's pretty daughter. She suggested that he might like a milk route, and "perhaps father can get you one." So formal, dignified, and fastidious was he that this seems improbable, but I quote his own account.

Doctor Ordronaux visited at my uncle's, a physician, when I was resting there from overwork. After his departure, uncle received a letter from him which he handed to me saying, "Guess this is meant for you." I quote proudly:

I rejoice to have been permitted to enjoy so much of Miss Sanborn's society, and to discover what I never before fully appreciated, that beneath the scintillations of a brilliant intellect she hides a vigorous and a.n.a.lytic understanding, and when age shall have somewhat tempered her emotional susceptibilities she will shine with the steady light of a planet, reaching her perihelion and taking a permanent place in the firmament of letters.

Sounds something like a Johnsonian epitaph, but wasn't it great?

I visited his adopted mother at Roslyn, Long Island, and they took me to a Sunday dinner with Bryant at "Cedarmere," a fitting spot for a poet's home. The aged poet was in vigorous health, mind and body.

Going to his library he took down an early edition of his _Thanatopsis_, pointing out the nineteen lines written some time before the rest. Mottoes hung on the wall such as "As thy days so shall thy strength be." I ventured to ask how he preserved such vitality, and he said, "I owe a great deal to daily air baths and the flesh brush, plenty of outdoor air and open fireplaces." What an impressive personality; erect, with white hair and long beard; his eyebrows looked as if snow had fallen on them. His conversation was delightfully informal. "What does your name mean?" he inquired, and I had to say, "I do not know, it has changed so often," and asked, "What is the origin of yours?" "Briant--brilliant, of course." He told the butler to close the door behind me lest I catch cold from a draught, quoting this couplet:

When the wind strikes you through a hole, Go make your will and mind your soul;

and informing me that this advice was found in every language, if not dialect, in the world. He loved every inch of his country home, was interested in farming, flowers, the water-view and fish-pond, fond of long walks, and preferred the simple life. In his rooms were many souvenirs of early travel. His walls were covered with the finest engravings and paintings from the best American artists. He was too willing to be imposed upon by young authors and would-be poets. He said: "People expect too much of me, altogether too much." That Sunday was his last before his address on Mazzini in Central Park. He finished with the hot sun over his head, and walking across the park to the house of Grant Wilson, he fell down faint and hopelessly ill on the doorstep. He never rallied, and after thirteen days the end came.

An impressive warning to the old, who are selfishly urged to do hard tasks, that they must conserve their own vitality. Bryant was eighty-four when killed by over-exertion, with a mind as wonderful as ever.

I will now recount the conditions when Ezekiel Webster and his second wife took their wedding trip in a "one hoss shay" to the White Mountains in 1826.

Grandma lived to be ninety-six, with her mind as clear as ever, and two years before her death she gave me this story of their experiences at that time. My mother told me she knew of more than thirty proposals she had received after grandfather's death, but she said "she would rather be the widow of Ezekiel Webster, than the wife of any other man." The following is her own description.

The only house near the Crawford Notch was the Willey House, in which the family were living. A week before a slide had come down by the side of the house and obstructed the road. Mr.

Willey and two men came to our a.s.sistance, taking out the horse and lifting the carriage over the debris.

They described the terrors of the night of the slide. The rain was pouring in torrents, the soil began to slide from the tops of the rocks, taking with it trees, boulders, and all in its way; the crashing and thundering were terrible. Three weeks later the entire family, nine in number, in fleeing to a place of refuge, were overtaken by a second slide and all buried.

The notch was then as nature made it; no steam whistle or car clatter had intruded upon its solitude. The first moving object we saw after pa.s.sing through was a man in the distance. He proved to be Ethan Crawford, who kept the only house of entertainment. He was walking leisurely, drawing a rattlesnake along by its tail. He had killed the creature and was taking it home as a trophy. He was a stalwart man, who had always lived among the mountains, and had become as familiar with the wild beasts as with the cat and dog of his own home. He said that only a few days before he had pa.s.sed a bear drinking at a spring. He led the way to his house, a common farmhouse without paint, or carpet, or cushioned seat. The landlady was spinning wool in the kitchen.

Mr. Crawford supplied the table when he could by his gun or fishing-rod; otherwise the fare was meagre. When asked for mustard for the salt meat, they said they had none, at least in the house, but they had some growing.

A young turkey halted about in the dining-room gobbling in a noisy way, and the girl in attendance was requested by Mr.

Webster, with imperturbable gravity, either to kindly take it out or to bring its companion in, for it seemed lonely. She stood in utter confusion for a minute, then seized the squawking fowl and disappeared.

When Mr. Crawford was asked if ladies ever went up Mount Washington, he said two had been up, and he hoped never to see another trying it, for the last one he brought down on his shoulders, or she would have never got down alive.

The first night I asked for a change of bed linen. No attention was paid to my request, and after waiting a long time I found the landlady and asked her if she would have the sheets changed. She straightened up and said she didn't think the bed would hurt anybody, for only two ministers from Boston had slept in it. We stayed some days and although it was the height of the season, we were the only guests. Nothing from the outside world reached us but one newspaper, and that brought the startling news of the death of Adams and Jefferson on the fourth of July, just fifty years after their signing the Declaration of Independence.

The large leghorn bonnet which Mrs. Webster wore on that eventful journey hangs in my collection of old relics. She told me it used to hit the wheel when she looked out. And near it is her dark-brown "calash," a big bonnet with rattans st.i.tched in so it would easily move back and forward. Her winter hood was of dark blue silk, warmly wadded and prettily quilted.

Who would not wish to live to be a hundred if health and mental vigour could be retained? This rare old lady wrote lively, interesting letters on all current topics, and was as eager to win at whist, backgammon, or logomachy as a child. Her religion was the most beautiful part of her life, the same every day, self-forgetting, practical Christianity. She is not forgotten; her life is still a stimulus, an inspiration, a benediction. The love and veneration of those who gathered about her in family reunions were expressed by her nephew Dr. Fred B. Lund, one of the most distinguished surgeons of Boston:

To her who down the pathway of the years Serene and calm her blessed way she trod, Has given smiles for smiles, and tears for tears, Held fast the good in life, and shown how G.o.d

Has given to us His servants here below, A shining mark to follow in our strife, Who proves that He is good, and makes us know Through ten decades of pure and holy life

How life may be made sweeter at its end, How graces from the seasons that have fled May light her eyes and added glory lend To saintly aureole about her head.

We bring our Christmas greeting heartily, Three generations gathered at her feet, Who like a little child has led, while we Have lived and loved beneath her influence sweet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STREET FRONTING THE SANBORN HOME AT HANOVER, N.H.]

Levi Parsons Morton, born at Sh.o.r.eham, Vermont, May 16, 1824, was named for his mother's brother, Levi Parsons, the first American missionary to Palestine. He was the son of a minister, Reverend Daniel Morton, who with his wife Lucretia Parsons, like so many other clergymen, was obliged to exist on a starvation salary, only six hundred dollars a year. Among his ancestors was George Morton of Battery, Yorkshire, financial agent in London of the _Mayflower_. Mr.

L.P. Morton may have inherited his financial cleverness from this ancestor.

After studying at Sh.o.r.eham Academy, he entered a country store at Enfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, and was there for two years, then taught a district school, and later entered a general store at Concord, New Hampshire, when only seventeen. His father was unable to send him to college, and Mr. Estabrook, the manager of the store, decided to establish him in a branch store at Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth College is located, giving him soon afterward an interest in the business. Here he stayed until nearly twenty-four years old. Mr.

Morton immediately engaged a stylish tailor from Boston, W.H. Gibbs, or as all called him, "Bill Gibbs," whose skill at making even cheap suits look smart brought him a large patronage from the college students. Once a whole graduating cla.s.s were supplied with dress suits from this artist. Mr. Morton had a most interesting store, sunny and scrupulously clean, with everything anyone could ask for, and few ever went out of it without buying something, even if they had entered simply from curiosity. The clerks were trained to be courteous without being persistent. Sat.u.r.day was bargain day, and printed lists of what could be obtained on that day at an absurdly cheap rate were widely distributed through the neighbouring towns. People came in large numbers to those bargains. Long rows of all sorts of odd vehicles were hitched up and down the street. A man would drop in for some smoking tobacco and buy himself a good straw hat or winter cap. A wife would call because soda was offered so cheaply and would end by buying a black silk dress, "worth one dollar a yard but selling for today only for fifty cents." Mr. Morton was perhaps the original pioneer in methods which have built up the great department stores of the present day. If he had received the education his father so craved for him he would have probably had an inferior and very different career.

Mr. Morton greatly enjoyed his life at Hanover; he was successful and looking forward to greater openings in his business career. My father, taking a great fancy to this enterprising, cheery young man, invited him to dine each day at our house for nearly a year. They were great friends and had a happy influence upon each other. There were many jolly laughs and much earnest talk. He met Miss Lucy Kimball of Flatlands, Long Island, at our house at a Commencement reception, and they were soon married. She lived only a few years.

Mr. Morton was next in Boston in the dry-goods house of James Beebe Morgan & Company, and was soon made a partner. Mr. Morgan was the father of Pierpont Morgan. It is everlastingly to Mr. Morton's honour that after he failed in business in New York he was able before long to invite his creditors to dinner, and underneath the service plate of each creditor was a check for payment in full.

Preferring to give money while living, his whole path has been marked by large benefactions. My memory is of his Hanover life and his friendship with my father, but it is interesting to note the several steps in his career: Honorary Commissioner, Paris Exposition, 1878; Member 46th Congress, 1879-81, Sixth New York District; United States Minister to France, 1881-85; Vice-President of the United States, 1889-93; Governor of New York, 1895-6.

Mr. Morton recently celebrated at his Washington home the ninety-first anniversary in a life full of honours, and what is more important--of honour.

CHAPTER II

A Friend at Andover, Ma.s.s.--Hezekiah b.u.t.terworth--A Few of my Own Folks--Professor Putnam of Dartmouth--One Year at Packer Inst.i.tute, Brooklyn--Beecher's Face in Prayer--The Poet Saxe as I Saw him--Offered the Use of a Rare Library--Miss Edna Dean Proctor--New Stories of Greeley--Experiences at St. Louis.

Next a few months at Andover for music lessons--piano and organ. A valuable friend was found in Miss Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, who had just published her _Gates Ajar_. She invited me to her study and wanted to know what I meant to accomplish in life and urged me to write. "I have so much work called for now that I cannot keep up my contributions to _The Youth's Companion_. I want you to have my place there. What would you like to write about?"

"Don't know."

"Haven't you anything at home to describe."

"No."

"Any pets?"

"Why I have a homely, ordinary dog, but he knows a lot."