Memories and Anecdotes Part 8

Thought is deeper than all speech, Feeling deeper than all thought; Souls to souls can never teach What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils; Man by man was never seen; All our deep communing fails To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known; Mind with mind did never meet; We are columns left alone Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky, Far apart, though seeming near, In our light we scattered lie; All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company, But the babbling summer stream?

What our wise philosophy But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the sun of love Melts the scattered stars of thought, Only when we live above What the dim-eyed world hath taught,

Only when our souls are fed By the fount which gave them birth, And by inspiration led Which they never drew from earth.

We, like parted drops of rain, Swelling till they meet and run, Shall be all absorbed again, Melting, flowing into one.

CHRISTOPHER PEa.r.s.e CRANCH (1813-1892).

Cranch's own t.i.tle for this poem was "Enosis," not "Gnosis" as now given; "Enosis" being a Greek word meaning "all in one," which is ill.u.s.trated by the last verse.

It was first published in the _Dial_ in 1844. "Stanzas" appeared at the head, and at the end was his initial, "C."

CHAPTER IV

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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Sat.u.r.day afternoons to a cla.s.s of married ladies at Mrs. Terhune's (Marion Harland) in Springfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 pet.i.tion.

I used no special text-book while at Smith College, and requested my cla.s.s 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 inst.i.tution 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 ill.u.s.trious president. Bringing to his task a n.o.ble 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 cla.s.ses. 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 cla.s.s. 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 a.s.sembled 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 n.o.ble woman, Sophia Smith of Hatfield, Ma.s.sachusetts.

On April 18, 1796, the town of Hatfield, in town meeting a.s.sembled, "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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 b.u.t.ton or do repairs on his clothing without paying them a small sum for it, and he always received six cents for doing ch.o.r.es 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 circ.u.mstances. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, instead of Hatfield, Ma.s.sachusetts. 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, Ma.s.sachusetts.

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 Va.s.sar, 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.