All were silent, for to have spoken while father was reading would have been an unforgivable offence. At last, however, Mr. Stillman lifted his eyes from the paper, and addressing Tom, said: "Well, how did you get along at school to-day?"

"Oh, first rate," said the boy; but that lost head mark rankled in his mind, and he added, "Rachel was called up by the teacher."

"How was that, Rachel?" said her father sharply. Poor girl!—deep in the mysteries of long division, she did not hear him.

"Rachel," he repeated, "what were you called up in school for to-day?"

She glanced reproachfully at Tom. "I read a little in 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' father. It's not a story-book—"

"Never mind what it is. I send you to school to study, and you're not to touch any but your school-books."

"May I bring it home?" she faltered.

"Bring it home, indeed! No, miss. I guess you can find enough to do at home. Not another word more, or you will stay at home for good."

The child bent over her slate; but tears would come, and at last a sob burst forth.

"Clear out to bed, Rachel," said her father angrily. "I want no snivelling here."

Upstairs, in the cold, dark room, what bitter thoughts surged through the childish brain!

Mr. Stillman loved his wife and children. He wanted them to be happy, but in his way. He must choose their pleasures. If they could not be satisfied with what he chose for them, it was not his fault; it was their perversity. And as no two souls are alike, the attempt to fit a number of them by the same pattern necessarily caused suffering to the souls undergoing the operation.

Mrs. Stillman's sensitive organization was completely crushed; her eldest daughter's nearly so. Martha, the second daughter, had escaped by marrying a clever young man, who first pitied, then loved the daughter of his employer, and persuaded her to elope with him, assuring her of a happier home than she had with her father.

The marriage angered Mr. Stillman greatly, and all intercourse with the disobedient daughter was forbidden.

Margaret, the third daughter, also rebelled at the fitting process; and having a goodly portion of her father's determination, many were the sharp words that passed between them.

So far Rachel and Susan had given no trouble. He ordered them about as he did his dumb animals, and with no more regard to their feelings. With his sons it was different. They would be men some day. They must be treated with some consideration. At an early age, John, two years older than Elizabeth, was given a share in the stock and land to cultivate; so that when, at the age of twenty-four, he married, he had a "right good start in the world."

But his sister toiled early and late, washing, ironing, milking, churning, baking, nursing the younger children, sharing her mother's labors, and paid as her mother was—with her board and a scanty, grudgingly given wardrobe. She was now twenty-four, and had never had a five-dollar bill to spend as she pleased in her life—for that matter, neither had the mother. There are many Mr. Stillmans, "Are they honest men?" If father and son have the right to be paid for their labor, have not the mother and daughter? I leave the question with you.

Rachel carried a heavy heart to school next morning. The tinker's wonderful allegory to her was very real, and to leave her hero in that awful dungeon was almost more than she could bear. When at recess the teacher offered her the book, she did not take it.

"Father said," she began—then sobs choked her utterance. He understood, and after a moment's silence said: "I am interested in Christian as well as you, Rachel, and if you will sit here I will read to you." In all her after life Rachel never forgot these readings at intermission, which were continued not only until Christian reached the Celestial city, but until Christiana and the children completed their wonderful journey to the same place. Her gratitude to her young teacher would certainly have become love had she been a few years older. As it was, when in March the term closed, not even the prize as the best speller—a beautiful copy of "Pilgrim's Progress"—consoled her for the cessation of school.

As for the teacher, he was glad the winter's work—which had been undertaken and conscientiously carried through solely for the purpose of obtaining means to pursue the study of his profession—was over. He liked some of his scholars very much, Rachel especially; she was so interested in her studies, so intelligent and grateful, that when, with eyes swimming in tears, she bade him good-by, he felt a moment's sorrow at leaving her, and comforted her by telling her what a good girl she had been and that he would not forget her.

"You ought to have seen Rache an' Suse cry when old Gray bid us good-by," said Tom that evening at home.

"Did you cry?" asked Margaret.

"Guess not! Glad school's out; an' I'm never goin' any more."

"I wouldn't if I were you, bub," said Margaret; "you know enough now." She always called him "bub" when she wanted to vex him, "But old Gray, as you call him, will be somebody yet, see if he don't."

The entrance of Mr. Stillman closed the conversation, and Tom went out, banging the door after him. No wonder Margaret was getting ill-natured.

The winter was a long, dull season at Stillman's. Even her enjoyment at the few social gatherings she was permitted to attend in the neighborhood was marred by the knowledge that she could not entertain her young friends in return. She had attempted once to fix up the "spare room" and have a fire for some company, but her father had peremptorily forbidden it. "I'd like to know," he said, "why the settin'-room ain't good enough! If your company is too nice to be with the rest of the family they can stay away, miss."

And "they" generally did stay away after one visit. Mr. Stillman was not a success as a host, young people thought; and a young minister who came home from meeting one Sunday with Elizabeth was so completely abashed by the cool reception he met that not even the daughter's pleading eyes could persuade him to remain in her father's presence. A few weeks after, he went to a distant appointment; and Elizabeth's sad face grew sadder than ever.

Jim Lansing, the son of a widow who managed a farm and two grown sons with equal skill, was more successful. He usually brought his mother with him; and, while she entertained Mr. and Mrs. Stillman, Jim, the girls, and the carpet rags escaped to the kitchen.

But spring was near, and Margaret thought: "He can't keep us out of the spare room in summer; and, besides, we can be out-of-doors."

June came, with her blue skies, her singing birds, her wealth of beauty. But there was no time at Stillman's to enjoy it. A larger crop than usual had been put in, and extra hands employed, but not in the house. Why, there were five women, counting frail little ten-year-old Susy as one, and poor, delicate Mrs. Stillman as another! What extra help could they need, although washing and cooking must be done for all the men? You see, "hands" could be got much cheaper if they were boarded—and what else had the women to do?

It was true, mother was not as strong as she used to be; but she did not complain. She was only more shadowy and quiet; and Mr. Stillman told his daughters to "stir around" themselves, and not let their mother do all the work.

"Oh, dear," said Margaret one morning, as she and Rachel were bending over the wash-tubs, while Susy labored at the heavy churning and the mother and Elizabeth were preparing dinner. "I wish we could go to the picnic on the Fourth; everybody's going."

"Maybe we can," said Rachel, hopefully. "I heard father say the wheat was late this year, and he did not believe it would do to cut before the sixth. And oh, Margaret, I heard him say your calf would bring at least ten dollars; and if he gives you the money, you can get a new white dress and give me your old one. It is lots too small for you."

Margaret laughed. "Yes," she said; "father said if I could raise the calf I might have it. Didn't I have a time with it, though, it was so near dead! Of course I will fix my old dress up for you—that is, if I get the money. Sometimes I think father's queer; he did not give Elizabeth the money when he sold that colt he had given her." And both girls were silent.

Out in the barnyard, as the girls worked, Mr. Stillman and Tom were putting the pretty calf in the wagon preparatory to taking it to the butcher in the town a few miles distant. When the girls went in to dinner the men had finished theirs, and were lounging in the shady yard enjoying their nooning.

As they were about to sit down at the table, Mr. Stillman handed Margaret a package, saying, "There's your share of that spotted calf, Margaret."

"My share!" she exclaimed. "Why, you gave me the calf; you had no right to it."

As she spoke she opened the package and unrolled a piece of cheap lawn—yellow ground dotted with blue. She flung it angrily on the floor, and ran out of the room.

Mr. Stillman turned to Rachel after a moment of dumb amazement, and said: "You can have the dress, Rachel. I'll teach Margaret a lesson."

"I don't want it," she said. "You had no right to take Margaret's money. You did give her the calf, and when you sold Tom's pig you gave him his money."

"Nice girls you're raising, mother," said Mr. Stillman to his frightened wife. "They'll be turning us out of doors next. You pick up that lawn, miss."

Rachel did so. As she folded it, he went on: "That calf was mine. I only meant to pay her for caring for it."

"You should have told her so, then," said his daughter, facing him with eyes keen as his own; "but you told her if she could raise it she might have it, and, of course, she believed you."

He raised his hand as if to strike her; then, as she did not move or drop her eyes, he turned and left the room.

July came, but the Stillman girls did not go to the picnic. Tom and the "hands" did; and Mrs. Lansing and her boys stopped at Stillman's on their way and offered the girls seats in their wagon. But Mr. Stillman said his women had to get ready for the harvest hands who were coming next day, and Margaret said to Rachel bitterly: "We have no decent clothes to go in anyhow." And there was much washing, ironing, cooking, and churning done as the days went on. No wonder Mrs. Stillman grew paler and weaker, until even her husband noticed it, and brought her a bottle of bitters, and told the girls to "keep mother out of the kitchen," which they indeed tried to do. But how could the mother rest when there was so much to do? The girls could not manage as she could, and Elizabeth seemed "so poorly;" for the patient elder daughter, as the summer dragged along, had a pitifully hopeless look on her pale face, and went about listlessly, as if life had lost all interest for her.

At last there came a morning when the mother did not rise for breakfast.

"Hadn't we better send for Dr. Lewis, father?" said Elizabeth.

"Oh, no; your mother did not sleep much, it was so hot last night. She'll be up directly. You keep her out of the kitchen, and see you have dinner on time. We want to finish to-day, for I expect we'll have a storm, from the feel of the air."

Noon came. Dinner for a dozen hungry men was on the table, and still Mrs. Stillman was in bed. While the men were eating, Rachel slipped in to her mother. She was awake, but her flushed face and wild, bright eyes startled the girl.

"Oh, mother!" she cried, "you are very sick; you must have the doctor."

"No, dear," the mother answered; "father is too busy now. I'll be better after awhile. You go help wait on the table."

Rachel returned to the dining-room. "Take that fly-brush, Rachel," said her father. "Susy's no account; she's too lazy to keep it going."

Poor, tired little Susy, who had done a large churning that morning, crimsoned to the roots of her hair as she handed Rachel the brush and hurried out of the room.

When dinner was over Mr. Stillman glared into the room where his wife lay. "She is asleep," he said. "I guess she's all right."

"She hasn't eaten a thing to-day," said Rachel. "Hadn't she better have the doctor?"

"Well," said her father, impatiently, "if she's no better in the morning, I'll send for him;" and he went back to the field.

Rachel went for Mrs. Lansing, for she and her sisters grew frightened as the mother's fever increased. When that good woman came she saw at once the serious condition of her friend.

"I saw Dr. Lewis coming down the road in his buggy as I came," she said. "One of you hurry out and stop him."

When, about five o'clock, the rain began to fall in torrents, Mr. Stillman had the satisfaction of seeing the last load of grain driven inside the barn door; and, taking off his hat, he wiped the moisture from his face, saying: "Well, boys, we beat the rain; and I don't care if it pours down now."

He walked toward the house, and, to his surprise, saw the well-known figure of Dr. Lewis on the front porch. "Driven in by the rain," he thought. "I'll get him to give mother a little medicine."

"How are you, doctor?" he said, as he stepped upon the porch. "Lucky getting my wheat in, wasn't I?"

"Very," said the doctor, gravely; "but I am sorry to say I find Mrs. Stillman a very sick woman. You should have sent for me long ago." The husband was startled.

"Why," he said, "she has been going about until to-day. I guess it's this weather has made her so weak. She can't be very sick."

The physician was silent for a moment; then he said: "If there is not a change for the better soon, I fear she will live but a few days. I cannot understand how she has kept up;" and he turned and went into the sick-room.

For once the men at Stillman's ate a cold supper and did the milking. Mrs. Lansing took things into her own capable hands. John and his wife were sent for and came, and Jim Lansing quietly hitched up a team and went for Martha and her husband—poor Martha, who had not seen her mother for more than a year!

All night Mr. Stillman watched by the bedside or walked up and down the long back porch. It could not be she would die—his wife. It was the hot weather; she was just weak and tired. That was it, Mr. Stillman—worn out, tired; and rest was coming. When Martha came, the mother who had so longed for her did not recognize her.

"Mother, only speak to me!" cried the daughter in anguish; but the mother looked at her with dimming eyes that saw no more of earth, and muttered as she turned upon her couch, "Hurry, girls, it's nearly noon. Hurry! Father will be angry if he has to wait."

Then she grew quiet; only her restless hands, which her daughters vainly strove to hold, kept reaching out as if to grasp that unknown land she was so soon to enter; and before the sun was high in the morning Mrs. Stillman had found rest.

Her husband was stunned. With haggard face he bent over his dead. "If I had known," he said. "Oh, my wife, if I had known, I would have taken better care of you."

Ah, Mr. Stillman, you are not the only one who with remorseful heart cries, "If I had only known, if I had only known!"

Life went on as usual at Stillman's after the mother had left them. For a while the father was kinder, but as time went on the old habit was resumed. Elizabeth went mechanically about her work, and her father did not notice her evidently failing health. Her quietness was a relief to him; for Margaret was growing more defiant toward him, and quarrelled constantly with Tom, who, now that his mother's influence was withdrawn, became more and more meddlesome and overbearing in his conduct toward his sisters. The summer following Mrs. Stillman's death Mrs. Lansing's eldest son, Frank, took unto himself a wife; and late in the fall the neighborhood was electrified by the unexpected marriage of Mrs. Lansing and Mr. Stillman. Her boys, on learning her intention, had remonstrated; but she said: "You boys do not need me, and these girls do. Think of a young girl like Rachel saying, 'God had nothing to do with my mother's death. It was hard work killed her!' And when I tried to tell her of His goodness to His creatures, she said: 'Yes; He is good enough to men. All He cares for women is to create them for men's convenience,' And then there's little Susy, with a face like her mother's. Why, it just haunts me!"

"Well," said Jim, "things are in a bad fix over there; but it isn't Susy's face that haunts me, by any means."

His mother laughed. "I shall take care of Margaret," she said; "she and Elizabeth need some one to look after them. They are being worked to death."

Four years have slipped over the heads of the Stillmans—years well improved by Rachel and Susy at the academy in the town near their father's farm; years which gave Margaret's happiness into Jim Lansing's keeping, and made Jim a young man of whom his sisters were extremely proud. Even Elizabeth's sad face looks as if life might be worth living; for, under the second wife, life at Stillman's had taken on a different color. The spare room is a pretty sitting-room for the young folks.

"We don't want them always with us," says Mrs. Stillman, as she shows her husband the change she has made; for one of her peculiarities is that she manages her household affairs as she thinks best, taking it for granted that her husband will approve. As for Rachel, she enjoyed the change for the better; but now, to the bitter feeling which she cherished toward her father, was added a touch of contempt "See," she thought, "how he can be flattered into doing things; if my mother could have managed him so, she might have lived."

Rachel was mistaken; the new wife did not manoeuvre or flatter, she simply took her proper place as mistress of the house—not as a sort of upper servant, to be snubbed or praised at the master's humor.

Another summer had been added to Rachel's years when, one evening, Tom came home from town, and entering the dining-room, where she was preparing the table for supper, exclaimed: "Rachel, do you remember old Gray, as I used to call him, who taught our school the winter before mother died?"

"Yes," she said, "I remember him. Mother liked him."

"Well, I met him in town to-day. He's on that Sanders case. He knew me right off, and he's coming out here this evening; so fix up nice and be looking your sweetest. They say he's smart. I heard some of the old lawyers talking about him." And Tom caught his sister about the waist and waltzed her out on the porch.

"Rachel," said Susy, as in their own room the girls were dressing after supper, "you are very hard to please to-night and you seem nervous. What ails you?"

Rachel smiled. "I am thinking of old days, that is all," she said. But she entered the little parlor, where Tom and the guest were seated, in a perfectly self-possessed manner, saying, as she held out her hand:

"Good-evening, teacher. How goes the battle with Apollyon?"

And the young lawyer sprang to his feet, exclaiming: "Rachel! is it possible?" and he retained her hand and looked into her eyes so long that Susy, who had followed her into the room, and Tom declared that he fell in love then and there. However that may be, it is certain Mr. Gray showed a wonderful interest in Stillman's district. The trial in progress at Meywood was tedious, but his patience did not give out; and when some of the lawyers proposed to hold night sessions of court he objected earnestly, saying: "It would be too hard on the old judge."

But all things must end, and the case was at last decided in favor of Mr. Gray's client. As Rachel congratulated him on his victory, he said, with a look that brought the color to her face:

"How long must I stay in Doubting Castle, Rachel?"

"Why, dear me," she answered, saucily, "I did not think a promising young lawyer, as father calls you, ever got into such a dismal place!"

Then Susy came in, and the young man bade her good-by, but he whispered promise of speedy return to Rachel, and as he travelled homeward those wonderful eyes of hers seemed to haunt him.

"Who would have thought," he said to himself, "she could have become such a woman? No wonder I could not find a girl to suit me when she has been my ideal."

You see, he was trying to persuade himself he had thought of her ever since that term of school; and it may be, unknown to himself, those eyes had held him. At any rate, he says they did; and when, time after time, they drew him back to Stillman's, he at last made Rachel believe it, and with the little key of promise she delivered him from Doubting Castle.

Let us take one more look, two years later, at the Stillman homestead. There is a family gathering, and all the girls are present—Martha and Margaret, with their sturdy boys and rosy girls; Rachel, with her baby; and Susy, a gay young aunt, flits to and fro, playing with and teasing the little ones. Elizabeth, with unwonted brightness in her eyes, looks on, enjoying the merriment.

"Doesn't it seem odd," whispers Margaret, "that Lizzie's minister should come back after all these years."

"Yes," answers Rachel, in the same low tone. "I am so glad. She seems so happy."

The husbands are all present in the evening, and the old house is full of light and gayety. Rachel slips upstairs to put baby to bed; and as she sits in the room where so many miserable hours of her childhood were spent, her tears fall, thinking of herself and the dear, patient mother, who had suffered and died; and the old bitterness rises in her heart. Baby stirs and she hushes him, then lays him gently in the old cradle, and goes downstairs. Some impulse prompts her to enter the sitting-room instead of the parlor, where she thinks the family are all gathered.

As she opens the door she sees her father sitting, as of old, by the table on which the lamp is burning, and she half turns to go out; but something in his attitude touches her. He is not reading, for the newspaper lies untouched—he is looking at something in his hand.

She notices how gray his hair is, and how age is tracing lines on his face. "Are you feeling sick, father?" she asks.

"Oh, no," he says. "Look here, Rachel;" and he hands her a faded daguerreotype of her mother taken when she was a fair young bride. "I was thinking about her."

"How much like Susy," she said, with tears falling on the lovely face.

"Yes, only she was prettier," he answers. "I have been thinking of her so much lately, Rachel. I am going to do something that would please her. I have bought that pretty little place of Perry's, and I will put Martha and her husband on it. Dick's a good industrious fellow; but it's hard to make anything on a rented farm, and Martha's worried too much. You don't think any of the children will object?" and he looked anxiously in her face.

"Object? Why, they will be glad, father!" And dropping her head on his shoulder, she puts her arm around him for the first time in her life; and as she slips the little daguerreotype in his hand a sweet peace fills her heart and she thinks: "The bitterness is gone, and love fills its place." After awhile she joins the group in the parlor. They are singing to Susy's accompaniment on the organ.

"Sing 'Coronation,' Susy," she says, as she sits down beside her husband and glances lovingly in his face.

"What is it?" he whispers. "You are unusually happy."

"Yes," she answers. "I have had a vision of the land of Beulah, where Love is king."



CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,

AUTHOR OF "THE GATES AJAR," "A SINGULAR LIFE," ETC.

THE BURNING OF THE PEMBERTON MILLS.—THE STORY OF "THE TENTH OF JANUARY."—WHITTIER AND HIGGINSON.—THE WRITING AND PUBLICATION OF "THE GATES AJAR."

The town of Lawrence was three miles and a half from Andover. Up to the year 1860 we had considered Lawrence chiefly in the light of a place to drive to. To the girlish resources which could, in those days, only include a trip to Boston at the call of some fate too vast to be expected more than two or three times a year, Lawrence offered consolations in the shape of dry goods and restaurant ice-cream, and a slow, delicious drive in the family carryall through sand flats and pine woods, and past the largest bed of the sweetest violets that ever dared the blasts of a New England spring. To the pages of the gazetteer Lawrence would have been known as a manufacturing town of importance. Upon the map of our young fancy the great mills were sketched in lightly; we looked up from the restaurant ice-cream to see the "hands" pour out for dinner, a dark and restless, but a patient, throng; used, in those days, to standing eleven hours and a quarter—women and girls—at their looms, six days of the week, and making no audible complaints; for socialism had not reached Lawrence, and anarchy was content to bray in distant parts of the geography at which the factory people had not arrived when they left school.

Sometimes we counted the great mills as we drove up Essex Street—having come over the bridge by the roaring dam that tamed the proud Merrimac to spinning cotton—Pacific, Atlantic, Washington, Pemberton; but this was an idle, aesthetic pleasure. We did not think about the mill-people; they seemed as far from us as the coal-miners of a vague West, or the down-gatherers on the crags of shores whose names we did not think it worth while to remember. One January evening, we were forced to think about the mills with curdling horror that no one living in that locality when the tragedy happened will forget.

At five o'clock the Pemberton Mills, all hands being at the time on duty, without a tremor of warning, sank to the ground.

At the erection of the factory a pillar with a defective core had passed careless inspectors. In technical language, the core had "floated" an eighth of an inch from its position. The weak spot in the too thin wall of the pillar had bided its time, and yielded. The roof, the walls, the machinery, fell upon seven hundred and fifty living men and women, and buried them. Most of these were rescued; but eighty-eight were killed. As the night came on, those watchers on Andover Hill who could not join the rescuing parties, saw a strange and fearful light at the north.

Where we were used to watching the beautiful belt of the lighted mills blaze,—a zone of laughing fire from east to west, upon the horizon bar,—a red and awful glare went up. The mill had taken fire. A lantern, overturned in the hands of a man who was groping to save an imprisoned life, had flashed to the cotton, or the wool, or the oil with which the ruins were saturated. One of the historic conflagrations of New England resulted.

With blanching cheeks we listened to the whispers that told us how the mill-girls, caught in the ruins beyond hope of escape, began to sing. They were used to singing, poor things, at their looms—mill-girls always are—and their young souls took courage from the familiar sound of one another's voices. They sang the hymns and songs which they had learned in the schools and churches. No classical strains, no "music for music's sake," ascended from that furnace; no ditty of love or frolic; but the plain, religious outcries of the people: "Heaven is my home," "Jesus, lover of my soul," and "Shall we gather at the river?" Voice after voice dropped. The fire raced on. A few brave girls sang still:

"Shall we gather at the river, There to walk and worship ever?"

But the startled Merrimac rolled by, red as blood beneath the glare of the burning mills, and it was left to the fire and the river to finish the chorus.

At the time this tragedy occurred, I felt my share of its horror, like other people; but no more than that. My brother, being of the privileged sex, was sent over to see the scene; but I was not allowed to go.

Years after, I cannot say just how many, the half-effaced negative came back to form under the chemical of some new perception of the significance of human tragedy.

It occurred to me to use the event as the basis of a story. To this end I set forth to study the subject. I had heard nothing in those days about "material," and conscience in the use of it, and little enough about art. We did not talk about realism then. Of critical phraseology I knew nothing; and of critical standards only what I had observed by reading the best fiction. Poor novels and stories I did not read. I do not remember being forbidden them; but, by that parental art finer than denial, they were absent from my convenience.

It needed no instruction in the canons of art, however, to teach me that to do a good thing, one must work hard for it. So I gave the best part of a month to the study of the Pemberton Mill tragedy, driving to Lawrence, and investigating every possible avenue of information left at that too long remove of time which might give the data. I visited the rebuilt mills, and studied the machinery. I consulted engineers and officials and physicians, newspaper men, and persons who had been in the mill at the time of its fall. I scoured the files of old local papers, and from these I took certain portions of names, actually involved in the catastrophe; though, of course, fictitiously used. When there was nothing left for me to learn upon the subject, I came home and wrote a little story called "The Tenth of January," and sent it to the "Atlantic Monthly," where it appeared in due time.

This story is of more interest to its author than it can possibly be now to any reader, because it distinctly marked for me the first recognition which I received from literary people.

Whittier, the poet, wrote me his first letter, after having read this story. It was soon followed by a kind note from Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Both these distinguished men said the pleasant thing which goes so far towards keeping the courage of young writers above sinking point, and which, to a self-distrustful nature, may be little less than a life-preserver. Both have done similar kindness to many other beginners in our calling; but none of these can have been more grateful for it, or more glad to say so, across this long width of time, than the writer of "The Tenth of January."

It was a defective enough little story, crude and young; I never glance at it without longing to write it over; but I cannot read it, to this day, without that tingling and numbness down one's spine and through the top of one's head, which exceptional tragedy must produce in any sensitive organization; nor can I ever trust myself to hear it read by professional elocutionists. I attribute the success of the story entirely to the historic and unusual character of the catastrophe on whose movement it was built.

Of journalism, strictly speaking, I did nothing. But I often wrote for weekly denominational papers, to which I contributed those strictly secular articles so popular with the religious public. My main impression of them now, is a pleasant sense of sitting out in the apple-trees in the wonderful Andover Junes, and "noticing" new books-with which Boston publishers kept me supplied. For whatever reason, the weeklies gave me all I could do at this sort of thing. In its course I formed some pleasant acquaintances; among others that of Jean Ingelow. I have never seen this poet, whom I honor now as much as I admired then; but charming little notes, and books of her own, with her autograph, reached me from time to time for years. I remember when "The Gates Ajar" appeared, that she frankly called it "Your most strange book."

This brings me to say: I have been so often and so urgently asked to publish some account of the history of this book, that perhaps I need crave no pardon of whatever readers these papers may command, for giving more of our space to the subject than it would otherwise occur to one to do to a book so long behind the day.

Of what we know as literary ambition, I believe myself to have been as destitute at that time as any girl who ever put pen to paper. I was absorbed in thought and feeling as far removed from the usual class of emotions or motives which move men and women to write, as Wachusett was from the June lilies burning beside the moonlit cross in my father's garden. Literary ambition is a good thing to possess; and I do not at all suggest that I was superior to it, but simply apart from it. Of its pangs and ecstasies I knew little, and thought less.

I have been asked, possibly a thousand times, whether I looked upon that little book as in any sense the result of inspiration, whether what is called spiritualistic, or of any other sort. I have always promptly said "No," to this question. Yet sometimes I wonder if that convenient monosyllable in deed and truth covers the whole case.

When I remember just how the book came to be, perceive the consequences of its being, and recall the complete unconsciousness of the young author as to their probable nature, there are moments when I am fain to answer the question by asking another: "What do we mean by inspiration?"

That book grew so naturally, it was so inevitable, it was so unpremeditated, it came so plainly from that something not one's self which makes for uses in which one's self is extinguished, that there are times when it seems to me as if I had no more to do with the writing of it than the bough through which the wind cries, or the wave by means of which the tide rises.

The angel said unto me "Write!" and I wrote.

It is impossible to remember how or when the idea of the book first visited me. Its publication bears the date of 1869. My impressions are that it may have been towards the close of 1864 that the work began; for there was work in it, more than its imperfect and youthful character might lead one ignorant of the art of book-making to suppose.

It was not until 1863 that I left school, being then just about at my nineteenth birthday. It is probable that the magazine stories and Sunday-school books and hack work occupied from one to two years without interruption; but I have no more temperament for dates in my own affairs than I have for those of history. At the most, I could not have been far from twenty when the book was written; possibly approaching twenty-one.

At that time, it will be remembered, our country was dark with sorrowing women. The regiments came home, but the mourners went about the streets.

The Grand Review passed through Washington; four hundred thousand ghosts of murdered men kept invisible march to the drum-beats, and lifted to the stained and tattered flags the proud and unreturned gaze of the dead who have died in their glory.

Our gayest scenes were black with crape. The drawn faces of bereaved wife, mother, sister, and widowed girl showed piteously everywhere. Gray-haired parents knelt at the grave of the boy whose enviable fortune it was to be brought home in time to die in his mother's room. Towards the nameless mounds of Arlington, of Gettysburg, and the rest, the yearning of desolated homes went out in those waves of anguish which seem to choke the very air that the happier and more fortunate must breathe.

Is there not an actual occult force in the existence of a general grief? It swells to a tide whose invisible flow covers all the little resistance of common, human joyousness. It is like a material miasma. The gayest man breathes it, if he breathe at all; and the most superficial cannot escape it.

Into that great world of woe my little book stole forth, trembling. So far as I can remember having had any "object" at all in its creation, I wished to say something that would comfort some few—I did not think at all about comforting many, not daring to suppose that incredible privilege possible—of the women whose misery crowded the land. The smoke of their torment ascended, and the sky was blackened by it. I do not think I thought so much about the suffering of men—the fathers, the brothers, the sons—bereft; but the women—the helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted women; they whom war trampled down, without a choice or protest; the patient, limited, domestic women, who thought little, but loved much, and, loving, had lost all—to them I would have spoken.

For it came to seem to me, as I pondered these things in my own heart, that even the best and kindest forms of our prevailing beliefs had nothing to say to an afflicted woman that could help her much. Creeds and commentaries and sermons were made by men. What tenderest of men knows how to comfort his own daughter when her heart is broken? What can the doctrines do for the desolated by death? They were chains of rusty iron, eating into raw hearts. The prayer of the preacher were not much better; it sounded like the language of an unknown race to a despairing girl. Listen to the hymn. It falls like icicles on snow. Or, if it happen to be one of the old genuine outcries of the Church, sprung from real human anguish or hope, it maddens the listener, and she flees from it, too sore a thing to bear the touch of holy music.

At this time, be it said, I had no interest at all in any especial movement for the peculiar needs of women as a class. I was reared in circles which did not concern themselves with what we should probably have called agitators. I was taught the old ideas of womanhood, in the old way, and had not to any important extent begun to resent them.

Perhaps I am wrong here. Individually, I may have begun to recoil from them, but only in a purely selfish, personal way, beyond which I had evolved neither theory nor conscience; much less the smallest tendency towards sympathy with any public movement of the question.

In the course of two or three years spent in exceptional solitude, I had read a good deal in the direction of my ruling thoughts and feeling, and came to the writing of my little book, not ignorant of what had been written for and by the mourning. The results of this reading, of course, went into the book, and seemed to me, at the time, by far the most useful part of it.

How the book grew, who can say? More of nature than of purpose, surely. It moved like a tear or a sigh or a prayer. In a sense I scarcely knew that I wrote it. Yet it signified labor and time, crude and young as it looks to me now; and often as I have wondered, from my soul, why it has known the history that it has, I have at least a certain respect for it, myself, in that it did not represent shiftlessness or sloth, but steady and conscientious toil. There was not a page in it which had not been subjected to such study as the writer then knew how to offer to her manuscripts.

Every sentence had received the best attention which it was in the power of my inexperience and youth to give. I wrote and rewrote. The book was revised so many times that I could have said it by heart. The process of forming and writing "The Gates Ajar" lasted, I think, nearly two years.

I had no study or place to myself in those days; only the little room whose one window looked upon the garden cross, and which it was not expected would be warmed in winter.

The room contained no chimney, and, until I was sixteen, no fire for any purpose. At that time, it being supposed that some delicacy of the lungs had threatened serious results, my father, who always moved the sods beneath him and the skies above him to care for a sick child, had managed to insert a little stove into the room, to soften its chill when needed. But I did not have consumption, only life; and one was not expected to burn wood all day for private convenience in our furnace-heated house. Was there not the great dining-room where the children studied?

It was not so long since I, too, had learned my lessons off the dining-room table, or in the corner by the register, that it should occur to any member of the family that these opportunities for privacy could not answer my needs.

Equally, it did not occur to me to ask for any abnormal luxuries. I therefore made the best of my conditions, though I do remember sorely longing for quiet.

This, at that time, in that house, it was impossible for me to compass. There was a growing family of noisy boys—four of them—of whom I was the only sister, as I was the oldest child. When the baby did not cry (I have always maintained that the baby cried pretty steadily both day and night, but this is a point upon which their mother and I have affectionately agreed to differ), the boys were shouting about the grounds, chasing each other through the large house, up and down the cellar stairs, and through the wide halls, a whirlwind of vigor and fun. They were merry, healthy boys, and everything was done to keep them so. I sometimes doubt if there are any happier children growing anywhere than the boys and girls of Andover used to be. I was very fond of the boys, and cherished no objection to their privileges in the house. But when one went down, on a cold day, to the register, to write one's chapter on the nature of amusements in the life to come, and found the dining-room neatly laid out in the form of a church congregation, to which a certain proportion of brothers were enthusiastically performing the duties of an active pastor and parish, the environment was a definite check to inspiration.

I wonder if all Andover boys played at preaching? It certainly was the one sport in our house which never satiated.

Coming in one day, I remember, struggling with certain hopeless purposes of my own, for an afternoon's work, I found the dining-room chairs all nicely set in the order of pews; a table, ornamented with Bible and hymn-books, confronted them; behind it, on a cricket, towered the bigger brother, loudly holding forth. The little brother represented the audience—it was usually the little one who was forced to play this duller role—and, with open mouth, and with wriggling feet turned in on the rounds of the chair, absorbed as much exhortation as he could suffer.

"My text, brethren," said the little minister, "is, 'Suffer the little children to come unto me.'

"My subject is, God; Joseph; and Moses in the bulrushes!"

Discouraged by the alarming breadth of the little preacher's topic, I fled up-stairs again. There an inspiration did, indeed, strike me; for I remembered an old fur cape, or pelisse, of my mother's, out of fashion, but the warmer for that; and straightway I got me into it, and curled up, with my papers, on the chilly bed in the cold room, and went to work.

It seems to me that a good part of "The Gates Ajar" was written in that old fur cape. Often I stole up into the attic, or into some unfrequented closet, to escape the noise of the house, while at work. I remember, too, writing sometimes in the barn, on the haymow. The book extended over a wide domestic topography.

I hasten to say that no person was to blame for inconveniences of whose existence I had never complained. Doubtless something would have been done to relieve them had I asked for it; or if the idea that my work could ever be of any consequence had occurred to any of us. Why should it? The girl who is never "domestic" is trial enough at her best. She cannot cook; she will not sew. She washes dishes Mondays and Tuesdays under protest, while the nurse and parlor maid are called off from their natural avocations, and dusts the drawing-room with obedient resentment. She sits cutting out underclothes in the March vacations, when all the schools are closed, and when the heavy wagons from the distant farming region stick in the bottomless Andover mud in front of the professor's house. The big front door is opened, and the dismal, creaking sounds come in.

The kind and conscientious new mother, to whom I owe many other gentle lessons more valuable than this, teaches how necessary to a lady's education is a neat needle. The girl does not deny this elemental fact; but her eyes wander away to the cold sky above the Andover mud, with passionate entreaty. To this day I cannot hear the thick chu-chunk! of heavy wheels on March mud without a sudden mechanical echo of that wild, young outcry: "Must I cut out underclothes forever? Must I go on tucking the broken end of the thread into the nick in the spool? Is this LIFE?"

I am more than conscious that I could not have been an easy girl to "bring up," and am sure that for whatever little difficulties beset the earlier time of my ventures as a writer, no person was in any fault. They were doubtless good for me, in their way. We all know that some of the greatest of brain-workers have selected the poorest and barest of spots in which to study. Luxury and bric-a-brac come to easy natures or in easy years. The energy that very early learns to conquer difficulty is always worth its price.

I used, later, to hear in Boston the story of the gentleman who once took a friend to see the room of his son at Harvard College. The friend was a man of plain life, but of rich mental achievement. He glanced at the Persian rugs and costly draperies of the boy's quarters in silence.

"Well," cried the fond father, "don't you think my son has a pretty room?"

"Sir," said the visitor, with gentle candor, "you'll never raise a scholar on that carpet."

Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful—the formation of fixed habits of work.

I have seldom waited for inspiration before setting about a task to be done. Life is too short for that. Broken health has too often interrupted a regimen of study which ought to have been more continuous; but, so far as I may venture to offer an opinion from personal experience, I should say that the writers who would be wise to play hide and seek with their own moods are few.

According to my custom, I said nothing (so far as I can remember) to any person about the book.

It cannot be said that I had any hope of success with it; or that, in my most irrational dreams, anything like the consequences of its publication ever occurred to my fancy. But I did distinctly understand that I had set forth upon a venture totally dissimilar to the safe and respectable careers of my dozen Sunday-school books.

I was asked only the other day why it was that, having such a rare critic at first hand as my father, I did not more often submit my manuscripts to his judgment. It would be difficult to say precisely why. The professor of rhetoric was a very busy man; and at that time the illness which condemned him to thirty years of invalid suffering was beginning to make itself manifest. I can remember more often throwing down my pen to fly out and beg the children to be quiet in the garden while the sleepless man struggled for a few moments' rest in the daytime; or stealing on tiptoe to his locked door, at any hour of the night, to listen for signs of sudden illness or need of help; these things come back more easily than the desire to burden him with what I wrote.

Yet perhaps that abnormal pride, whose existence I have admitted, had quite as much to do with this restraint.

When a thing was published, then quickly to him with it! His sympathy and interest were unfailing, and his criticism only too gentle; though it could be a sword of flame when he chose to smite.

Unknown to himself I had dedicated "The Gates Ajar" to him. In this dedication there was a slip in good English, or, at least, in such English as the professor wrote and spoke. I had used the word "nears" as a verb, instead of its proper synonym, "approaches." He read the dedication quietly, thanked me tenderly for it, and said nothing. It was left for me to find out my blunder for myself, as I did, in due time. He had not the heart to tell me of it then. Nor did he insinuate his consciousness that the dedication might seem to involve him—as it did in certain citadels of stupidity—in the views of the book.

The story was sent to its publishers, Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, and leisurely awaited their verdict. As I had written somewhat for their magazines, "The Atlantic" and "Our Young Folks," I did not come as quite a stranger. Still, the fate of the book hung upon a delicate scale. It was two years from the time the story went to its publishers before it appeared between covers. How much of this period the author was kept in suspense I cannot remember; but, I think, some time.

I have the impression that the disposal of the book, so far as that firm went, wavered for a while upon the decision of one man, whose wife shared the reading of the manuscript. "Take it," she said at last, decidedly; and the fiat went forth. The lady afterwards became a personal friend, and I hope I may not forfeit the treasure of her affection by this late and public recognition of the pleasant part she bore in the fortunes of my life.

The book was accepted, and still this piece of good luck did not make my head spin. I had lived among book-makers too much to expect the miracle. I went soberly back to my hack work, and on with my Sunday-school books.

One autumn day the customary package of gift copies of the new book made its way to Andover Hill; but: I opened it without elation, the experience being so far from my first of its kind. The usual note of thanks was returned to the publishers, and quiet fell again. Unconscious of either hope or fear, I kept on about my business, and the new book was the last thing on earth with which I concerned myself.

One morning, not many weeks after its publication, I received a letter from Mr. James T. Fields. He, who was the quickest of men to do a kindness, and surest to give to young writers the encouraging word for which they had not hope enough to listen, had hurried himself to break to me the news.

"Your book is moving grandly," so he wrote. "It has already reached a sale of four thousand copies. We take pleasure in sending you—" He enclosed a check for six hundred dollars, the largest sum on which I had ever set my startled eyes. It would not, by my contract, have been due me for six months or more to come.

The little act was like him, and like the courteous and generous house on whose list I have worked for thirty years.



EDITORIAL NOTES.

TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR SHORT STORIES.

We find considerable difficulty in getting the two hundred first-class short stories that we require each year. We are delighted to be able to publish so many stories by eminent authors, but we should like to get more good stories from writers whose fame is yet to be made. We therefore announce a liberal policy in regard to payment, and invite contributions from every one who can write a good story. The scale of payment will be such as to please every contributor, whether he is famous or not.

We need every year about fifty stories of from four to six thousand words in length; about one hundred stories of from two to three thousand words in length, and not less than fifty stories a year for young people, about two thousand words in length. Of these stories thirty or forty are for McCLURE'S MAGAZINE, and the remainder are for the newspaper syndicates controlled by the publishers of this magazine.

A regular manuscript department has been established by the editors, and it is the intention to report upon every manuscript within a week after it is received. We also welcome contributions to every branch of literature represented in the magazine.

THE McCLURE'S "EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN."

This volume contains all the articles published in the first four Lincoln numbers of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE (November to February, inclusive). These numbers, although repeatedly reprinted, are now out of print, and the "Early Life of Lincoln" was published mainly to meet a demand we could not fill with the magazine. It contains a great deal more, both in text and pictures, than appeared in the magazine. It is mailed to any address for fifty cents; or for one dollar, if bound in cloth. We intend having our own plant, to reprint the March and subsequent numbers whenever necessary.

THE McCLURE'S NEW "LIFE OF GRANT."

We have been greatly surprised, in preparing our new "Life of Grant," to find so much new and valuable material, especially about Grant's earlier life. No more fascinating and dramatic story has ever been lived. We have been especially fortunate in securing the collaboration of Mr. Hamlin Garland to write this life of Grant. Mr. Garland was selected for this work for two reasons—first, he has always loved and admired Grant; second, he is familiar in general with the conditions of life in the middle West, and is especially qualified to tell the truth both in color and fact. The tastes and training of a realistic novelist are an admirable equipment for a biographer, provided the hero of his story and his environment appeal to the novelist.

We propose to publish the best Life of Grant ever written.

We have collected a great quantity of pictures and other illustrations, and we ask our friends to help us as they are helping us in our "Life of Lincoln." Every one who has a contribution, either in picture or incident, to our knowledge of this great man ought to bring it before the two or three million readers that McCLURE'S will have when we begin to publish the "Life of Grant" next November.

NEW PICTURES OF LINCOLN.

Almost every week we add to our collection of Lincoln pictures. Many of these ambrotypes and photographs are of the greatest value in adding to our knowledge of Lincoln. We hope to reach one hundred before the end of the year. We had only fifty portraits last November. We have eighty now.

THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND PRACTICAL ARTS.

Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, was the scene of one of the most important of the debates between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas. The debate took place on a platform at the east end of the main college building. At this memorable debate the students carried a banner on which was inscribed "Knox for Lincoln." In April, 1860, before he was nominated for the Presidency, Knox College conferred the degree of LL.D. on Abraham Lincoln. At their recent midwinter meeting, the board of trustees unanimously voted to establish a memorial to Lincoln; and this memorial will be the scientific department of Knox College, and will be called "The Abraham Lincoln School of Science and Practical Arts."

The founders of this magazine are all alumni of Knox College, and are particularly pleased at this action of their alma mater. Knox College affords a splendid opportunity to young men and women of limited means. The editors of this magazine can afford to pay the living expenses and tuition for one year at this college of any young man or woman who secures five hundred subscribers, as proposed and explained on the second advertising page of this number of the magazine.

The editors of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE are thoroughly acquainted with Knox College, and can recommend it, knowing that students who go there will live under the best possible influences and receive a sound education. All inquiries should be addressed to the president, John Finley, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.

THE HOUSE IN WHICH LINCOLN'S PARENTS WERE MARRIED.—A CORRECTION.

The picture of the house in which Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married, printed in McCLURE'S MAGAZINE for November, 1895, was credited by mistake to the Oldroyd collection. The photograph from which the reproduction was made came from the Oldroyd collection; but this photograph is, we are informed, from a negative now in the possession of Mr. A.D. Miller of Brazil, Indiana, and credit is therefore due to Mr. Miller.



[Note: The Table of Contents and the list of illustrations were added by the transcriber.]

THE END