Neither ocean
Binds his motion,
Undismayed explorer;
Challenge dares him,
Pullman bears him
Swifter than Aurora.
Here's to Teddy!
Let no eddy
Block the onward current.
Him we trust,
And guard we must
From schemes to sight abhorrent.
When the tuba
Called to Cuba
Where the fight was raging,
Rough and ready
Riders led he,
Valorous warfare waging.
Here's to Teddy!
Safe and steady,
Loved by every section!
South and North
Will hurry forth
To hasten his election.
1904.
On September 12, a notice of the death of William Allen Butler is pasted in the Diary. Below it she writes:—
"A pleasant man. I met him at the Hazeltines' in Rome in 1898 and 1899. His poem ["Nothing to Wear"] was claimed by one or two people. I met his father [a Cabinet Minister] at a dinner at the Bancrofts' in New York, at which ex-President Van Buren was also present, and W. M. Thackeray, who said to me across the table that Browning's 'How They Brought the Good News' was a 'good jingle.'"
On the 29th she spoke at a meeting of the New England Woman's Club in memory of Dr. Zakrzewska, and records her final words:—
"I pray God earnestly that we women may never go back from the ground which has been gained for us by our noble pioneers and leaders. I pray that these bright stars of merit, set in our human firmament, may shine upon us and lead us to better and better love and service for God and man."
"In the afternoon, to hear reports of delegates to Biennial at Los Angeles. These were very interesting, but the activity shown made me feel my age, and its one great infirmity, loss of power of locomotion. I felt somehow the truth of the line which Mr. Robert C. Winthrop once quoted to me:—
"'Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.'"
Yet a few days later she writes:—
"I had this morning so strong a feeling of the goodness of the divine Parent in the experience of my life, especially of its most trying period, that I had to cry out, 'What shall I, who have received so much, give in return?' I felt that I must only show that forbearance and forgiveness to others which the ever blessed One has shown to me. My own family does not call for this. I am cherished by its members with great tenderness and regard. I thought later in the day of a sermon to prisoners which would brighten their thoughts of the love of God. Text from St. John's Epistle, 'Behold what manner of love is this that we should be called the sons of God.'"
This was the year of the coal strike in Pennsylvania, which made much trouble in Boston. She notes one Sunday that service at the Church of the Disciples was held in the church parlors "on account of the shortage of coal." This recalls vivid pictures of the time; distracted coal merchants dealing out promises, with nothing else to deal; portly magnates and stately dames driving down Beacon Street in triumph with coals in a paper bag to replenish the parlor fire: darker pictures, too, of poverty and suffering.
At 241 Beacon Street the supply was running low, and the coal dealer was summoned by telephone. "A load of coal? Impossible, madam! We have no—I beg your pardon! Mrs. Julia Ward Howe? Mrs. Howe's house is cold? You shall have some within the hour!"
CHAPTER XIII
LOOKING TOWARD SUNSET
1903-1905; aet. 84-86
IN MUSIC HALL
Looking down upon the white heads of my contemporaries
Beneath what mound of snow
Are hid my springtime roses?
How shall Remembrance know
Where buried Hope reposes?
In what forgetful heart
As in a cañon darkling,
Slumbers the blissful art
That set my heaven sparkling?
What sense shall never know,
Soul shall remember;
Roses beneath the snow,
June in November.
J. W. H.
The year 1903 began with the celebration at Faneuil Hall of the fortieth anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. She was one of the speakers. "I felt much the spirit of the occasion, and spoke, I thought, better than usual, going back to the heroic times before and during the war, and to the first celebration forty years ago, at which I was present."
Work of all kinds poured in, the usual steady stream.
"January 6. Wrote a new circular for Countess."
Who the Countess was, or what the circular was about, is not known. By this time it had become the custom (or so it seemed to exasperated daughters and granddaughters) for any one who wanted anything in the literary line, from a proverb to a pamphlet, to ask her for it.
It is remembered how on a certain evening, when she was resting after a weary day, a "special delivery" note was received from a person whom she scarcely knew, asking for "her thoughts on the personality of God, by return mail." This was one of the few requests she ever denied. People asked her to give them material for their club papers (sometimes to write them!), to put them through college, to read their manuscripts, to pay the funeral expenses of their relatives. A volume of the letters conveying these requests would be curious reading.
The petition for a "little verse" was rarely refused. Her notebooks are full of occasional poems, only a small proportion of which ever appeared in print. Many of them are "autographs." She always meant to honor every request of this kind; the country must be full of volumes inscribed by her. Here are a few of them.
For Francis C. Stokes, Westtown School, Pennsylvania
Auspicious be the rule
Of love at Westtown School,
And happy, mid his youthful folks
The daily task of Master Stokes!
[When this gentleman's note came, she was "tired to death." The granddaughter said, "You can't do it. Let me write a friendly note, and you shall sign it!"
"You're right," she said, "I can't: I am too tired to think!" But when she saw the note taken away, "No, no!" she cried, "I can! He is probably a most hard-working man, and a little word may cheer him. Here, I have a line already!"]