She practised her scales faithfully every day, through the later years. Then she would play snatches of forgotten operas, and the granddaughter would hear her—if she thought no one was near—singing the brilliant arias in "a sweet thread of a voice."
After her practising, if she were alone, she would sit at the window and play her Twilight Game: counting the "passing," one for a biped, two for a quadruped, ten for a white horse, and so on.
In the evening, before the "Victor" concert, came the reading aloud: this was one of her great pleasures. No history or philosophy for the evening reading; she must have a novel (not a "problem novel"; these she detested!)—a good stirring tale, with plenty of action in it. She thrilled over "With Fire and Sword," "Kim," "The Master of Ballantrae." She could not bear to hear of financial anxieties or of physical suffering. "It gives me a pain in my knee!"
We see her now, sitting a little forward in her straight-backed chair, holding the hand of the reading granddaughter, alert and tense. When a catastrophe appears imminent, "Stop a minute!" she cries. "I cannot bear it!"—and the reader must pause while she gathers courage to face disaster with the hero, or dash with him through peril to safety.
She would almost be sorry when the doorbell announced a visitor; almost, not quite, for flesh and blood were better than fiction. If the caller were a familiar friend, how her face lighted up!
"Oh! now we can have whist!"
The table is brought out, the mother-of-pearl counters (a Cutler relic: we remember that Mr. Ward did not allow cards in his house!), and the order for the rest of the evening is "A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game!"—
It was a happy day when, as chanced once or twice, Mr. Ernest Schelling, coming on from New York to play with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, offered to come and play to her, "all by herself, whatever she wanted, and for as long as she liked." She never forgot this pleasure, nor the warm kindness of the giver.
One day Mr. Abel Lefranc, the French lecturer of the year at Harvard, came to lunch with her. He apologized for only being able to stay for the luncheon hour, owing to a press of engagements and work that had grown overpowering. He stayed for two hours and a half after luncheon was over, and during all that time the flow of poignant, brilliant talk, à deux, held the third in the little company absorbed. She was entirely at home in French, and the Frenchman talked over the problems of his country as if to a compatriot.
A few days afterwards a Baptist minister from Texas, a powerfully built and handsome man, came to wait on her. He also stayed two hours: and we heard his "Amen!" and "Bless the Lord for that!" and her gentler "Bless the Lord, indeed, my brother!" as their voices, fervent and grave, mingled in talk.
She never tried to be interested in people. She was interested, with every fibre of her being. Little household doings: the economies and efforts of brave young people, she thrilled to them all. Indeed, all human facts roused in her the same absorbed and reverent interest.
These are Boston memories, but those of Oak Glen are no less tender and vivid. There, too, the meals were festivals, the midday dinner being now the chief one, with its following hour on the piazza; "Grandmother" in her hooded chair, with her cross-stitch embroidery or "hooked" rug, daughters and grandchildren gathered round her. Horace and Xenophon were on the little table beside her, but they must wait till she had mixed and enjoyed her "social salad."
At Oak Glen, too, she had her novel and her whist, bézique or dominoes, as the family was larger or smaller. She never stooped to solitaire; a game must be an affair of companionship, of the "social tie" in defence of which "Bro' Sam," in his youth, had professed himself ready to die. Instead of the "Victor" concert, she now made music herself, playing four-hand pieces with Florence, the "music daughter," trained in childhood by Otto Dresel. This was another great pleasure. (Did any one, we wonder, ever enjoy pleasures as she did?) These duets were for the afternoon; she almost never used her eyes in the evening. They were perfectly good, strong eyes; in the latter years she rarely used glasses; but the habit dated back to the early fifties, and might not be shaken.
We see her, therefore, in the summer afternoons, sitting at the piano with Florence, playing, "Galatea, dry thy tears!" "Handel's old tie-wig music," as she called his operas. Or, if her son were there, she would play accompaniments from the "Messiah" or "Elijah"; rippling through the difficult music, transposing it, if necessary to suit the singer's voice, with ease and accuracy. Musicians said that she was the ideal accompanist, never asserting herself, but giving perfect sympathy and support to the singer.
We return to the Journal.
"January, 1908. I had prayed the dear Father to give me this one more poem, a verse for this year's Decoration Day, asked for by Amos Wells, of Christian Endeavor belonging. I took my pen and the poem came quite spontaneously. It seemed an answer to my prayer, but I hold fast the thought that the great Christ asked no sign from God and needed none, so deeply did he enter into life divine. I also thought, regarding Christ and Moses, that we must be content that a certain mystery should envelop these heroic figures of human history. Our small measuring tape or rod is not for them. If they were not exactly in fact what we take them to be, let us deeply reverence the human mind which has conceived and built up such splendid and immortal ideals. Was not Christ thinking of something like this when he made the sin against the Holy Ghost and its manifestations the only unpardonable error? He surely did not mean to say that it was beyond the repentance which is the earnest of forgiveness to every sin."
A day or two after this she met at luncheon "a young Reverend Mr. Fitch.... He is earnest and clear-minded, and should do much good. I spoke of the cup [of life], but advised him to use the spoon for stirring up his congregation."
She was asked for a "long and exhaustive paper on Marion Crawford in about a week. I wrote, saying that I could furnish an interesting paper on the elder and younger Crawford, but without any literary estimate of Marion's work, saying that family praise was too much akin to self-praise; also the time allotted much too short."
One night she woke "suddenly and something seemed to say, 'They are on the right tack now.' This microscopic and detailed study of the causes of evil on society will be much forwarded by the direct agency of women. They too will supply that inexhaustible element of hopefulness, without which reforms are a mere working back and forth of machinery. These two things will overcome the evil of the world by prevention first, and then by the optimistic anticipation of good. This is a great work given to Woman now to do. Then I caught at various couplets of a possible millennial poem, but feared I should not write it. Have scrawled these on a large pad. This line kept coming back to me, 'Living, not dying, Christ redeemed mankind.'... This my first day at my desk since Saturday, March 28. I may try some prose about the present patient analysis of the evil of society, the patient intelligent women associated in all this work. To reclaim waste earth is a glory. Why not a greater to reclaim the moral wastes of humanity?"