Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

MEMOIRS OF A MILLIONAIRE

BY

LUCIA TRUE AMES

AUTHOR OF “GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS”

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1889

Copyright, 1889,

By LUCIA TRUE AMES.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.

Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

Dedicated

TO

MY ONLY BROTHER, CHARLES H. AMES.

Written for all men and women to whom the privilege of American citizenship has been vouchsafed, and to whom the stewardship of wealth has been entrusted.

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

Since the recent death of the noble woman whose name has become a household word all over our land, and whose memoirs form the subject of this volume, I have been repeatedly importuned to give to the public some account of her remarkable life.

It is too soon yet to present an adequate biography, and for such a task I should consider myself entirely unfitted. I have, however, endeavored, though somewhat hastily, to put together such material, chiefly selections from newspaper reports, letters, and diaries, as shall throw light upon the numerous projects that were the outcome of her thought and generosity, and which in certain ways are unparalleled in the annals of those whose wealth has been devoted to the cause of humanity.

Cut off in the full ripeness of early womanhood, her work was nevertheless accomplished, and millions shall in the ages to come reap perennial harvests from the seed which in one short year her wisdom and foresight sowed far and wide.

The world at large will know somewhat of her work; but only to those who knew her best, to whom she revealed the warmth and intensity of her strong nature, can the full beauty of her life be known.

The constant, subtle charm of her manner, now gracious and dignified, now unconsciously naive and simple, only a master could portray. I must content myself, therefore, with giving, in simplest words, but a few of the many reminiscences that memory brings back of those moments which may serve to make clear the thoughts and purposes that were the mainspring of all her action, and which made her what she was, the noblest woman I have ever known.

I have hesitated about using the word “Memoirs” in the title of this volume. That word has a somewhat doleful and funereal sound, suggestive of anything but the bright, vigorous life of her who was so intensely warm and alive. But perhaps there is no other word that so well expresses what I have here put together, and so I leave it as I wrote it first, “Memoirs of a Millionaire.”

Boston, June 7, 189–.

MEMOIRS OF A MILLIONAIRE.

CHAPTER I.

The class of which I speak make themselves merry without duties. They sit in decorated club-houses in the cities, and burn tobacco and play whist; in the country they sit idle in stores and bar-rooms, and burn tobacco, and gossip and sleep. They complain of the flatness of American life; America has no illusions, no romance. They have no perception of its destiny. They are not Americans.—Emerson, The Fortune of the Republic.

It was on the evening of election day that I first saw her. I had come up from Salem to Boston, to spend the night and hear Booth and Barrett the next day, and I had gone to dine at aunt Madison’s on Louisburg Square.

The lamps had not been lighted, and we were all sitting cosily around the open grate after dinner, talking over the matinée, and jesting with two or three of Will’s college friends who were there for the evening, when the portière was noiselessly drawn aside, and Mildred Brewster came in with a cheery good evening.

I can recall now just how she looked, as, after the introductions were over, she stood leaning on the back of aunt Madison’s chair, with the ruddy glow of the firelight on her face, and her lithe figure dimly outlined against the shadowy background.

I did not notice her much at first, for, after her blithe greeting, on seeing strangers she had drawn back into the shadow and sat so quietly that I, carrying on a gay banter with the young men, had almost forgotten her.

I do not remember what was said at first. It did not make much impression on me at the time, until, after a while, the talk grew a little more serious, and the young men began to speak of their plans for the future. They were all seniors, and each of them, except Will, had plenty of money in his own right, with apparently nothing in life more burdensome to do than to draw checks and order dinners at Young’s.

They were a handsome trio, broad-chested, keen-eyed, clad in the daintiest of linen from Noyes Brothers,—“the jolliest swells in the class,” Will called them.

Aunt Madison asked them, apropos of the election, how they had voted, for they were all residents of Boston and had passed their majority. They were evidently rather amused at the query, but each and all politely replied that they hadn’t much enthusiasm about voting, and it having been a rainy day, they had not taken the trouble to go to the polls.

“You see, the fact is,” said the young man with the blonde mustache whom Will called Ned Conro, “voting is a confounded bore, any way.”

“But of course you have an interest in national politics, if not in municipal affairs?” said aunt Madison, inquiringly, as she looked up from her knitting and beamed benevolently at the young man through her gold-bowed spectacles. “I suppose you young men at Harvard, with all your study of history and political economy, are wide awake about all these things.”

“Oh, we talk free trade and protection more or less, that is, the fellows did who took that course of study last year. I don’t go in for that sort of thing myself very much; my money isn’t in manufactures, and I don’t care a continental about the tariff one way or the other. And as for politics,—of course we all go in for the hurrah and fun in a presidential campaign, but I don’t look forward to doing anything further in that line after I graduate. It is all well enough for any one who has a fancy for it and who wants to run for office, and that sort of thing. But there can’t be more than two senators and one governor in a state at a time, and anything less than that isn’t worth the trouble.

“I’ve mighty little respect for any man who condescends to be a ward politician. Boston is an Irish city, after all, though last year some of the better class got their blood up and had a clearing out; but the game isn’t worth the candle, and I, for one, am willing to let the Irish go the whole figure if they wish to do it. We can’t get rid of them, and it doesn’t pay to mix up with them. I don’t propose to vote to have my father, or any other gentleman of good old New England stock, sit beside some liquor-seller or grocer as common councilman or alderman.”

“Neither do I,” ejaculated my vis-à-vis, whom Will had introduced as Mr. Mather; “a fellow who begins to bother his head about all these little twopenny municipal affairs only soils his hands for his pains, and doesn’t improve matters one atom. It’s well enough to vote if one wants to, but what does a single vote amount to? It counts no more when cast by a Harvard professor than by some South Cove ‘Mick.’ Suppose Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown are up for school committee; you don’t know a thing about either of them, except that they are nominated by a set of rummies and demagogues, or else by a lot of women or pious temperance cranks. You are a professional man and your time is worth ten dollars an hour,—you don’t care a fig about the whole school committee business anyway; it’s the women’s affair—they can vote on that. Let them turn out and manage it as they did last year, if they want to; but you can’t expect a man to look after these matters, and be elbowed and hooted down at the caucuses, if he has the tastes of a gentleman and all the responsibilities of a profession or a large business on his shoulders.”

“The fact is that in municipal matters the ballot ought to be put on a property basis, and until that is done, I shall bother myself precious little about it,” remarked the third young gentleman, twirling his seal and addressing his three feminine listeners.

I wondered why Mildred’s cheeks had grown so rosy and why her dark eyes had such a gleam in them as she laid down the bit of embroidery on which her fingers had been busy, and turned toward the speaker. “What a profile!” I thought; “almost pure Greek, only the chin is a little too square.”

“The truth is,” the young man continued, “we have no great men now and no great issues, unless you call all this frenzy about the school question a great issue. We’ve got to come to see that the government has no right to tax its citizens to teach history, anyway. It’s an imposition to tax a man to send some one else’s child to a high school. Let the state give a child the three R’s, and then if he wants to learn about Tetzel or Luther, let his father pay to have him taught in his own way. Politics is no profession for a young man. There’s no great amount of money in it, unless you’re mighty shrewd, and tricky, too; and as for fame, the man must be pretty thick-skinned who can stand the pelting which every reputation gets nowadays, and not wince under it. For my part, I think democracy is a good deal played out. It was all right so long as men were equal; but we’re getting about as stratified a society now as there is anywhere in the Old World; and there’s no use in the sentimental every-man-a-brother kind of talk. I don’t propose to shake the greasy hand of any of these beastly foreigners that are coming here and crowding us to the wall. I don’t grudge them the rights of American citizenship; they may have it and welcome, if they want it; but where they step in I step out. In fact, I think I shall settle down in Paris or Florence for a while. There’s lots more fun for a fellow over there.”

There was more of this sort of talk. I watched Mildred’s face, and noticed that her lips were twitching and her fingers playing nervously with the fringe of a scarlet silk shawl which she wore. Evidently she was under some stress of strong emotion, though for what reason I but vaguely guessed. She had come out of the shadow, and stood tall and stately, with her arm resting on the mantel and her eyes fixed on the speakers with such a look as I had never before seen on any countenance. There was anger and pity and contempt, strangely mingled, on her mobile features. She had forgotten herself, and I think they were fairly startled at the look they read in her tell-tale face.

Will made an attempt to change the subject, but Mr. Mather broke in: “You look as though you did not agree with us, Miss Brewster. Come, we have monopolized the conversation so far, now tell us what you think.”

She did not speak at first, and there was an awkward silence for a minute. When it was broken, her voice sounded so painfully hard and calm in its effort not to tremble that I scarcely recognized it.

“Within two weeks,” she said, speaking slowly, “I have sat for five hours face to face with the leading anarchists of New England. I have questioned them, and they have told me frankly of their doctrines, which you already know, and which, I scarcely need to say, I heartily detest. But I have not heard, either from the lips of these misguided men or from any one for many months, anything which has so shocked and surprised me as what I have just listened to here.”

I felt that she was trembling as she spoke, but her voice was low and quiet.

She continued: “When one is filled with indignation and grief it is difficult to speak justly and wisely, and therefore, if you will excuse me, I think that I will not trust myself to say anything further.”

“Good heavens!” cried Mr. Mather, staring at her in undisguised amazement, while his companions glanced slyly at each other with faint smiles and an evident endeavor to make the best of an embarrassing situation.

“I think, dear, you had better tell them what you are thinking of, lest they misunderstand you; of course you don’t mean that they are worse than anarchists,” said aunt Madison, gently.

“No, not worse, but more to blame,” replied Miss Brewster, with extraordinary candor, and then recollecting herself, a crimson tide suddenly mantled her neck and cheek and brow, and she drew back again into the shadow.

“I beg your pardon,” she stammered; and then with a little forced laugh she added, “you see, you oughtn’t to have tempted me to speak. I was sure to give offense if I spoke my thoughts.”

“Ah, but we can’t excuse you unless you go on,” said Ned Conro, persuasively. “As for me, you have whetted my curiosity so that I shan’t sleep a wink to-night,” he went on, with a twinkle in his eye, “unless I know why my father’s son and heir, who has hitherto supposed himself to be always on the side of law and order, is more to blame than these foreign wretches who have come over here with the notion in their addled heads that they are going to upset this nineteenth-century civilization with a few ounces of dynamite.”

Mr. Gordon echoed Mr. Conro’s request, while a quizzical smile played around his lips, and I knew as well as if he had told me, that he was saying to himself, “Gad, she’s a specimen! One of these cranky women’s-righters, no doubt. How they do like to hold forth! These girls always spoil a fellow’s fun with their high and mighty theories and ideas.” And this son of a quadruple millionaire thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his English trousers and stretched himself comfortably to listen, with all the complacent condescension of a man to whom twenty-two years of experience and masculine wisdom gave a consciousness of virtuous superiority.

The flush had faded from Mildred’s cheek, but I fancied from the look in her eyes that she was in no mood to be trifled with; this was no mere passing gust of passion. She had received a wound which had cut her to the quick; for, as I afterwards learned to know, hers was one of those rare natures, rare in men, rarer still in women, which scarcely feels a personal slight, but to which a grand, absorbing idea is more real and vital than all else, and which counts treason to this the unpardonable sin.

“If I speak, I must speak plainly,” said Mildred. “I have neither time nor wit to clothe my thoughts in ambiguous, inoffensive words. Like plain, blunt Antony, I can only ‘speak right on’ and say ‘what in my heart doth beat and burn.’”

“Good, I like that,” said Mr. Mather gravely, and there was an instant’s silence, broken only by the chime of the cathedral clock as it struck the hour.

“I have been thinking,” said Mildred quietly, “of those words in that record of the young Hebrew, who, it is said, sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. I have been thinking also of those words of our own Emerson: ‘We live in a new and exceptional age. America is another name for Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of Providence in behalf of the human race.’ Perhaps you do not see the connection between these two thoughts, but to me it seems very close. To have for one’s inheritance the birthright of American citizenship seems to me something so rich and precious that to despise it and ignobly sell it,—not like Esau for the mess of pottage which could relieve his hunger,—but to sell it to the stranger for the sake of gaining immunity from responsibility, yes, more than that, throwing it away out of sheer contempt for it and ingratitude for what it has done for one, this seems to me the acme of cowardice and selfishness.”

I noticed that Mr. Mather knit his brows at this, and I thought I detected a slight flush in his cheeks, but perhaps it was only the firelight. Mildred did not look up or hesitate, but went steadily on.

“We sit here in the Promised Land

That flows with Freedom’s honey and milk;

But ’twas they won it, sword in hand,

Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.”

“Yes, they won it, not we; and we, the heirs of all the ages, for whom the whole creation has groaned and travailed until now, we, the favored children of the best age, the best land which history has known, we idly fold our hands and let the wealth of all the past, which others have toiled for and shed bloody sweat to gain, fall into our laps as a matter of course, as if it were but the just due of such lordly creatures as we.

“Of what value, pray, is all our study of history if we have so little realizing sense of its meaning, if we have no imagination to fill out with quivering, throbbing life this record of the past, which shows what mankind has been, and what, thank God, we have escaped?

“Of what value are the sacrifices of those who at bitter cost bought us our freedom and privilege, if we are so lost to all sense of honor as to tacitly say, ‘everything has been done for us, to be sure, but we can’t be expected to go out of our way to see that it is passed along to those who are less favored’?”

Mr. Mather made a gesture of dissent and looked up as if to speak; but Mildred did not notice him. She was gazing with fixed eyes into the shadows, and seemed to have forgotten her little audience and to be addressing herself to an unnumbered throng of unseen listeners. Her bosom heaved and her breath came and went quickly as she went on with her relentless sarcasm.

“Yes, our business as immortal sons of God is first of all to look out for our precious selves. Let us all see to it that no annoying social or economic questions shall disturb our minds. Let us not be distracted from our culture and amusements by being forced to waste time in settling the prosaic bread and butter problems of the ‘lower classes.’ Let us wash our hands of all responsibility. Why should we hold ourselves debtors either to the Greeks or to the barbarians?

“Oh, we are not hard-hearted. We would live and let live. But we can count it no part of our business to soil our fingers by lending a hand to the poor wretch whose blind guide has led him into the miry ditch.

“Let him who ‘despises his birthright’ just think for an instant what citizenship on the continent of Europe means. You talk about finding ‘more fun’ in Paris and Vienna than here, yes, to be sure; for there you have nothing to do but to skim the cream of everything and dream away your youth surrounded by all that the thought of the ages and modern science can devise to stimulate your already fastidious palate. But suppose you were a citizen of Germany or Austria or Russia, and must spend from three to six of the best years of your life in active service in the army; suppose you were taxed to the extent of over thirty per cent. of your earnings like the people of Italy; suppose you knew that your country was growing poorer and taxation was on the frightful increase as is the case in continental countries; suppose you were taxed to support a church in which you did not believe, and a government which granted you no representation; suppose privilege and prejudice hung like a millstone round every effort for your social advancement!

“Why,” continued Mildred after a moment’s pause, “just imagine for an instant all that is involved in the difference in comfort and mode of life from the simple statement that during the ten years from 1870 to 1880, when the United States decreased its aggregate taxation nine per cent., Germany increased hers over fifty per cent. Imagine, if you can, what it means to the lives of millions of human beings when I say that during a period when the wealth of Europe decreased per caput three per cent. that of our country increased nearly forty per cent.

“It is one thing, I have found, to travel in Europe untaxed, unmolested, and unaffected by that gloomy war cloud which continually hovers over every nation; where, even in times of peace, one man out of twenty-two is withdrawn from productive industries to train himself to destroy his fellow-beings. It is quite another thing to be an irresponsible traveler, free to come and go and say what he pleases.

“Let those who count their American citizenship of such slight worth think what a delightful existence theirs would be if they were so favored as to be one of the subjects of the Russian Tsar! Think of the bliss of living in a land where one is never disturbed by the encroachments of foreigners, or expected to attend caucuses and polls; where, in fact, the less he knows about the government the better for him and his! Fancy the pleasure in reading newspapers where the news of the day is under such careful surveillance, through the kindness of the censorship, that one is never disturbed by troublesome political matters, and has always the calm consciousness that everything is going well, although ninety per cent. of the hundred millions over whom the Russian flag waves cannot write their names; where a man may not go from one town to another without a passport; where for joining a club that advocates a constitutional monarchy, as here you might join a club that advocates Nationalism, you may be subject without a moment’s warning to arrest and solitary confinement for a year or two without a trial! You have read Kennan and Stepniak. You know these are hard facts.

“So when I see men who have been ground between the millstones of caste, priestcraft, and governmental oppression come here and turn against all government, I have less contempt and more patience for them than for the young men of our land, who owe almost every blessing that they enjoy to this government, and who from mere indolence and apathy choose to allow the demagogue and ignorant alien to shape its destiny.

“You complain that we have a ‘stratified society.’ Are you not doing your best to make it a stratified society and create a caste system when you advocate a property qualification for the ballot, and would deny all but the barest rudiments of education to the poor boy? One would think that you had been brought up in a monarchy and did not realize that from the people we must choose our legislators as well as our voters, and that a system which can be tolerated in a country where rulers are hereditary is most perilous for a government that is of ‘the people, by the people, and for the people.’

“You say ‘there are no great men now,’ ‘no great issues.’ True, the war is over, and Grant and Lincoln are dead, but

‘Life may be given in many ways,

And loyalty to truth be sealed

As bravely in the closet as in the field,

So bountiful is fate.’

“I do not doubt if our flag were openly dishonored you, too, would spring to arms and give your life-blood as heroically as those who fell at Manassas or in the Wilderness.

“But how many young men have that kind of heroism that impels them to devote their culture and ability to unostentatious, unceasing service to the state, though it bring no glory or reward in fame or office? No, the cowards are not so often to be found on the battlefield as at the committee meeting and the caucus.

“True, there seems to be nothing sublime in being a faithful health commissioner, an Anthony Comstock, a General Armstrong, or a Felix Adler; nothing glorious in busying one’s self with such prosy things as labor statistics and tenement houses, with prison reform and sewage and primary schools and ward politics. ’Tis a thankless task, and the large per cent. of our Boston legal voters who did not vote yesterday doubtless think, if they think at all, that even the casting of a ballot once or twice a year is too great a sacrifice of their valuable time, and more than ought to be expected of men whose private and social interests are of far more importance than the welfare of the body politic.

“And as for caucuses, how preposterous to expect a man who has such important matters as Art Club receptions, Psychical Research meetings, and Longwood toboggan parties to attend, to spend one or two evenings a year in the company of grocers and saloon-keepers, all for the sake of defeating some lamplighter or pawnbroker who wants a nomination for the city council! What difference does it make who is on the council, provided taxes are not raised?

“Yes,” continued Mildred, and a shade of melancholy replaced the quiet scorn in her tone, “the last thing that you or they ever dream of is that you have a debt to pay and are basely repudiating it.”

The voice, whose tremor at last betrayed the intensity of the feeling that had hitherto been carefully guarded, ceased, and suddenly starting with a self-conscious look, and coloring deeply, Mildred glided softly from the room. Aunt Madison followed her.

The fire had burned low and the light was dim. The young men had forgotten me in the sofa corner.

There was not a word said for a minute or two as they sat looking into the bed of coals and listening to the wind shuddering through the bare branches of the elms outside. Mr. Mather sat leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands; I could not see his face. Presently he looked up and made a motion as if to speak, but apparently he changed his mind, for he said nothing. At last Mr. Gordon’s voice broke the silence.

“I say, Madison,” he asked, with a studiously polite manner, “who is this charming Miss Brewster who has favored us with the benefit of her views?”

“She is a sort of second cousin of my mother,” Will replied. “She has just returned from abroad, and I haven’t seen much of her yet.”

“Well,” rejoined the other, “with your permission, I will venture to say that with all due respect to your mother’s second or third cousin, I would as lief hear it thunder as to hear her talk. Why can’t a pretty woman let well enough alone and not go into hysterics over what she doesn’t know anything about? You would think, to hear her go on, that the country was going to the devil, and that we were the cause of it.”

“I wonder if all those facts about Russia and the thirty per cent. taxation in Italy are really true,” interposed Mr. Conro, meditatively. “She reeled off all those statistics like a schoolma’am saying dates.”

“They are true if she says so, you can bet your life on that,” answered Will, thoroughly nettled. “Being out at Cambridge most of the time, I haven’t seen much of her, and I never heard her say so much on any subject before to-night. I was about as much surprised as you were at her coming out in that way; but if you and Gordon think she is the kind of girl to go into hysterics over nothing, you are mightily mistaken. Most people talk for the sake of talking, but I’ve seen enough of her to know that when she says a thing it stands for something. What you said hurt her in a way a fellow like you can’t understand. You’ve no interest in a girl who has any notions beyond flattering you into thinking you are the most stunning fellow going.”

“Beg pardon,” drawled Gordon, “but”—

“Hold on there,” interposed Mr. Mather, grimly; “you’ve said enough. What she said was solid gospel, and you know it as well as I do.”

CHAPTER II.

The books of Scripture only suffer from being subjected to requirements which we have ceased to apply to the books of common literature.—Dean Stanley, History of the Jewish Church.

The Protestant Reformation shows how men tried to lodge infallibility in the Bible.... The great point of our present belief is that there is no such infallible record anywhere in church or council or book.—Phillips Brooks, Harvard Divinity Address, 1884.

Boston, Jan. 6. 25 Louisburg Square.

Jessie dear,—I have been sitting for the last half hour in the broad, cushioned window-seat of my cosy attic room, looking far out over the mass of chimney-tops to the towers and spires beyond the hill and the Public Garden.

I love to sit here quietly on Sunday afternoons, and when the sunset comes I throw aside my books and watch the shifting, brilliant colors turning the blue Charles into a sheet of glimmering gold and dyeing with rosy hues the snowy slopes of Corey Hill beyond.

Have you been away so long as to have forgotten these dear old sights? And do you recall that on this western slope of Beacon Hill from which I write to you lived the hermit Blackstone of Shawmut, before Winthrop or any Puritan had thought of settling Boston town?

I like old places. I like to be on the oldest spot in this old, historic town, as you may easily imagine, remembering all my antiquarian enthusiasm when we were at school. Well, I have not outgrown it in the least, in spite of all my modern radicalism about many things.

I wonder, dear, what all these ten years have brought to you. I have been sitting and thinking, as the sunset glow has faded in the western sky, all its glory turning so soon to dull, cold gray, how in these few minutes the past years seem typified. What glorious visions, what radiant achievements illumined the heavens when we looked at them with the eyes of eighteen! What would we not, what could we not, dream of doing then? I remember how you vowed that I was a genius, and were sure that ten years would not pass before I should win renown. And now, to-night, on my twenty-eighth birthday, I sit here as dull and prosy and commonplace a spinster as one can well find in this city of spinsters.

After one is twenty-five and the birthdays begin to be a little unwelcome, I suppose one is apt to be made a little morbid by them, though I solace myself by thinking that since college girls in these days rarely finish their studies before twenty-two, twenty-eight does not seem so ancient as it was once thought to be.

How strange that we should have known so little of each other, we who vowed that “ocean-sundered continents” should never make our girlhood’s love less warm! But after your change of name and transfer to the China Mission, while I was at Smith College, I lost sight of you, and, missing your letters, knew not where to write. So you will understand my long silence and know that the Mildred of ten years ago is the same Mildred to-day, only no longer a girl, but a woman.

A woman, with many ambitions unsatisfied, with many heroes dethroned, but with the same loves and hopes and fears, and with the same ideals, although their attainment seems farther off with the growing years.

I have slowly come to recognize and be reconciled to my mediocrity; to know that I have not had a thought but has been common to humanity; that I am no whit wiser or better than all my fellows; and that what you in girlish enthusiasm flattered me into believing was creative power was simply a capacity to appreciate and be moved by what was great.

I have longed for power, but, believe me, not for name or fame. Simply to have had the consciousness in myself that the world was better and wiser for my having lived would have made all drudgery and toil a joy and privilege. But the blessedness of giving and doing in a large measure has not been granted to me. Not that I blame fate or circumstance or environment. I have had health and freedom and friends; no hindrances and no great sorrows since mother left me alone five years ago.

The failure lies with myself alone. Sometimes there has been an unutterable loneliness and a longing for something, I know not what; but I suppose it must be for the love which has not yet come to me, and which now may never come.

But I do not let that burden me overmuch. I have my daily task. I love my work; and here, among my books, I thankfully count myself rich indeed in the society of all the great and wise and good of whose treasures I am the happy heir. I have traveled, too, and seen the Old World cities and the castles, palaces, and ruins of which we used to dream. It was not exactly the blissful experience I had fancied, for I was doomed to be the companion of a stupid old dowager whose money bought my time and service, and to whom I was useful as an interpreter of the arts and languages with which she was unfamiliar.

I saw a great deal and learned some things. It helped me a little towards reaching that goal of culture at which I aim, whence I can truly say that “I count nothing human foreign to me.” It helped to free me somewhat from the narrowness of my age and environment. I have become a little more of a Greek, a little less of a rugged Goth. Not that mere travel did this; if my eyes had not begun to be opened before, I should have seen nothing. I have verified nothing more thoroughly than Emerson’s saying, “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us or we find it not.”

I miss the picturesqueness and the charm of the Old World life. I am surprised to find how shocked and annoyed I am at the crudities and Philistinism of which I was once oblivious. But, after all, I am glad to be back; glad to be in the current of real life again, and to take my share in it. It is worth something to live in a land where one does not have to despise the men or pity the women; where a man is not ashamed to be seen carrying his own baby; where a girl can walk the streets alone and unmolested, and where a lady can earn her daily bread and be thought a lady still.

I have a quiet home with my mother’s cousin—“auntie,” I call her; and I have settled down to steady work with a concert or play or toboggan party to give it a little zest now and then. My classes take me to Dorchester and Cambridge and Longwood. Once a week I meet a score or so of our Boston society women in a Commonwealth Avenue drawing-room, who manage, among their thousand and one lectures, lessons, and engagements of every sort, to squeeze in an hour to hear me discourse on the topics of the day, when I try to teach them about some phases of our nineteenth century life of which they, like most women, know but little. As these ladies include all shades of religious and political belief and non-belief, I have to choose my words, as you may imagine.

I write a little occasionally for the “Transcript” or “Woman’s Journal,” or some other equally inoffensive and unremunerative sheet. I visit my North Enders, and think I am doing God more service in trying to keep some of my small Hibernians from being sent to the Reform School than I ever used to accomplish in teaching Jewish history at the Mission.

I have given up Sunday-school work. Not that I disbelieve in it, but I find myself less and less able to adapt myself to the requirements of superintendents and “lesson helps,” and my conscience now forbids me to teach what I could once repeat so glibly and confidently.

Yes, let me say it frankly,—though I fear it will greatly shock you, you dear, pious soul,—I have gone over to the “New Theology,” and I have gone so far and so irrevocably that but few of those churches where my childhood’s faith is still believed dare open their doors to me.

I wonder if you can conceive how painful it has been to me to find the friends for whom I care most condemning as irreligious every thoughtful man or woman who ventures to treat the Hebrew scriptures in a reasonable way.

My last Sunday-school class was in the home school, where I had bright girls of sixteen. I did my best to make the Bible a living book to them, to make them study the history of the Jews in the same natural and enthusiastic way that they studied their Greek history at school, but I soon found that they considered this sacrilegious. They looked at me with cold, critical glances when I tried to spiritualize their “Gates Ajar” idea of heaven. I found that they had gone home and told their mothers that I did not believe in God or heaven or hell, and, to my bitter mortification and dismay, they left me one by one until I was alone.

Doubtless I had little wisdom. I was trying to teach them in a few months what it had taken me years of growth to reach. In trying to disabuse them of their anthropomorphic notions of God, I had succeeded in making Him only a nonentity to them. In taking away a literal Garden of Eden and the serpent, and substituting a theory of evolution, I had, in their imaginations, abolished all inspiration and moral responsibility. Not that they were girls who troubled themselves very much about such things; they could dance and flirt as well as the best; but as for really daring to face the evidence on such matters, that was wicked and dangerous, in their opinion.

Nor was this all. One good old clergyman, to whose church I brought a letter of recommendation, and who after my candid talk felt obliged to deny me a welcome, said, with tears in his eyes, that he hoped my mother’s prayers would save me.

It made me feel forlorn and homesick for a while. I like the strength, sincerity, and earnestness which the old faith gave, and I cannot lightly break away from it. I hate the lukewarmness and apathy of many of the more radical faith, and I cannot make up my mind to cast my lot with them. Besides, I have a half fear that, after all, they have not begun, even intellectually, to probe to the bottom these great historic beliefs on which the church has stood for ages. I fear that they treat them too cavalierly, too superficially. I find about as much intolerance among the so-called liberals as among the conservatives.

To me sin is not an ailment to be cured with sugared plums. The Puritanism in me rebels at the weakness and flabbiness of many who have left the old faith for a broader one. However much my mind is forced to accept their doctrine, my sympathies abide with the men of moral earnestness who still think it their business to be “saving souls.”

To me the doctrine of the Trinity is something more than a mathematical absurdity, as the men of one party say; and, on the other hand, something more than an inscrutable mystery to be accepted without deep philosophic study, as the men of the other party hold.

I pity and long to help the poor souls groping for some solution of the religious problems peculiar to our day. There are thousands of them—more than any one knows—inside the fold of the church itself, fed, but not nourished, and famishing for the kind of food which their good pastors know not how to give.

How many times I have gone to church bewildered, utterly wretched, my soul crying out for the living God, and listened to a cheap, well-meant discourse against “Ingersoll, Emerson, and all other unbelievers in the inspired Word of God,” with an earnest exhortation to refrain at our peril from “searching into what are the hidden mysteries.”

I understood the preacher’s standpoint, poor soul! I respected him and his effort, but oh, how helpless he was to do anything for me who could detect the sophistry and lack of discrimination in all this talk!

Oh, if I could help those who have been driven to question the whole of truth, when they thus find out a part of it to have been crude or false! And I pity almost as much the many timid ones who, like myself, are longing to stay in the mother church, to that end being sorely tempted to quibble with creeds, but who find no place either in or out of the church which would exactly express their true religious attitude.

How strange all this must seem to you, who used to feel that heaven and earth might fall, but that I should never give up my faith.

No, please God, I shall never give up faith, nor hold less faithfully to the eternal verities which alone make life worth living. Never have I felt more deeply than to-day the truth of the old words of the catechism, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” But I do not hold that keeping the faith is an adherence to any creed or an absolute acceptance of any book, even if it be the Book of books.

I have come to feel that the teaching of my childhood which made historic facts, or what were assumed to be historic facts, of equal importance with the eternal and immutable laws of moral and spiritual growth,—I have come, I say, to feel that his was false. Ah me, the pity of it!

I write you all this because I want you to know the strongest reason that has prevented me from following in your footsteps and, as I once dreamed of doing, giving myself up either at home or abroad to the grand missionary work which still seems to me the most satisfying kind of work in the world. No, I cannot be a missionary; I think I shall never dare to teach any one; I don’t know how; but, thank God, I have come to see a little more clearly some truths to which I think it is possible for the human mind to attain. The vision thus gained, though still at times a fleeting one, has, I firmly believe, placed me forever beyond the reach of the nightmare of doubts and mortal terrors which first assailed me after I dared trust myself to think and question.

No one, not bred in a New England home with all the Puritan traditions imbibed with every breath, can realize the fever and despair that I have felt more than once after I dared to think and face the result of my thought. But that torture can never come again. Not that I have relapsed into indifference or have heeded the pleadings of my devout friends to “only believe,” that so I might dread my doubts as impious and accept without question the creed of my fathers. No! Kant, Hegel, and Fichte, Carlyle and Emerson, Robertson, Stanley, Phillips Brooks, and, more than all, the unprejudiced study of the Bible itself, have kept me from that.

I no longer tremble at the question whether the record of the miracles be fact or no; it touches not my spiritual life. The baby born next door yesterday is a greater miracle to me than Lazarus raised from the dead; the morning’s breakfast turned into vital force that guides this hand as marvelous as water changed to wine. Whether the resurrection of Jesus be literal fact or not, it in no wise affects my immortality. My faith rests on something surer than the accuracy of any historic fact.

Are you shocked? Yes, doubtless, for so should I have been once. I do not expect you to understand me yet, unless you too have been climbing up to the light by the same path in which I have been led. You will think that I have been venturing on dangerous ground, but I could not write to you without granting your request to tell you how it was with me in my inmost self.

You ask whether I am married or am going to be. The first question I have answered; as to the second, the most that I can say is that when a woman has lived a dozen years beyond sweet sixteen and has never been very deeply in love, it argues either that she has lived like a nun, or something rather uncomplimentary to her heart, and that there is precious little prospect of her ever finding the right one after that.

They say no woman ever fails of some time having at least one suitor. Well, I have had my one. A burly, broad-chested business man he was, with very decided ideas about protection and mining stock, with a good deal of amused wonder at my independence of thought and action, and a chivalrous old-fashioned pity for gentlewomen who had to earn their living. He felt pretty desperately when I said “no,” and I had to say it three or four times before he could believe it, for he had been so sure that a poor young creature like me must long for his strong arm and good bank account to shield her from the “world’s cold blasts.” I did like him, I confess, but not enough; not as I must love the one to whom I would gladly, heartily, pledge my whole self for life.

So, one bright spring day he sailed away for South America and never returned. He married a Spanish wife, I hear, who will inherit his millions, for he made shrewd investments and became enormously wealthy. The “Herald” had a dispatch yesterday morning announcing his death from sunstroke. It gave me a shock. Yes, he was a good man, and I did like him; but I am glad I am not his widow in spite of his millions.

We were talking at lunch to-day about wealth, and when I answered the question “How much money would you wish for if you could have your wish?” by saying “Twenty-five millions,” every one looked aghast.

“What, you, Mildred, of all persons! Why, you never cared for diamonds or horses or yachts or anything grand,” exclaimed one.

“What in the world would you do with it?” asked another. “You couldn’t spend half a million with your modest tastes, and the rest would be simply a dead weight. You would be bored to death with lawyers and beggars, and have brain fever in six weeks.”

“Oh no,” interposed a third; “she would buy shoes for all the barefoot children, and build colleges from Alaska to Key West.”

“If you were like most people you would find it the hardest thing in the world to spend your money wisely,” said auntie, sagely.

So I kept my counsel and said nothing. I can’t help wishing, though, to know what will become of these millions which I might have had by saying that one little word five years ago. It seems to me I should not be utterly at a loss to find some wise uses for them, and it would not be by building colleges which are not needed, or by encouraging pauperism....

CHAPTER III.

(Extract from the “Boston Herald.”)

MILDRED’S MILLIONS.—BOSTON’S BEAUTIFUL BELLE FALLS HEIRESS TO A FORTUNE ESTIMATED AT THIRTY MILLIONS! MISS MILDRED BREWSTER THE SOLE HEIRESS.

When the rumor in yesterday’s South American despatches hinted that the colossal fortune amassed by the late Mr. William Dunreath was, according to his will, to be transferred in toto to a Boston lady, when moreover, on investigation, the name of the aforesaid lady was disclosed by her lawyer, an enterprising representative of the “Herald” was not long in finding his way to the residence of this favored daughter of fortune.

Two other journalists, with pencil and pad in readiness, arrived almost simultaneously and were shown into the reception room.

Miss Brewster was out.

Would her ladyship soon return?

That was doubtful.

A skillful use of some of Uncle Sam’s coin, however, secured an “aside” in the library with the sable domestic whose acquaintance with desirable facts proved a godsend.

“Was Miss Brewster young?”

Certainly. She had just celebrated her twenty-fourth birthday, or, to quote our informant more literally, “Yes, sah, she is done gone twenty-fo’ shuah, fo’ I made her buffday cake.”

“Was Miss Brewster handsome?”

In response to this momentous question this jewel of a Chloe produced from a corner of the library a photograph album containing two cabinet photographs, taken in Boston and Paris respectively, and representing one of the most attractive types of petite female beauty. One picture was taken in a jaunty riding habit, displaying to good advantage a slender, trim figure, with a graceful poise to a very pretty head, and a pair of fascinating dark eyes looking frankly at you from under the hat-brim. The other was in a white evening dress modestly covering the sloping shoulders, the hair worn Pompadour, and no ornaments save flowers. There was a delicacy and refinement indicated in the small ear and sensitive mouth, which betokened generations of the best blood and culture. It was gratifying to perceive that the enviable possessor of one of the largest private fortunes in New England was evidently richly endowed by nature with every charm which could lend grace to the brilliant position in society that she without doubt is destined to fill.

The “Herald” representative inquired further as to the past history of Miss Brewster, and learned that she was the only child of a physician, was born in Cambridge, has spent some years in foreign travel and study under the chaperonage of a distinguished leader of society, was presented at the Court of St. James, and received marked attention from some of the scions of the oldest and noblest houses of England.

She is supposed to have had a small independent fortune of her own, but having literary and philanthropic tastes, has quietly devoted herself to study and works of charity, thus depriving society of one peculiarly fitted to be one of its brightest ornaments.

The connection between the defunct millionaire and the charming girl upon whom he has lavished all his wealth seems hard to prove. From all that could be learned, however, it seems conclusive that an engagement existed between them, and that the death of Mr. Dunreath was a great shock to the fortunate lady of his choice. In the absence of any family or near relatives, Mr. D. being an only son and a bachelor, she will find no one to dispute the will. This latter point was confirmed by her lawyer, Mr. Kilrain, of No. 55 Pemberton Square, who, however, remained very provokingly non-committal on all other points of interest, intimating that he was thus obeying the instructions of his fair client, who modestly wishes to avoid the sudden notoriety which her fortune will necessarily bring upon her.

A call on some of her co-workers in the Associated Charities revealed the fact that Miss Brewster is ardently absorbed in her work, and has been peculiarly successful in winning the hearts of the street gamins in her district. She is interested in various charities, and it is anticipated that her increased wealth will not lessen the time nor the interest which she has devoted to her various benefactions.

It was intimated from one source that Miss Brewster holds very pronounced views upon women’s rights, and will probably use a great part of her wealth in advancing the cause of female suffrage, but this we are loth to believe.

(Extract from the “Boston Globe.”)

... After waiting an hour and calling at three different times, the representative of the “Globe” was finally so fortunate as to encounter the fair lady in whom the public is now feeling so warm an interest. She had just returned home, and was standing in the hall with her little toque of wine-colored velvet still crowning her chestnut tresses, and her tall, stately figure draped from head to foot in a fur-trimmed cloak of the same shade.

She received the “Globe” representative most courteously, ushering him into a cosy little reception room, and meanwhile drawing off the gants de suede which encased her shapely hands. She seemed nervous and tired, but had a brilliant color which deepened perceptibly when requested to grant an interview. The involuntary look of surprise and hauteur which accompanied this only enhanced her beauty, but quickly recovering herself she replied without embarrassment that there was nothing whatever that she wished to state to the public. She had not been apprised of the nature of the will until within three days. Since then she had been overwhelmed with business arrangements, and was very tired and wished to see only her intimate friends.

One question, however, she so far forgot herself as to answer, namely, as to whether she should change her residence. She replied that she purposed soon to leave town for an indefinite period. A further question designed to draw out some information regarding her acquaintance with Mr. Dunreath, whom it is certain she has for a long time corresponded with, met with no reply beyond “I will bid you good evening.”

Miss Brewster is certainly a very prepossessing lady. In addition to her beauty her voice is particularly well modulated and pleasing. She is decidedly above the medium height, and has a queenly air combined with a brisk, business-like manner, which gives evidence that she is at once a lady and a shrewd woman of the world,—an indication of anything but the helpless state into which most inexperienced women would have been thrown at so sudden and astounding a change of fortune.

In the gaslight and with such a color Miss Brewster had the appearance of being not over twenty-three; we learn, however, on unquestioned authority from a former schoolmate of hers, that she is just twenty-six, having had a birthday last week.

Miss Brewster is said to be a very devout church-woman of the ritualistic type, and usually attends the Church of the Advent.

The Hub is certainly to be commiserated at the prospect of so soon losing a lady who would otherwise become one of its most admired belles as well as a leader of its most cultured society, and we trust that her stay though indefinite may not be prolonged.

Three of the one hundred and twenty-seven letters received by Miss Brewster during the first week after the above newspaper extracts appeared will serve as types of the whole.

LETTER NO. I.

Jonesport, Pa., Jan. — 18—

Derest Miss Brewster honored miss

God has been verry bountiful too you truly and no doubt your kind heart is greatful for all his Mercies and anxshus to do your part in relieving the wos of humanity. Henceforth your couch is down and your pathway strude with roses. You have more money than you know what too do with and will take it kindly for me suggest a most useful and feesable way to do the greatest good to the greatest number which is the Christian’s vitle breath. My dorter Rose Ethel Bangs is just turned sixtine and is as smart and handsum a girl as ever trod shu lether. She is awful musicle and is just dying to get a chance to go to the Boston Conservatory, she plays the banjo best of anybody in the county and has given solo peices at some of the best concerts she plays the melodeon at meeting and the best critics say her voice is amazing a professor from Philadelfy said he had heard a great many voices but he never heard a voice that was as strong as her voice. A yere’s residens in Boston would complete her education she has a young gentleman second cousin who is anxshus to show her about to see the sites and 300 dollers with what her pa can raise would just about do the bizness now dear miss when you have it in your pour to bestough such a blessing how can you refrane. We shall bless you and my dorter will be a credit to you and a jewel in the crown which our Heavenly father will bestough on all who remember the proverb it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Yours with love and regards

Mrs. Mattie T. Bangs.

P. S. I send Bose Ethel’s tintype took when she was fourtine she wears her hair up now.

LETTER NO. II.

New York, N. Y., —— Street.

Dear Miss Brewster:

Permit me at this moment of your joy and unprecedented good fortune to present to you my most heartfelt congratulations.

Perhaps you may not recollect my humble self, as you always impressed me with such a sense of awe and dignity that I dared not venture to disclose to you the profound admiration which I have always felt for your exalted character.

Rarely have I known such a nature as yours. One so endowed with all the charms and graces of a goddess and a saint it has never been my fortune to meet. Do not think I am flattering you, mon ange; but ever since the first moment when my eyes fell on your face suffused with dewy tears, as you bade good-by to your native land, you have been the ideal of my fondest dreams.

I sailed with you on the steamer, like you bound for those shores of mystery and delight which from childhood’s hour had haunted my imagination, now hélas! never to be revisited, for I—how can I say it?—have been doomed by fate to lose all that is most dear to me.

I had kept my diamond earrings until the last, but yesterday even those, my last precious treasures, had to be sacrificed. How can I relate to you the story of our disgrace!

A year ago papa failed, and we were obliged to leave our palatial home on Fifth Avenue and betake ourselves to a small hotel on W. Ninth Street. I nearly cried my eyes out. I spent days and nights in weeping over our sad fortunes, and as one by one I was obliged to surrender the darling treasures of happier days I felt that if this were to go on I should either become a hopeless wreck with shattered nerves and end my days in a lunatic asylum, or else that rather than suffer the mental torture which I had endured I should with my own hand take the life which was a curse to me.

Everything has gone from bad to worse, though I have fought against fate with all the passion of desperation. Our friends have deserted us; that is, all the young society which I care about and really need to keep up my spirits and make me cheerful. I can find no congenial society in the class with whom I am doomed to associate, and so I keep my room, and solace my sad hours with works of fiction, which for the time being take me out of myself, and with fancy work, which is the one little link that connects me with my happy past.

But now a crisis has come in papa’s affairs. He is offered a position in Jersey City, and compels us to go with him to this odious place, to live in a second or third rate boarding-house, away from everything that makes life endurable.

I cannot do it. I should simply be burying myself alive. To one of my sensitive temperament the shock would be too great, and I know that I should become but a wreck of my former self.

I have racked my brains and tossed on my sleepless pillow many a night, endeavoring to solve the problem that is before me.

This morning a ray of light dawned upon the gloom which has enshrouded me. I picked up the morning paper and read the delightful announcement of the good fortune which has come to you. My heart throbbed with sympathetic joy, mon amie, to think that in this desolate world at least one whom I loved was completely happy.

The report says that you are soon to go abroad. Like an inspiration the thought came to me, “Oh, if only I could go with her as a companion!” The thought fairly suffocated me. Once the idea of attempting to go as a paid companion, of accepting money for services rendered, no matter how valuable they might be, would have brought the blush to my cheek. But my pride has been humbled, and though even now I could not do it for every one, for you whom I adore it would seem no sacrifice but a privilege.

I could be of invaluable service to you in shopping and in visiting galleries. I speak French perfectly, and could play whist or sing to you when you are tired. I know how to arrange flowers, to design toilettes, to order dinners, and can read aloud without fatigue. I could relieve you of all care, and this you will certainly require, as so many new cares have devolved upon you, and you must be distracted with all the new things you have to order and to attend to.

What steamer shall you take? I like the North German Lloyd best,—don’t you?

I can be ready at a moment’s notice. I await your answer in an agony of suspense.

Yours devotedly,

M. Jeanette Mason.

LETTER NO. III.

E. Gainsborough, Vt.

Miss Brewster:

Dear Miss,—No doubt you will be very much surprised to get a letter from me for you don’t know me at all and I don’t know you at all and I persume you are not used to getting letters from strangers. But you are a rich kind lady and as a last resorse I turn to you for my heart is bleeding and my friends can’t do no more for me. I am an inventor as you will be surprised to learn. Ever since I was able to hold a jack knife and whittle I have been whittling out things and making inventions. Some folks say I am a genius and if I had my rights I should be rolling in welth and be able to keep a horse and carriage.

My inventions have been about all sorts of things. I almost got a patent for a clothes-wringer but a mean sneak of a fellow stole it from me taking the bread from my children’s mouths. My wife took in sewing and washing and the children milked the cow and kept the garden running and sometimes I got odd jobs. But a month ago Susie and Jimmie took sick with scarlet fever and wife she was up with them night and day and she took sick too and first Jimmie died and then Susie, and mother the next day.

I did the best I could and the neighbors was kind and came in spite of its being so catching.

But now there all gone and nobody but the baby and me is left. He had it light and wan’t down but a day or two. I feel most crazy when I think of it all and wonder what I’m going to do. The neighbors cooked up some vittles for a few days but there poor too and I can’t count on them for doing much.

I’ve got to do something right off and I an’t a cent of money more than enough to pay the postage of this letter.

Last night when Mis deacon Allen went by with the newspaper she had got to the P. O. she stopped and read me all about your getting rich so sudden and she said to me brother Silas if I was you I’d just write to that Miss Brewster and if she’s a woman with a heart in her she’ll feel for that poor motherless little feller there a toddlin about, and you with your hands tied sos you cant leave him a minute. I’d take him myself said she if my hands wasnt tied too. Which is true enough for shes five of her own and one adopted.

Now Miss Brewster if you could take my baby for a while, his name is Orlando and he is 18 months old and help me make a man of him and get on my feet a little and carry out a scheme I’ve got for an improved churn I’d thank you to my dying day. I aint a great hand at farm work for I cut my foot in a mowing machine and have been lame ever since and my hearing is bad. So you see there aint much I can do except invent and sometimes if it want for the inventing I think Id rather die. But I do feel sure sometime if I can only get a chance I can invent something that will sell and then I can repay you.

If you send for Orlie to go to Boston I must stay there too. I couldn’t bear to be so far away from him. I should die of lonesomeness. Couldn’t you get me a chance there? I am forty-six years old and a professor.[^[1]]

Yr. ob’t servant,

Silas Kittredge.

[1]. Of religion.—Ed.

CHAPTER IV.

Notwithstanding all that England has done for the good of India, the missionaries have done more than all other agencies combined.—Lord Lawrence, in 1871.

... all this is very surprising when it is considered that five years ago nothing but the fern flourished here; native workmanship taught by the missionaries has effected this change; the lesson of the missionaries is the enchanter’s wand.... I look back to but one bright spot in New Zealand, and that is Waimate with its Christian inhabitants.—Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches in Natural History and Geology.

EXTRACT FROM MISS BREWSTER’S DIARY.

For the first time since the lawyer’s call a week ago I sit down to collect my wits after this whirl of excitement, and, like the old woman in the nursery rhyme, ask myself if it can be that I am really I.

I am frightfully tired, and it may be childish to write this all out for no one’s eye but my own. I cannot sleep, however, and I feel as if it would be a relief and might cool the fever in my veins to calmly make a record of some of the momentous events of these last few days. So many things are crowding upon me that I fear my mind will be a chaos if I do not attempt something like this to help me to quiet and arrange my thoughts.

When Mr. Kilrain came with the cablegram and letters, I neither laughed nor cried nor fainted. I was perfectly calm. I did not realize it in the least, just as a girl never realizes what it all means when she kneels before the altar as a bride, or when she stands beside the dead white face that she has loved.

After the real meaning of the thing dawned upon me and I began to comprehend that I, whose golden dreams had been quietly put aside forever, was now actually to realize those dreams, to exchange prose for poetry, and insignificance and uselessness for tremendous power such as I had always longed for,—when the possibilities of it all came over me and I saw that I could now actually build all my air castles on this earth, besides doing many other things of which I have dreamed,—it gave me at first a thorough ague fit, followed by a burning fever which nothing could allay until I had seen my will written, signed, and witnessed.

Every one thought it such an odd thing for me to think of at first. Auntie said, “Wait and take time to think it over, dear. You are laboring under a nervous strain now; wait and rest and enjoy yourself a little while. Go to Hollander’s and order a fine outfit. I will help you find a French maid, for you will need one, of course; then travel after that, if you like. Take time to make up your mind. It isn’t possible for you to know how to spend such an enormous sum wisely without great thought.”

I could find no rest, however, until I had put beyond a peradventure the danger of my dying and leaving nothing done towards carrying out all the projects which have been so dear to me.

My will is made, and though I may change it next week,—doubtless I shall change it more than once as I get more wisdom,—I know that it is in the main as I shall let it stand.

Mr. Kilrain’s partner and uncle Madison start at once for South America to look after my interests, and transfer my stocks and landed property as soon as possible into our government and railroad bonds. I cannot bear to feel that I am employing hundreds of people whom I do not know, and who may suffer from the extortion of villainous agents and overseers whom I cannot control. If I could go to South America myself, and if I understood enough of business to administer my affairs personally, I might, perhaps, do as much good by giving employment to great numbers of people there, and treating them in a helpful Christian fashion, as by anything that I can do at home.

But it would take me ten years at least to learn the language and know the people and the business merely in its outlines. My lawyers say it would require half a dozen of the shrewdest men simply to make investments and oversee the overseers, and I can foresee that a woman dependent on lawyers and agents is in no wise to be envied. So I am determined to free myself from these worries as to the details of making money, and devote my whole energies to making this fortune, which has so strangely fallen to me, tell for good in the future of our country.

I am sure that nowhere else in Christendom can money be made to produce such far-reaching results. Last night I lay awake for hours, planning this work. My mind is made up. For the next few years I shall travel and study, first, the resources and necessities of our own country, and after that the social and economic questions in the Old World. Meanwhile I shall begin to carry out some of my schemes at once, and not wait for lawyers and trustees to squabble over my money after my death.

As I am planning to leave Boston soon, I determined to meet some of the people whom I have chosen as trustees of certain funds. Accordingly I invited five people of different religious faiths, the broadest-minded and most public-spirited persons known to me,—Revs. P—— B——, A—— McK——, E. E. H——, P—— M——, and Mrs. A—— F—— P——. Not one of them had an inkling as to what it was all about, or knew who were invited beside himself. Mr. Kilrain was there in obedience to my request. I wished him to see that everything was done legally, and, besides, to draw up all the necessary papers.

I fairly shivered with delight and excitement as they came in one by one and I introduced myself to them, feeling very much like a young queen who has just ascended a throne and summons her generals and wise counselors to plan a campaign.

I had a dainty lunch served in a cosy little parlor, and as soon as the servants were gone I began, rather tremulously, it must be confessed, to make my little speech. They all knew, of course, that they were invited to give me counsel on some philanthropic matter, but further than that they were in the dark. As nearly as I can remember this is what I said:—

“You are all aware that I have asked the favor of your company to-day in order to discuss a serious matter involving the expenditure of a large sum of money. I wish to avail myself of the united wisdom of those present to enable me to use for good and not for evil the enormous wealth which has so suddenly dropped from the skies, as it were, into my hands.

“I count myself as simply a steward, and know well that before my own conscience, if before no other tribunal, I shall be called to account for my stewardship.

“It is stated that one of the seven greatest sources of pauperism in London is foolish almsgiving. I am perfectly aware that I may ‘give all my goods to feed the poor,’ and do more harm by it than if I threw my offerings into the Charles River.

“I am convinced that if I would help any man I must do it by giving him the means to help himself, and thus to retain or gain his self-respect.

“My thoughts and affections go out most strongly to our own country, and therefore most of my money is to be spent in it. I feel that by helping to outline the new paths which multitudes are to follow here, I shall best help the progress of humanity everywhere. But I am not so narrowminded as to think it right to wait until we get all the industrial schools and kindergartens that we need here, before we teach the first elements of decency to our brothers and sisters in Africa and every other stronghold of heathenism and savagery. My childhood was spent with earnest people who were interested in the missionary work. As a child, I read the ‘Missionary Herald,’ and gave my mite towards building the Morning Star.

“But of late years I have lived in a society whose sentiment has been more than half contemptuous of foreign missions. ‘Let us civilize the heathen at home,’ they say; ‘let us do the duty that lies nearest, and not meddle with what is none of our business.’

“I am tired of this prating and ignorant talk by would-be cultured people who know nothing of the real results of missionary work. They find no fault with actresses or sea-captains or Bohemians who choose exile for gain or pleasure, but they are always ready to cry out against the folly of one who goes to teach men the alphabet, and tell women that they are something more than beasts of burden or mere child-bearing animals.

“I am constantly meeting people who talk as if Buddhism contained all that is of value in Christianity, and who actually scoff at any attempt to disturb what they call the picturesque, simple faith of their carvers of ivory bric-à-brac.

“I revere Buddha. I do not ignore the fact that in all ages God has not left himself without a witness, and that many seers and prophets have led the nations toward the light. But I prefer the sunlight to the twilight, and what vision of truth has come to me I would pass along to others. Especially do I long to help the women. Sometimes their degradation and helplessness appeals so powerfully to my imagination that I feel that I must give my money and my time without stint, until selfish, indifferent Christendom is forced to remember what is the true condition of two thirds of the world.”

I was trembling all over with nervous excitement, and, as usual, was so absorbed in what I was saying as to quite forget to wonder what these five people, so much older and wiser and more experienced than I, must think of my sitting there and talking to them in this fashion. I am dreadfully afraid it must have seemed conceited or audacious or something of the sort. However, they knew nothing about me or my ideas, and as it was quite necessary that they should understand my position before they could give me any counsel, I proceeded to make it known.

“I am not content,” I said, “with most methods that have been used. Sectarianism, bigotry, and ignorance have often perverted the best results. The good souls who fear to send a preacher, no matter how devoted, unless he preach exactly their ‘ism,’ seem to me to be retarding by many years the consummation so devoutly to be wished. The most Christlike men whom I know could not be sent out as missionaries by the American Board. I believe there are hundreds of ardent young souls who would be led to offer themselves for work in foreign lands if the restrictions of creed did not stand in the way.

“Do not misunderstand me. I do not condemn creeds. Doubtless every one who thinks must have some kind of a creed, however short it be. But in the making of bequests, in endowments which are to help affect the thought of future generations, it seems to me difficult to avoid ultimate lawsuits, temptation to mental dishonesty, and infinite harm, unless the founder works on the broadest principles and sees the work begun in his lifetime.

“I have written my will this week and have devoted a very large sum of money for the establishment of a fund, the amount of which I shall not at present name, to be used as follows:—

“For the management and expenditure of this fund I have chosen five trustees. These shall fill vacancies in their number as they occur from death, resignation, incapacity, or whatever cause. One member, at least, shall always be a woman, and as many as three Christian denominations shall always be represented among the five trustees.

“The fund shall be called the ‘Christian Missionary Fund,’ and the work shall be, so far as the trustees are concerned, entirely unsectarian, though always distinctly Christian and Protestant.

“The fund shall be devoted to the following purposes:

“First, for promoting the spiritual and mental, and thus indirectly the material, welfare of the most helpless and degraded people on the globe.

“Second, for promoting Christianity and education in lands like Japan, where there is already an awakened aspiration for better things, and hence the most immediate results may be anticipated.

“Third, for promoting such measures as shall diminish the slave-trade wherever it exists, and for preventing the liquor traffic between civilized and barbarous nations, for instance, such as is now disgracing and desolating the Congo State.

“Any man or woman who applies to be sent out as preacher, teacher, or agent, for promoting any of these ends, shall be accepted if he or she give satisfactory evidence to the committee of being fitted to do sufficiently helpful work in the positions to which they are assigned. No acceptation of any creed shall be required of any applicant. After being enrolled for the work, however, all shall be required to leave detailed written statements of their religious beliefs. These are to be kept on file for statistical purposes, together with the records of the subsequent work of the candidates, their methods of labor, and the results accomplished.

“Every woman employed by the trustees shall receive the same salary as a man would receive for doing the same work. In sending out preachers and pastors no distinction shall be made in regard to sex. All women desiring to preach and to administer the sacraments shall be authorized to do so if possessed of proper qualifications.”

In regard to that latter clause I had had considerable discussion with auntie previous to convening the trustees.

“Isn’t that a little odd?” she asked. “I am afraid some clergymen would be shocked at that.”

“Aunt Madison,” I said, “if it is desirable to have the sacraments of communion or baptism celebrated at all, I can see no reason why they cannot be done by a woman’s hand as well as by that of a man? If the hand that made the bread does not desecrate it, why may not that same hand break and pass it, provided it be done in a proper spirit? Is a man’s hand any more sacred than a woman’s?”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” said auntie, fidgeting a little; “but it is the words and the service which go with it, of course.”

“Certainly,” said I,—rather bluntly, too, I am afraid,—“and those words consist of quotations from the words of Christ and Paul, and a prayer. I see no reason why quotations and prayer uttered by a female voice may not be just as acceptable to the Almighty as if spoken by a male voice. (I hate those words ‘male’ and ‘female,’ but I thought it would help her to see the absurdity of our conventional notions about such things.)”

“Well, dear, perhaps so, if you look at it that way,” she said; “but what do you think the apostles would have thought of such a thing?”

“As a matter-of-fact,” said I, “the members of the early church, who ate at one table, and had all things in common, and celebrated their Lord’s death at the close of their meal in the simplest way in the world, probably passed the cup from one to the other informally, and women as well as men took part in what little service there was. It seems to me in this age of common sense on other subjects it is time we had a little more of it in religion.”

How saucy that appears as I write it. I wonder if I am getting dictatorial.

I told the trustees, that, although their work as trustees was to be entirely undenominational, and that they were to discourage any sectarian work in whatever schools and churches might be established, this was not to be interpreted to mean a refusal to send good men and women, even if they held narrow sectarian views. I hold myself too liberal to refuse to send any one who can do any good, even though he hold mediæval views on eschatology. If a man can persuade a savage to wash his face and stop beating his wife, I am willing to allow him his cassock and crucifix and all the joys of a celibate High Churchism, so long, at least, as he holds himself responsible to no other body than the committee of my choosing. I have observed that a fair amount of civilization, intelligence, and real Christianity can co-exist with a very crude theology. So any good man who cares enough about helping his fellow-men to work hard on a moderate salary, as an exile in a heathen land, shall not be hindered from going until enough better men offer themselves to take his place.

I told my guests that I wished to begin the work at once. Without stating whether or not they were the trustees referred to in my will, I asked them to assume for the next three years the responsibility of disbursing two hundred thousand dollars annually in the way I had specified. I shall keep the money in my own hands so that they need not be troubled about investments, and shall pay the amount in installments, as they call for it.

I requested them to do exactly as they thought best, without any more reference to me than if I were dead, except when they came to any misunderstanding in regard to the interpretation of my wishes as expressed above.

I shall have accurate reports of their proceedings, and thus be able to rectify any point that is left obscure, or that is capable of abuse.

I requested that my name should not be made known in connection with all this.

When I had finished there was a pause; then Dr. H—— in his genial way began—But I can write no more to-night.

(Extract from an editorial in the “Church Inquisitor.”)

It is with feelings of mingled interest and alarm that we report as the most notable of recent events in the religious world the announcement of an enormous bequest for foreign missionary work.

“Why alarm?” may be asked. But a careful reading of the provisions of the bequest which we publish in another column will assure the reader that the conditions under which it is given are unprecedented and allow possibilities so dangerous as to create great anxiety in the minds of those who are well grounded in the faith and zealous for the maintenance of pure doctrine. As it is needless to say that in matters of such moment we hold that the most stringent regulations and careful scrutiny should be exercised, it is evident that the utter abolishing of all tests, allowing the teaching of the most dangerous heresies by Unitarians, Universalists, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists and what not,—and this to be done in the name of Christian Missions,—is startling, to say the least.

It will be readily seen that to the mind of the untutored savage unable to distinguish genuine Christianity from that which is spurious, and as likely to accept the one as the other, the danger of confounding the two to the discredit of all true piety will be great, if the restrictions laid down in the bequest are to be binding.

To be sure, the men and women sent out by this fund must be presumed to possess a fair amount of intellect and moral character, though how their spiritual condition is to be ascertained before hearing a statement of their creed we fail to see. Doubtless something may be done in the way of building up schools and supplementing the work of those whom our Board sends to preach the gospel. For this we rejoice and give thanks. Knowing the genuine Christian character of some members of the committee, we are led to hope that they will deem no one fit to send out as a proclaimer of the doctrines of Christianity who holds the evidently loose views of the framer of this singular bequest. As only one of the trustees is a Unitarian, and as Unitarians are proverbially indifferent to foreign missions, it seems to leave considerable ground for the hope that none of that sect will apply, or, if applying, will be sent.

The donor’s name is withheld, but it is shrewdly surmised to be the late Mr. Albert Danforth of Springfield, formerly a noted Free-thinker, but who is said to have had a deathbed repentance and to have attempted to appease his conscience by bestowing his vast wealth in the manner described. In this case why his name should be withheld remains a mystery.

It will be noticed that another peculiar feature of the bequest is that one trustee at least shall always be a woman. In the course of time there is nothing to prevent all of them being women, as four of the five appointed are known to be in favor of female suffrage. As the late Mr. Danforth, among his other radical notions, held the same unscriptural view of woman’s functions, the promotion of “women’s rights” views by the endowment in question is to be feared.

It is, perhaps, well enough to pay women in the mission field the same sum as that given to men for the same work, though this possibly would be too attractive an allurement for some unworthy persons who might assume the sacred duties in question for the sake of the loaves and fishes. But what seems especially unwise as well as wholly unscriptural, and of which we feel compelled to assert our disapproval, is the provision that women shall be permitted to administer the holy sacraments. See Corinthians i. 14, 34, and xi. 3, 7.

There seems to be no serious objection to women preaching to assemblies of their own sex where male missionaries cannot be admitted; but that such an extreme step should be taken as to desecrate and turn into a farce the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper by allowing them to be administered by a woman, is something that we must deplore.

Were it not that most of the trustees appointed represent the new school of thought, which seems to rely more on reason than on the Written Word, we should wonder at their being able to satisfy their consciences if they accept responsibilities encumbered by such restrictions.

CHAPTER V.

LETTER TO AN INTIMATE FRIEND.

Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, February —, 18—.

My dear Alice,—I ran away from Boston without saying good-by to you. Dr. Wesselhoeft predicted all sorts of horrors—hysterics, St. Vitus’s dance, nervous prostration, and I don’t know what else, if I did not at once get away from the hosts of people who drove me distracted with an incessant ringing of the door-bell from breakfast until bedtime. I was not aware that I had so many friends before. Every pupil I have ever had, every passing acquaintance even, has felt it to be his or her privilege and duty to call and congratulate me and bore me to death with their ecstasies and flatteries.

I rather liked it at first, I must confess. It was all so novel to me, and it showed some of my acquaintances in an entirely new light, which, I found, gave me an admirable opportunity for a study of character on its drollest side. Whenever I entered the reception room and found it lined with callers waiting all on tiptoe for my appearance, I really felt like a president beset by office-seekers during his first month at the White House.

But a few days of all this rather nauseated me, and I thanked my fortune that it had not come at my birth, but had allowed me to make many true and tried friends before bestowing on me what I fear will now always make me suspicious of a lack of disinterestedness in every new-comer.

However, in leaving Boston and coming to New York I fancy that I have only jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, for letters pursue me everywhere. I devote every forenoon to reading them and dictating replies to my amanuensis. Many of them are applications for money or help of some sort, some of them outrageous, and some very pitiful indeed. I had one some days ago from a poor fellow in Vermont, who fancied himself an inventor. He had just lost his wife and two children, and implored me to “help him make a man” of the only little one left to him. His letter sounded so forlorn that it went to my heart, so I sent telegrams of inquiry about him to the postmaster and the minister in his native town. They answered my questions satisfactorily, and I sent at once for the man to come.

Such a dazed, bewildered-looking creature as he was, to be sure, when he stepped out of the carriage, which I had sent for him, and stumbled clumsily up the steps with his baby, tied up in an old red shawl, in his arms!

He told me the simple story of his life, its little ambitions and narrow outlook; of his conversion and his courtship, and of the horrors of disease and death and poverty, to which his pinched face and trembling hands bore witness. The boy was a pathetic little morsel of humanity, and his sad little mouth won my heart. I have taken charge of the child, and, please God, I will “make a man of him.” The father is quite unfit for hard work, and what to do with him I did not know, when suddenly I bethought myself of a magazine article which you loaned me some time ago, apropos of “A Universal Tinker.” The man is clever with tools, I hear, and just the one to do odd bits of mending and attending to the thousand and one things which are always getting out of order about a house. So I sent him with a letter to all my Back Bay friends, and eight of them have offered to pay him five dollars a month each, on condition that he keep everything in their establishments in repair. I have given him a chest of tools, and have found a good home for him. A widow in straitened circumstances, whom also I wish to help, but who will not accept charity, is glad to receive him and his child into her family. Really, the man seems already like another creature. He has taken on a new look of self-respect and courage that makes his commonplace, weather-beaten face fairly radiant.

This whole experience has given me intense satisfaction. I had almost made up my mind to pay no heed to these calls, which demand so much of my time and prove, at least half of them, to come from frauds and impostors. In fact, it was merely as an experiment, and chiefly to indulge my curiosity, that I heeded this case. I am now determined to have every appeal for help that seems at all deserving thoroughly investigated, and I foresee that I shall be obliged to have more than one agent to attend to it all.

I had an extraordinary experience last night, of which I must tell you, though my ears tingle yet at the thought of it. I wonder if this is a foretaste of the penalties which I am doomed to pay for the sin of being a great heiress. I had always wondered how rich women could endure to make such a display of diamonds at parties and balls as to necessitate their being dogged by private detectives everywhere. I always maintained that a woman was an idiot who would thus let herself become such a slave to her wealth. I was sure that any one who lived simply, and did not care for show, could go alone where she pleased, and have no fears; but my theories are getting sadly shaken. However, I am digressing. Now about this affair last night.

I received a beautifully written note the other day, delicately perfumed, and bearing a seal stamped with a coat of arms, and signed Manuel Altiova. The writer intimated that he had been a friend of Mr. Dunreath, and had matters of importance to tell me. He begged the favor of an interview. I surmised that he was a scamp, but, on the other hand, thought it possible that he might be some titled wealthy Spaniard who had met Mr. Dunreath in South America, and who could give me some information about the locality of my possessions. So I had my amanuensis send him a formal note in reply asking him to call on me last evening.

I told my maid Hélène to remain in the next room with the door ajar, and when his card was sent up, followed almost immediately by himself, I arose to receive him with some curiosity.

Tableau. Enter, with many bows, a tall, black-eyed man of perhaps thirty-five, clad in faultless dress; in short, to all outward appearance, an elegant Adonis.

I let him tell his story, and said nothing for awhile. He professed to have been most intimately acquainted with Mr. Dunreath, and produced a photograph of him. Subsequently, he showed me some letters in Mr. Dunreath’s handwriting referring to some dishonorable business transactions by which Mr. D. had greatly augmented his fortunes, and for which he would have suffered the full penalty of the law except for the timely and most self-sacrificing intervention of his “noble and devoted friend,” Manuel Altiova.

I was thunderstruck. The hot blood mounted to my temples, and for a moment everything seemed to reel before me. Was all my happiness a dream? Was I then enjoying the ill-gotten gains of a swindler? I looked at the letters. There could be no mistake about the handwriting. That very forenoon, with my lawyer, I had been carefully examining a dozen documents in that same queer crabbed hand, which I had known so well in the days when I was a girl and had a lover.

Five years ago it was, but it seemed fifty, as I sat there staring dizzily at those letters and trying to realize that this man whom I had loved almost enough to marry, this man whom I would have sworn was honor itself, was false, basely false. Oh, it seemed a thing incredible; yet, as I thought of how in these last few years for month after month society has been shocked by the fall of those who have stood most high in our esteem, yet who have been tempted to sell their souls for gold, I believed it all.

I remember thinking vaguely of how I must try to find out the men whom Mr. Dunreath had defrauded, and return to them this money, which was theirs, not mine. Then I roused myself and questioned him, trying to appear as indifferent and non-committal as possible, though I could feel my temples throbbing, and I knew my cheeks were hot. He answered my questions without the slightest hesitation, giving names, dates, and localities with startling readiness and apparent sincerity. He mentioned various little peculiarities of Mr. Dunreath’s,—his never eating butter, his being left-handed, and so on.

At last I could ask no more. I felt as though I should suffocate. The man went on talking, however, telling his own family history. His father was a learned professor, his mother a lady of noble birth. He was born at Barcelona, had been destined from childhood to take orders in the Romish Church, and was finally disinherited by his stern father for his avowed Protestant and Republican doctrines, to say nothing of his refusal to wed the woman of his father’s choice when all hope of his entering the church had been abandoned. With his own little private fortune of twenty thousand dollars he had sailed for Brazil, and had entered the service of Mr. Dunreath. Soon he became the devoted friend of that gentleman, was intrusted with his confidence, and became cognizant of all his affairs. Mr. Dunreath had fully expected to return to him the thousands which he had so generously made over to the officials in the nick of time, thus preventing the pursuit which would have ended in his arrest and conviction, with the subsequent surrender to the state of many of his millions.

Mr. Altiova, or rather Señor as he called himself, presently let me understand the chief purpose of his visit. As you will readily guess, he desired me to pay him the sum which he had spent, namely, twenty thousand dollars, all his little fortune. In another letter which he produced, Mr. Dunreath had promised to return this sum doubled, and this promise was in the act of fulfillment on the very day of the fatal sunstroke.

Señor Altiova modestly disclaimed any desire that this generous offer should be fulfilled by Mr. Dunreath’s heirs, and declared that he would be quite content to receive only the sum which he had spent. He paused for my reply. Meanwhile I had been gradually collecting my wits, and was able to control my voice enough to say that I must first consult with my lawyer.