USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 26
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with the characteristic unthrift which had marked our business transactions thus far, we did not stop to calculate the many new ex- penses: lighting and heating, carpeting of stairs, water-rates, win- dow-curtains, woodshed and laundry and cellar.
Our families warned us apprehensively, but our vision of a warin inclusive family life outshone the gloomier picture. We had learned some economies, enough to give us ideas for reducing liv- ing costs; in our personal financial management we could rob lux- urious Peter, even if we could not always pay fact-facing Paul. We moved in the first of May, and settled down, as usual, with all the confidence in the world,
But even in the process of transition a test came. I was put to bed, for six weeks and perhaps more. The child we had longed for since our baby's death in 1892 was on its way.
It was an ordeal, that. So much to be done, and yet such an im- possible weakness and weariness. The spring was abnormally hot, and we were longing to get off early to Forty Acres. Meetings were over for the season, but I was editing a little paper for girls-un- salaried work of course-the Girls' Friendly Magazine, and had counted on helping out expenses by some stories for the Youth's Companion, which paid well and promptly. I finished a couple of articles on Fine Women for the first small sheet, the beginning of a series, writing on a cutting board at a level with my face, not seeing the letters, but keeping the lines straight somehow. I was living chiefly on hard-boiled eggs and chipped beef at the moment, one of the fantastic menus which land-seasickness could invent and en- clure.
By way of forgetting disagreeable sensations, one could indulge in dreams. With half-closed eyes I fancied I saw a rose-branch, bear- ing one great open flower on its tip, watching it sway to and fro out- side the windows of Uncle Phelps' study as it had done the June be- fore. And I pictured glorious sunsets, smelled new-mown hay, heard the wind in the pines. The deep green boughs of the maple tree out- side my windows, a unit of spring life, became a small world. It shut out some of the city noise and dust; it held a nest and a pair of sparrows whose domestic joys and difficulties suggested parallels
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with our own experience; only the little mother was very comfort- able in her woven setting, and not obliged to leave it often. Every soft twitter, even the hum of an occasional big bee among the maple leaves, was welcome to my ears; and then when twilight, or closed shades, gave eyes a rest, they could listen again to the orchestra in the Leipzig Gewandhaus. I heard Beethoven symphonies, note by note, heard Joachim, Sarasate, the Wagner operas, the Bach Passion- musik.
Archie would come home at night bringing books from the li- brary, some of them for me to read by day, others for our common enjoyment. We discovered that neither of us had known much of Dumas, strange to say, and he read aloud The Three Musketeers, its excitement giving a much-needed distraction of mind.
We got to Forty Acres in time, and had a lovely summer. I stayed on into October, waiting for Archie, who could not get his vacation earlier. We let our maid go home, and at night Cleve, the Bishop's dog, a big straw-colored Leonberg, who had watched beside the family babies for five years, came over and slept at our house, a faithful sentinel. We never locked the doors. Nan used to go over to the old house, and bring him back with her after supper; I would see them coming along the road in the twilight, the child's hand holding to his collar.
After her father arrived, and the family had gone back to Syra- cuse, Cleve came to live with us, and we had a glorious fortnight, cooking our meals over a wood fire in the long parlor, which served as dining-room and lounging-place. We roamed the woods, and drove over the hill-roads, and brought back apples and pumpkins from upland farms. Next summer we should not be by ourselves, so there was a certain last-time flavor to our enjoyment; but not less looking-forward, with a special joy and expectation which had taken its place among our visions of the future. Somehow it seemed to have been decided that the coming child was a boy, although we had no expert advice on the subject. He would love Forty Acres as we all loved it, and would fish and hunt and swim; perhaps would till the soil, and live as his forbears had lived, we said.
When we got back to town, however, dreams no longer occu-
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pied our minds. We must buckle down to work, and provide ways of meeting the heavy outlay ahead. I had an opportunity for some teaching, and took on a number of music pupils in our own neigh- borhood. Then there was writing to be done in spare minutes, and the editing of the little magazine; the Woman's Club, the Social Re- form Club, and the meetings of the Consumers' League, public and private. We expected our baby just after Christmas, and it became rather a problem to get time off for bringing him into the world; all sorts of civic activities and obligations piled up. The League had developed, and there was now a small corps of investi- gators in our Brooklyn membership. But there was still speaking to be done, sometimes in suburban districts, and as the holiday season approached we returned to the task of persuading the large dry-goods firms to do a little better by their employees, who were forced to work extra long hours during the Christmas shopping- time, with no extra pay for the suppers which they snatched in grudged moments.
The year before we had compiled a White List of stores who served regular suppers in their lunch-rooms without charge to the girls, and had published it in the larger Brooklyn papers. It had apparently proved a satisfactory advertisement, and in the winter of 1896 we found practically all of them willing to continue the free suppers. A few more had been added. I went down to the news- paper offices the week before Christmas, to arrange for publication of it, on the editorial page. The Brooklyn Eagle men had been particularly gracious. But when I reached their offices that day, a certain reserve of manner alarmed me. The man I found looked dubiously at the list and said that he couldn't really say just what they were able to do about printing it. He thought I would better negotiate with the advertising manager, who understood the sitna- tion better than the rest of the staff. A pleasant looking man was summoned from the pressroom. He appeared embarrassed.
"I'm awfully sorry," he murmured, "but I'm afraid we can't get that in this time. You see our advertisers have made a fuss about it; it would mean an awful money loss if they should withdraw their columns, and some of them are very big firms who aren't
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giving suppers. They complain that it's discrimination if we print the names of the others. I really don't know what to do about this, but I'm afraid I must give it to them; we can't afford, you know, to get 'em down on us. Every paper has to look out for its advertis- ing business."
"But I've promised to have this list published. They've got our word as a league that we'll have it in tomorrow's issue. What can I do? I can't back out on it now, and you didn't give me any warn- ing, either. You were so perfectly willing last year that I didn't dream of any trouble."
"Perhaps the firms themselves would be willing to pay to have it go in as a regular advertisement," suggested the man.
"No, they wouldn't; they're supposed to be philanthropists; don't you see? Even I know enough about advertising to realize that a notice on the editorial page is much more conspicuous than the ordinary columns. Why I can't give it up; I mustn't. We've agreed to it."
The manager was genuinely regretful. He explained regret- fully that the Press was anything but free when it came to business influences. After some dickering and coaxing, however, he made a sally into the pressrooms, and came back with a hopeful sugges- tion. If I could get about twice as many names on that list, not all dry-goods people, but stores of other kinds, they could consent to print it. Could I do that, did I think? I felt sure that he counted on my not being able to accomplish such a feat at the last minute. But it was a desperate situation, and I resolved to go to work.
They lent me a little office, with a desk and telephone. I got two of our investigators who were up to their ears in Christmas preparations, but magnanimously threw themselves into the breach. They agreed to go out at once, and to call up results. Then I tele- phoned to one store after another, some of them small business men who, I knew, were probably in the habit of giving the employees supper money. There were corset-shops, tailor shops and book- stores, which employed only a few people; men as well as women. Many were not interested, but I kept at it, and after the first half hour paused between my entreaties to receive the investigators'
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report. By twelve o'clock there were only two new names. But in the noon hour we had better luck. Slowly the list grew. Even some people who had refused us the week before became interested. From then on I had no idea of the flight of time, but at last when the required number of names was really filled out, and the ad- vertising man had timidly but graciously agreed to yield, just for that one year as he stipulated, I found I had been out four hours, and the clock had struck two before there was an opportunity to start for home. I landed at our corner at half-past two, and met Archie pacing up and down the sidewalk.
"I was just advising your husband to telephone round to the hospitals," said Mrs. Shepard, our next door neighbor, and we all shook with the hysterical mirth of reaction. "Now you've got to settle down; the neighborhood can't stand these moments of anx- iety."
I was gład to do that, I must say. During the next few days there were more last bits of business to be put through, but we got the Christmas stockings filled and packages mailed. And on the morning of the twenty-seventh, just in time to be welcomed by daylight, our oldest son appeared; a funny little baby, all mouth, as the nurse observed, and with eyes as dark as the proverbial fruit of the blackthorn.
The doctor breakfasted with Archie, and while Miss H., a fine combination of hospital training and old-fashioned family nursing, was getting the newcomer bathed and dressed, the maid came up and handed me my mail. It contained a package of proof which ought to have arrived the day before, and should be sent back at once to the printer. I took a pencil out of the drawer of my bedside table, and went to work at it unobserved, getting it fin- ished just as the two men came upstairs again from the dining-room. Miss H.'s horrified exclamation brought only a laugh from the doctor.
"That's all right," he said. "She's tough. Now, Madam, break- fast off a chop if you like." I gladly accepted the permission, and my husband undertook to mail the proof. Activities really did let up a little thereafter. In two weeks I began slipping down-stairs to
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give music lessons, and while sitting up I made pretty good headway feather-stitching a set of flannel baby garments ordered by a wealthy lady through the nurse; expenses had to be met somchow.
The child throve apace. My sister Arria came to stay with nie, and was godmother at his baptism. We had settled on naming him Roger-Roger Pitkin, I had planned to call him, after a col- lateral ancestor in England. I was ashamed to give him a purely arbi- trary fancy name. The other two saw no sense in bringing in the Pitkin, so they made a plan of their own, and at the service, when Arria was asked to "name this child" as she handed him to the clergy- man, I was somewhat amazed to hear her say, quite positively, "Roger Huntington." I had no chance to protest, and we promised with mutual stoutness that he should fight manfully against the world, the flesh and the devil, name or no name. .
He was a strong young fellow, very sleepy and hungry, but awakened suddenly one cold night when the tinny jangle of a hurdy- gurdy started up under our window, ground out by a forlorn man who appeared to have been moved by desperation to attempt an out-of-season performance. I have never been able to remember the melody he produced, probably some rattling jig, for the baby claimed our attention. His eyes opened wide, his face grew pink, his hands moved excitedly. Evidently he was listening.
"That child's going to be musical," cried the nurse. "Look at him; he's all stirred up."
We rewarded the hurdy-gurdy man lavishly, and suggested politely that he should move on, the instrument not being suited for a lullaby, but he insisted on giving us an encore, which Roger quite appreciated. The incident was duly recorded, and we found our surmise was correct; the infant's diminutive ear was sensitive to tonal vibrations, and his whole nerve-system responded to them.
Later, when we tried to take him downstairs, he developed a terror of descending motion. We made an attempt to cure it by having him carried in his father's arm, while I played on the piano below. A Bach gavotte from the French Suite seemed to suit the down-stepping rhythm excellently, and took his mind off his fears
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so effectively that we kept up the method till he began to intimate in baby fashion that he wanted to make a musical flight.
Now, with a baby in it, our little old house really began to func- tion as the kind of home we had planned and longed for. I had every excuse to drop outside activities for the time being. Mornings were devoted to nursery cares and domestic chores; getting Nan off to school and Roger out in his carriage. Old Melissa came back to help take care of him, for her daughter's children were grown out of babyhood, and she longed to return to her profession. Friends came to us, since I could not often go to them, and frequently dropped in for lunch. In the afternoon I kept vigil in the nurs- ery, writing sometimes, sewing, and having an eye to the older chil- dren as they played out-of-doors, racing over the neighbors' fences and yards. There were sixteen boys and girls on our block; some of them my music-pupils, all Nan's schoolmates, and an extremely merry crowd. They were very much at their ease in our house, which was one reason for my wanting to be there afternoons.
One's children's comrades out of school hours are of immense importance to the family life. The music scholars very often came in to practise as well, when their mothers were using the family parlors for company or for meetings. On stormy days they were very apt to have a study hour in the dining-room for the sake of sociability and a sort of prestige which they felt to be attached to this privilege, because silence was a condition of their being al- lowed to come. It was not uncommon for a guest to find a girl or boy performing on the piano, several more studying at the dining- room table, a group in the nursery playing dolls with Nan, and perchance a lone reader tucked into a big armchair. I invited my older callers to come upstairs to my room under those circum- stances, but even then there was chance of an interruption at five, the hour when it was possible to tease a fairy story out of "Aunt Ruth," which appellation designated extra-territorial affiliations, as it were. On bright days they all played out-of-doors except those who had to do special lessons, and I could see them from my win- dow, dashing about, counting blindfolded with forehead against the maple tree or shouting "All in!" at the end of a game.
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They were not above squabbling and playing tricks on one an- other, and running upstairs to complain. Boys accused girls and girls boys, and I began to be tired of tattling after a time. So we decided to turn that into a game, which was called Trial by Jury. And that it was, in effect. The disputants eliminated themselves to two, and must each choose an advocate from among the rest, to put their grievance before the court; they were not supposed to tell their own story. The successful advocate was understood to be the boy or girl who could be an absolutely accurate and impartial witness, and after the taking of evidence the jury, which consisted of the rest of the group, retired to the nursery to arrange its verdict. It was astonishing how seriously the youngsters took it. There were no punishments except apologies and restitutions, although once or twice imprisonment was suggested. Nevertheless each of the quarrels was settled amicably, and I rather suspected now and then that a dispute was framed in order to bring on court action. I of- ficiated as judge, but rarely needed to harangue the offenders, and became very fond of the bad boys, as well as of the good. The system made for truthfulness.
My own child was quite as often disciplined by her mates as any other one; in fact everybody was equally welcome under our shingled roof, and all claimed a sort of tacit family connection. They were avid for stories, especially fairy tales, and when the long spring twilights came they gathered after their supper on the front porch, coming much too early usually, and besieging us while we were eating dessert. The story lasted till eight, when parents called their children to bed; any boy or girl who did not go at once on order was barred next night from the company. There was woe when we ourselves were entertaining at dinner, and now and then a wistful child peering in at the window and having to be apolo- gized for by the hostess. But aside from these skirmishes they all romped and climbed and shouted healthily, and made an interest- ing study.
One cannot be a real child-lover unless one can enjoy other people's children, and do them justice. If I had known in those days what a good training I was having for a future vocation, I
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should have been even more interested in those afternoon en- counters. Roger, a serious baby, watched them solemnly.
When my chickens were in bed, I wrote and wrote: magazine articles, letters to newspapers, sometimes controversial; columns for the little magazine. I fear the essays were preachy; the flavor of the Bishop's study would get into them. My pen had been trained to the transcription of hortatory exegesis, and ran it off involun- tarily. But sermons did not pay as stories did. Munsey's Magazine was making a hit in the late nineties, and used to print short tales which were called storiettes. I sent one, hoping to get enough money for a much-needed coat, and to my surprise received a check four times as large as I had expected, with news that the story would be published in the regular columns. Years after, when my husband was editor of Ainslee's Magazine, a man in one of the far southern states sent him that very story, probably thinking that enough time had passed to make the plagiarism go unsuspected.
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SORROWFUL EVENTS
Sorrowful events made the summer of 1897 very different from our untroubled winter. That which concerned the family life most deeply was the death of my husband's mother, the mainstay of her children and the solace of her invalid husband. It left a very empty place in our household, where she had been used to spend one day a week-a happy time for parents and children both. I was always strengthened by our talks as we sat sewing together, for her clear mind and her understanding of her son's mind made my own com- prehension far more complete. I had thought our mutual confi- dence was primarily a matter of kinship, but I know now that it was a wise and self-effacing counsel that made me depend more and more on her judgment. She and her brothers and sister had been educated abroad; there was an element of cosmopolitan tol- erance in their outlook and a breath of view that counterbalanced the Puritan inheritance which she shared with her generation. This broad-mindedness she owed, as we did, to the grandmother who left Calvinism for Unitarianism. Her likeness to our Grandmother Huntington was pronounced, and her face had the same strong lines which we had seen in Aunt Bethia's face and in the pictures of Elizabeth Phelps-the long upper lip and delicate nostrils, sever- ity softened by sweetness of character.
The 1897 Christmas holiday was again a busy time for the Con- sumers' League. We knew we could not count on the newspapers to help this time; another way of advertising the exemplary supper- providers must be found, and I think it was the New York League which set the example of printing small flyers which we distributed by thousands to be wrapped in bundles with purchases. It was not
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a very hopeful method of advertising, but it was the best we could do, and we did not see how many of them were left over; they were considered a nuisance by the bundlers. However, there had been a slight improvement in the arrangements for sales-girls, and mean- time our investigators had achieved more than in previous years. I had made a few speeches that winter, and found audiences a little more responsive; it was becoming fashionable to call public attention to glaring evils, as well as to reform legislation. At Girls' Friendly conferences there was a nearer approach made to an understanding of the members' backgrounds and the effect of those backgrounds in lowering standards.
The neighbors' children still annexed themselves to our me- nage, playing and studying and bickering. Nan asked more questions now, at the age of nine; why didn't women vote, what were wom- en's rights, what did noblesse oblige mean? I heard her explaining it later to a comrade. If you had a nice grandpa or daddy, not rich of course, but lovely, you had got to be nice to everyone else, you know; you were obliged to have the noblesse; it was a French way of spelling niceness. And what if you had neither a grandpa nor a daddy, the interlocutor inquired. Well, in that case you would have to make up some niceness of your own, suggested Nan. But little children who had poor homes and not enough to cat and no bathroom couldn't be expected to make up niceness for themselves, so you had to do it by being very friendly with them, don't you see, and having to do things like that was the oblige. Obleege was what they called it. You just couldn't be stuck up, because it was only an accident that you had bathrooms anyway. By which time the argument was abandoned as raising too many issues.
A blow which amounted to a national calamity, took place in October of that year-the sudden death of Henry George. He had become more and more of a power in the affairs of Greater New York, and had been nominated by the Jeffersonian Democrats as an independent candidate for mayor, with Seth Low running on the Republican ticket, and with Van Wyck the Tammany candidate and tool. His chance of success was strong, with the backing of vigor- ons anti-Tammany groups. But his doctors-and one of them was my
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old friend Felix-had warned him that he had not strength for the campaign. The stress of active political work wore on him. The quiet, intense philosopher and prophet was fighting for the great principles to which he had dedicated his life, and could not listen to any plans for withdrawal.
In the midst of the battle he was struck by a sudden seizure, and lived only a few hours. Then the world knew that one of the greatest men of our times was gone. His body lay in state in the Grand Central Palace, and a hundred thousand people filed past it. Messages came from four great countries of Europe and from Africa, Australia, Japan, and China. His funeral was a simple, majestic service, with clergy of three protestant churches, a Rabbi, and a Catholic priest, Dr. McGlynn, who had suffered in his own church for his allegiance to George's doctrine, and had, after excommuni- cation, been restored to it by order of Pope Leo XIII.
A long procession, led by a band playing the great funeral march of Chopin, and the Marseillaise, carried his body on a high bier drawn by a double line of horses to Brooklyn. It was in the eve- ning, so that the working people might join in the "vast winding column" which followed it while crowds looked on from the side- walk. The next day there was a quiet little ceremony, with two Epis- copal ministers, in his own house at Fort Hamilton. My brother James was one of his sincerest mourners. They had been together in Europe in 1890, and were in deep sympathy; he had performed the wedding ceremony of Mr. George's son Richard, the sculptor.
The election day which followed three weeks after Mr. George's death was sorrowful for those who had enlisted under the great leader. Our own household was subdued. Nan remembers still, after forty years, how her father came in that night; she heard me call out softly from my room as he stole into the dark hall, "Who got in?" and his answer, "Oh Lord! Van Wyck!" The Tammany success seemed to spell not only defeat, but disgrace.
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