USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 5
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The performance in which we were drilled for the soirée was most cleverly arranged by Mademoiselle de la Motte. It was the theme from Handel's Harmonious Blacksmith, written in parts for eight children to play on four grand pianos. Each part was ex- tremely simple, but represented a section of the harmony, and played together gave it complete. We went over and over it till we had memorized every note and accented every phrase, and could keep our eyes on Mademoiselle's baton. That was not all we were to play, however. Our teacher had set her heart on having us do the scales, major and minor, a heavy contract for a child who had had lessons for only about seven months. But the teamwork carried us along. Even the terrible double sharps in some of the scales were surmounted by dogged perseverance-Mademoiselle's, not ours- and by the appointed date we were at home with our task.
When the concert was played in Chickering Hall before a selected audience we all felt it was the beginning of a real career. We had no self-conciousness and no appreciation of the audience, for our eyes were glued to the figure of Mademoiselle, in a full- skirted black silk gown with a fine lace collar. We admired the costume because it was not "slinky" like her everyday one. We sat on our slippery piano-stools, arranged our fingers lightly on the keys, ready for action, and followed her baton with automatic
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MUSIC IN BOSTON
precision. The blacksmith's hammer tapped responsively from one pair of pianos to the other, and there was no breakdown in the scales, for which crisp orders were given, though I suspect there were notes missed here and there without interruption of the rhythm. It was a tribute to the excellent method we had been taught, and which I believe is the best system for the acquisition of carly technical fertigkeit. For me, at all events, that evening was a high-spot, and the best part of it was the great concession my par- ents made in letting me hear some of the performance of the more advanced pupils, who gave fine renderings of classical music, as it was then called.
My study of music was definitely beneficial to my development. It gave me a new world in which I could live alone, independent of my parents, my brothers, and sisters. In enjoying it, I had no obliga- tion to anyone but myself.
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It was not very long after the concerts that a new prospect, sud- den and thrilling, appeared on the horizon of the rectory family. Something was happening. The Rector himself was silent and pre- occupied. The lively meal-times had changed. Jamie was the only person who laughed aud brought in tales of school affairs. He did not know, we felt. Our mother and sister talked together in low voices. Once they walked about the parlor looking at the furniture and suggesting what should be taken. Taken where? We began to grow unhappy over the mystery when one day our father waked up at the dinner-table and seemed to have reclaimed his old bright- ness of spirit. He said:
"Children, how would you like to go to Syracuse to live?"
"Why?" I inquired. "Are we going there?"
Yes, that was the plan. Father was going off to be a bishop, and take us all with him, in a railroad train. The furniture was going to be packed and stored for the summer, and in September we should move to a new home, have a new school and a new circle of friends. Harriet would go too. It was way, way off out West.
"And shall we have little bags of our own?" asked Molly, to whom the journey by rail appealed. No doubt we should. Father could not be certain of that; it was for mamma to say. And mamma, promptly interrogated, allowed that we might have to have bags, and even trunks. She did not look worried any more. "Arria will be the one to feel it most," we heard her say to someone later.
It was very, very exciting. We thought about bishops. We knew a little what they were like because a few had visited us. Bishop Clarke of Rhode Island always told such lovely funny stories. And
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Bishop Coxe of Western New York was nice, only he used to get ex- cited in talking sometimes, and say that some people were headed for Rome, whatever that meant. He liked a rich service but thought red altar-cloths were dreadful. We had never seen an altar-cloth, red or any other color. And Bishop Eastburn, who lived right in Boston, talked like that too, only more so. They had said so much about Catholics that we had asked Harriet why there was any harm in them when we said "the holy Catholic Church" in the creed on Sunday. Harriet had said: "Well, there's two kinds; there's the holy Catholic church and the Roman Catholic church; I guess that's the kind they don't like." But Jamie, overhearing us, had said, "No, Harriet, catholic means all-over-the-world, that's all."
"Oh." I was silenced for the time being. But bishops-bishops- what did they do? "Are bishops grand?" I asked my older sister.
"Not in America. In England they are, sometimes. But they have power." Of course. The power-and-the-glory-forever-and-ever- amen. Father would have power. He didn't look any different yet, however. Then we found there was to be a great service to conse- crate him. A new word, consecrate. I had learned to go to the fat Webster's Dictionary which must be tumbled to the floor because it was too heavy to lift. I knocked it carefully down, got to all fours, and looked up consciousness, conscription, consecrate; "to exalt to the rank of a saint." I guessed at exalt, though that was a new word too. So they were going to make Father a saint, that was it. I wondered if he would look different that way. How would they do it? Harriet, summoned to help replace the Dictionary, suggested that they put robes on him and something on his head.
"What is it they put on bishops' heads?" I inquired of my eldest brother.
"Mitres, do you mean?"
"I guess so. Real bishops, not chess-bishops. Will father have a mitre on when they consecrate him?"
My brother was amused. "Hardly," he said. "That would be a rather startling departure for Boston. Fancy Bishop Eastburn's state of mind," he added to his sister Arria.
"Why?" I persisted. "Would he think it was worse than a red
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altar-cloth?" At which the other laughed immoderately. I looked up mitre, and found a picture of one in the dictionary. It was the mitre of a Pope, whoever that might be: a heavy thing really like the top of a chess-bishop. I was glad Father would not have the embarrass- ment of wearing one in church; it might get askew or tumble off when he bowed his head. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," I reflected. It might be the same with bishops.
Then came a box with some bishop's robes in it. A wealthy pa- rishioner had sent them to her departing pastor. Beautiful thick black satin and very full white sleeves with fine ruffles at the wrists. Our mother was showing them to one of our aunts from Cambridge next day.
"Yards and yards and yards," was her comment on the wrist bands. "Isn't that rather discouraging? They have to be done up by hand, and those tiny pleats crimped with a periknife; think of the time it will take."
"Yes," was the answer, I imagine from Aunt Mary Cooke. "And they're one of those things that only a lady can do perfectly-like making a sponge cake. But you're just the person for a Bishop's wife, Hannah; you'll carry it off grandly, I know."
Grandly, yes. Mamma would. She was so large, fine-looking, dignified, and gracious in her ways, as everybody said. But we all sympathized with her in the matter of the ruffles.
When the great day came, it seemed to fill Boston-the rectory family's Boston, that is-with ministers in black coats. They strolled across the Public Gardens, they hurried along Arlington Street, they got out of horse-cars, they came down Boylston Street in groups. The Bishop-to-be had moved out of his house, and we younger children were staying with Aunt Kate, our mother's sister, on the next block. I wanted to go to the service, feeling sure there would be grand music, but Mother said that was too long for me to have to sit still.
So I went off to school as usual, but in the afternoon when Aunt Kate was lying down, I stole away with another child in the neigh- borhood to play in a vacant lot where there was building going on. There were many such lots near by full of shavings and bricks.
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But we were not supposed to go there to play alone: I knew that. I can never forget that mild April afternoon nor the quiet of New- bury Street just opposite the church, where all the people had gone after the morning ceremonies. We two children balanced on boards, sat on a pile of bricks, then walked up to a great building- ladder which was lying full length against a wall. The other child said, "Let's pull this over," and took hold of the upper edge. It tumbled toward us. I was knocked over backwards, down a slight bank; the edge of the heavy ladder pinned me by one leg, which pained. I cried out, but the other child ran away. Then a man's strong arm pulled up the ladder and dragged me out, very quickly. He was a tall, fine-looking young man, as it turned out, the son of one of the bishops who was in town. He lifted me in his arms, carried me to the sidewalk, and stopped two old ladies who were driving by in a carriage. "Why, that's Dr. Huntington's little girl!" exclaimed one of them. The young man climbed in with me and held me on his lap till we got to Aunt Kate's house, then carried me upstairs where my tired parents were trying to rest.
The doctor who came was a soft looking person who evidently prided himself on his success with children. He approached the bed looking sentimental, pulling his moustache.
"My dear little girl, you've been real brave not to make any fuss. But I must tell you that your leg is broken, and you'll have to have it put in a splint, and lie still for awhile."
My eyes opened wide, fairly dilating with joy. Two seconds of imagination-visions of lame children, Jenny Wren with her crutch (Hoppetty, Kicketty, Peg-peg-peg), the Little Lame Prince, Tiny Tim, myself hopping about with two croquet-mallets under my arms as I had done last summer. And people pitying me. I laughed, boisterously, gleefully.
"Broken!" I cried. "Really broken? How interesting! I shall be a real cripple, shan't I?"
The doctor was amazed and frankly disgruntled. A most dis- concerting child-dramatizing a serious situation like that, taking the thing so lightly, calling it interesting! He had expected to wipe my tears away and promise me some candy.
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Now came some truly delightful weeks, weeks of being carried each morning to a couch across the bay-window, on which I spen the day, looking out at the Gardens in their spring verdure. People came every day to see me, ont of love for the whole rectory family brought books and puzzles and fruit. It really did make one a litth bit important, apparently, to break one's leg.
One visitor, however, made a mistake. She told me she had once broken her own leg, "And I had to learn to walk al over again." That made a strong impression. Learning to wall somehow did not look attractive; it was being like a baby. And i wasn't like a real bona fide cripple either. Hopping on a crutch wa something unusual, something really entertaining, not such : trivial thing as calculating which foot to put out first. I spent a good cleal of time planning how to begin.
The weeks passed quickly, what with all the visitors and amuse ments, and the long letters which were coming from Syracuse. The new Bishop was being received there with open arms, and had beer fêted and introduced everywhere. He had seen some real Indians People were kind and warm-hearted; many asked after his little girl with the broken leg. This was balm to my soul, and I resolved to make a still greater impression when I reached there.
Life continued in smooth, protected fashion. There were last visits and invitations. Little Molly was staying at Cedar Square with Grandmother Sargent, our older sister. Aunt Kate took some of the care from my mother's shoulders, and was a most entertaining nurse, bringing out treasures from her mental storehouse in the way of jokes and verses, creative ventures and musical snatches. Sometimes she sat down in the parlor and played, making up things as she went along. Our older brother had been ordained to the min- istry the day after our father's consecration, and was settling down to parish work; he could not be often with us.
One day the surgeon came to take the starch bandage off the broken leg, bringing a neat little saw which he operated, length- wise, from the toes to the knee. It was thrilling. I was a bit afraid, naturally, that he would saw through to the bone, and he did make a few slight scratches on the flesh, but not "so's to hurt." Then
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he took hold of the two sides and bent them back with a mighty grip, and pulled off the whole shell, which by that time was yellow. And the unimportant fracture, lo and behold, had behaved beauti- fully. I could now, as he said, begin to walk.
There seemed to be no reason whatever for me to use crutches, which was terribly disappointing. I had set my heart on it and pic- tured myself using them for a long time to come. It was exhilarat- ing to be told one could really walk off, however, and I gaily put out a foot, ambitious if not wholly satisfied. But there was some- thing wrong after all; it wouldn't hold me up even long enough to get the other foot going. I tumbled and clung abjectly to my mother's hand. My sense of balance seemed to be gone. I tried again, without success. It was true, evidently, that I must learn to walk all over again. But not that way; one had to rest and begin again later. Travelling had lost its lure; the familiar couch was casier.
Things didn't go very fast. Even Mother, who could be Spartan when it came to bracing and encouraging her children, began to think she ought to give in on the crutch question. It was suggested that the bad backward tumble might have disturbed the nerves of my spine in some way. But it was straight and strong, and the doc- tor said it would do its duty all right. And meantime his young patient kept the pose of a cripple, acting the part with great detail and effect. I was quite happy in it, not appearing to mind being carried and helped. When the time came to travel to Forty Acres, the lameness was worse than ever. The Bishop had come back with glowing accounts of his new diocese, and of Syracuse. All of us would enjoy it; I must put forth all my efforts and be ready to run about and see things. He made me a little cane with a cross piece at the top on which I could rest both hands and help myself without the shortening of the leg and heightening of the shoulder which the doctor feared from a crutch. The day we journeyed to Hadley for the summer, I carried it in my hand, but did not use it much. When the train stopped at Palmer Junction we had an hour to wait for the New London train, and I got my father to lay me out on a bag- gage truck on the platform. I felt that people would notice me there
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and be sorry for me. But most of them hurried along, unnoticing. Finally a stout, curious lady stopped, and greeted me.
"What's the matter with you, little girl?" she inquired.
This was precisely what "the lame one" wanted. "I'm a cripple," I said pathetically, rolling up my eyes. "I've broken my leg."
"'Tain't your hip, is it?" The woman set her bag down on the truck. "Hip-disease is kind o' bad."
"No, it's a-an unimportant fracture. A ladder feli on it. I can't walk on it. Maybe I never shall."
"Well, you look healthy. It ain't made you peaked. Is that stick all they could afford to give you?"
This was an unpleasant suggestion. "No," I answered truth- fully, "The doctor wouldn't let me have a crutch."
"Oh, well, I guess there can't be much the matter. You'll be running around all right pretty soon." And she started for the lunch-room. Nobody else came along but a friendly brakeman who had lifted me out of the train, and he just whistled and laughed. It was a rather unsympathetic world, somehow.
All summer the cripple-obsession lasted, and was perseveringly carried out, but was far from disturbing my serenity. It was one of the jolliest summers I ever had. The other day I came across a letter which one of our Phelps cousins, when a young girl, wrote to her mother describing a visit at our house during that time. It says:
"We saw the little girls. Ruth is pale, but prettier, and her face has a more peaceful expression."
I could not but think how delighted I would have been to have known the impression I had made. Pale, pretty and peaceful-the equipment most desired for my role as a patient invalid. But alas! recognition is only too apt to come late in this uneven life.
The departure for Syracuse took place on a misty September morning at the old Boston and Albany station. We climbed into a Pullman car-one of the first used on the Boston and Albany road- and sank, or rather bounced, into its grand red plush upholstery, feeling that this was the adventure of our lives. A crowd of faithful women and courteous gentlemen finished their leave-taking on the platform of the cheerless depot, as it was called. Arria tore her-
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self from the clinging arms of her mates. Harriet sniffed into a large cotton handkerchief as she disposed of bags and lunch-basket. Our eldest brother's strong embrace made one more sob rise in my throat, but that yielded to the excitement of getting started, to the une of a vigorous "All aboard!" from the uniformed conductor. Bells clanged, engines whistled; we slid out under old Berkeley bridge, the second time in my life that I had looked up at it. Away, away from the ordered, protected existence, from the city blocks and the golden dome of the State House, from Miss Gage and Mademoiselle de la Motte, from Dr. Gannett's steps and the Public Garden. We little knew what a turning point it was in the road the rectory family was to travel.
Syracuse in the Seventies
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OLD SYRACUSE
Central New York represented the great West to an average Bos- tonian in 1868. Not that the Valley of the Mississippi was unknown, nor that travelers had not already explored and settled in Cali- fornia, Texas and other distant lands. But somewhere between Syra- cuse and Utica, as my father put it, there was a psychological line which fenced off the West from home-abiding New Englanders. Furthermore, a good day's journey separated both those cities from Boston. Utica contained old families-the Devereux and Millers, Bacons and Beardsleys, Conklings and Coventrys, Seymours, Wil- liamses, Kernans, Watsons-a society with traditions and formalities and social partitions, like Albany with its Dutch aristocracy. Syra- cuse, somewhat newer, still kept a spirit of pioneer enterprise, and her representatives of birth and pedigree were not in such close communication with Boston as with New York. Our family of Bostonians were emigrating to an altogether new world.
We soon forgot the sad little group of friends who had come to the Boston and Albany station in gray morning fog to bid us goodby. The twists of the railroad tracks and crossings of many streams between Springfield and Pittsfield gave us our first impres- sion of romantic scenery, and kept us exclaiming. The Berkshire hills were brilliant in autumn colors. When we crossed the State line, rather disappointed that it was not drawn in visible shape, there came a contrast: flat and monotonous country. Albany had been prepared for by consultation with our green-covered geogra- phies, which had told us that the Catskills would appear "like a purple cloud in the distance"; and in the September sunshine they actually did. The Hudson, with its crowds of small craft and the old
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Daniel Boone at her pier, seemed far more important than the Con- necticut.
Twilight found us still far from our destination. There were halts every now and then, when the passengers, silent and sleepy, wondered about sundry metallic bangs under the car. The brake- man apparently hit the wheels with iron instruments. A few men would climb out to watch the process, which was accompanied by smells of oil, and would trickle back, mentioning that a "hot box" was causing the delay. Then the last of the spectators would climb in hastily, the train would start up with a jerk, and proceed for a few miles, only to stop suddenly again and repeat the banging process. Darkness, and sleep fell upon us after we had consumed the remains of Grandmother Sargent's lunch. Toward midnight we were wakened by Father's announcement that we were reaching Syracuse. Lights grew more numerous, the engine slowed down; a short dash through a tunnel, and then a glimpse at a strange dark place where half-naked men, a weird glare on their figures, were moving about bright molten masses.
"The Glass Works," Father announced, and Jamie pressed his face against the window-pane to look back, as the train moved on more and more slowly. We were rolling through city streets, as travelers do to this day; only the streets were silent, and houses dark. An occasional informal welcome blazed from some illuminated saloon, but otherwise we received a blurred impression of many buildings; then there was a jarring stop, and we were hustled out into a crowd on a sidewalk, in front of the temporary shed which served just then as a station. Somebody held on to us, and we strag- gled across the street to a hotel on a near-by corner, The Vanderbilt.
All the rest of the night a clanging of engine-bells, screeching of whistles, and the bustle incident to trains, went on under the win- dows. The rooms were stuffy, the din unbearable to our elders; but we slept through it all, and awoke early, to find a string of freight-cars standing on the tracks below, a yellow fog surrounding the buildings opposite, and Harriet looking glum over the scanty furnishings of our apartment.
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OLD SYRACUSE
"Towels no bigger than a pocket-handkerchief," she muttered, "and no water in the pitcher. It's a queer place we've come to."
What matter about water? Anybody could draw it out of a faucet. But to be in a real hotel, with engines and cars so handy that one could watch them all the time one was dressing, and meals served in a long dining-room with a printed choice of food, was glorious enough to fill our souls with content. That first breakfast in the new country! The escape of savory vapors through a swing door, the black waiters, the clatter of cutlery, the piles of fried cakes and fishballs and corn bread, the ham and eggs, the clusters of little china-ware bathtubs round our plates! We studied the menu, and made plans for meals ahead.
From the windows of the hotel one could look along the busi- ness blocks which towered above the railroad tracks, and the street from which we started for our walk to the new house. Across it, far over our heads, floated a huge banner on which was inscribed GRANT AND COLFAX; it was an election year. Farther on was another banner: SEYMOUR AND BLAIR. We passed Hanover Square, an open space where market carts and hayloads stood ranked, and pigeons moved back and forth. Beyond, an arched iron bridge, toward which the street sloped upward, spanned the Canal-our first introduction to what was then the glory of Central New York. Just at that point came the meeting-place of the Erie and Oswego canals, with other bridges beyond.
We were in ecstasies as we passed on, over the bridges and up a broad residence street which rose smoothly and gradually to a con- siderable height beyond, with elm-shaded sidewalks on either side. We were obviously strangers-a middle-aged clergyman in a black cape, his pleasant-looking wife, a pretty daughter in the twenties, a tall lad of fifteen in a Scotch cap, two little girls in frocks of fine brown-plaided gingham with short sacques of brown cloth, and straw hats with brown streamers; and an elderly nurse, attired ac- cording to her "station" in a plain calico gown, black jacket and a severe bonnet with black strings. The "lame one" still limped, and carried a sort of crutch-stick, upon which she did not lean very heavily. We all looked eagerly about us.
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We passed large houses with grounds and shrubbery, solid brick edifices built by families of distinction, and many smaller wooden ones, often constructed in the fashion of Greek temples with pillars in front and upper stories with small windows opening on the pil- lared porticocs, an architecture unfamiliar in New England.
All this made its impression on the eager and enthusiastic new- comers, as they passed along James Street: this was a growing com- munity, not a finished one. They, too, were pioneers, and for them it was a fresh-discovered country.
The party came to a great house built on a terrace high above the sidewalk, with stone steps leading up to it. It had Greek columns like the other houses, only it was taller and grander. On either side of the steps were lions, crouching lions of iron, painted dark green. It looked like the house of a king, or a president, we thought. There were grounds beyond, with a group of tall oaks, bronzed by the Autunm sun.
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