USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 8
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I tried first to get the other wall-flowers interested in observing gowns, or playing games, or just laughing at nothing. This plan fell to earth because they were too occupied in watching for partners to be interested in anything else. Then I had another inspiration. Why not cultivate the bashful boy? It was manifest that he, too, got but little out of parties. At all events I might sound him out. The first victim that came to hand was a somewhat ungainly youth who evidently wanted to ingratiate himself with girls, and who held his head on one side and smiled self-consciously. Odious, I concluded, but maybe not impossible. I began by just simpering at him. After
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we had shuffled round the room uncomfortably, I said "Let's sit down out in the hall and talk; shall we?"
"Oh, yes," he answered; "I'd like it ever so much better than dancing." So we found a bench from which it was necessary to re- mnove a few hats and coats, and perched upon it. The slightly unso- cial nature of the move made a sort of bond, and we each confessed to a sense of boredom at having to sit and look on at the dancing. Before long we were carrying on quite an animated conversation. The boy's neck lost its tenseness, and he evidently felt at home with this new sort of partner. He confided to me that he was in high school, studying hard because he wanted to be a surgeon. He had done a little of it, and had some practice with animals; a dog's broken leg and a couple of weeks with a cousin who was a veter- inary. I was all interest, having myself treated a dog whose leg was cut by a mowing machine, in the face of the doctor's prediction that he would have necrosis. And the dog had recovered. We were in the midst of detailed though somewhat gruesome description, when the hostess, an older girl, bore down upon our retreat.
"What are you doing here?" she inquired tartly. "People come to parties to dance. Clayton, you go right back and take a girl out. As for you, Ruth Huntington, you ought to be on the floor your- self."
"I will," I answered, turning pert, "if you'll get me a partner. But don't trouble yourself too much." Whereupon the call came for the Grand March to the dining-room, and Clayton reappeared to ask for the honor, his head as one-sided as ever, and the old bash- ful smirk. At any rate one was assured now of a new name on one's card at the next party.
It was plain that I was not cut out for a social success. Still I made up my mind to become a better dancer, and to study the finesse of party procedure. It was easy enough to get acquainted with the non-dancing boys, but there was more than that to be learned. Just then came an invitation to a little club which the Sedgwicks and Wilkinsons had formed. We met once in two weeks, I think; we did not dress up, came home early, and had apples and crackers for refreshment, or sometimes pop-corn. The dances were
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at different houses on the hill. There was no band; a tall, lank negro played piano for the dancing. Also no cards nor formalities, but much jollity, and some of the older girls and boys saw to it that everybody had a partner. Hostesses like Mrs. Wilkinson and Mrs. Sedgwick really gave us lessons, by their own hospitable example, in entertaining. One danced without thinking about it, and felt as if one had belonged for years in that friendly, cordial circle. There were boys whom I had not known before. I could not get the gen- eral rhythm quite so well as most of the others, but talking was not forbidden, and there was one boy, who liked the authors whom I best loved. It was a pleasant discovery. The foundations of a happy friendship, often silent for months but always congenial, were laid then and there. He was an usher at my wedding years after, and on visits to Syracuse I always enjoyed him; a quiet bachelor, writing sometimes, browsing in a well-stocked library, entertaining a circle of friends with whom he shared his literary treasures.
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EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES
What are known as "educational facilities" were very good at that stage of Syracuse history. The little school with the bay-window had been enlarged, and had become a boarding-school-in fact a diocesan school with episcopal backing. It was quartered in a com- modious building, and its scope amplified. Miss Jackson's methods had fully kept up to the standards of the day, although the equip- ment of the school was meagre in comparison with that of the twentieth century. But I did not reflect any credit upon the provi- sions for my acquisition of knowledge. I was a most unsatisfactory student.
In the winter, I was often out of school for weeks at a time with chilblains. Our house on James Street was poorly heated; great Himalaya shawls were hung outside of doorways, to wrap about us when we made trips from one warm spot to another. There was compensation to be had in the fact that Father allowed me to stay in his warm study. The weeks spent there, however, provided no adequate training in application. Still, those delightful long mornings-how I revelled in them! There was a corner at the end of the tall bookcase, to the left of the fireplace, where a warm register, a low, soft chair and a high footstool for disabled feet made a nook unequalled for browsing. And the absorbed cleric who came and went sometimes without so much as a look at his daughter's curled-up figure had no inkling of the arbitrary and un-academic tastes I was indulging. My mother would have been scandalized had she realized; my sister, a student born and bred, guessed nothing of the disorganized methods practiced under the Bishop's very nose. He had been sympathetic with her own scholarly habits, and she
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supposed he was attending to those of the younger daughters also. The whole household was occupied with social work, and I went undisciplined.
I had been spoiled for steady application. Research delighted me, and every now and then I would trace down assiduously some special phrase or fact and call to my aid the resources of the library. But for the most part the subject of each day's reading was deter- mined by mood or fancy. I remember devouring portions of the Faerie Queene, a fat blue volume with thinnish paper and fairly good print; reading until I was saturated with uninterpreted old English text, and had to close my eyes and dream about it all. For history there were Prescott and Motley, Greene's Short History, and Parkman once in a while. I did not like reciting in a history class, nor keeping notes and recording contemporary dates. I was utterly lazy about that sort of thing, and preferred a long reading-sojourn in some one country, inhabiting it with my imagination, dipping into its language perhaps, with the linguistic passion which had pos- sessed my forebears.
Our French teacher had drilled her classes thoroughly in the speech and literature of her own country; she was a dominating person, large, red-faced, and with a head of short, loose, Medusa-like ringlets which fairly squirmed at the pupil. I neglected geometry and algebra for an astronomy course, a much-popularized affair, in- teresting but short. The girls fitted up a small observatory on the roof of the "See House," as we called our James Street edifice, and spent more time in hunting constellations than in calculating dis- tances. Rhetoric was delightful, and also Mental and Moral Philos- ophy, as they were termed. Moral Philosophy was taught by a clergy- man, who introduced a certain amount of theology. Physics, with no school laboratory, only rather dull trips to factories and an occasional half-hour standing round a locomotive with a teacher explaining its possibilities, sometimes getting a little mixed up her- self, was not inspiring. Latin was a joy while we were learning the language-structure, the thing I most loved. Caesar we translated without proper reference to grammar or construction, but with merely a species of understanding that the pupil would do that her-
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self-a laxity which once roused the Bishop to unexpected concern over school methods.
I had brought home my Caesar, and was boggling one evening over the strenuous fifth paragraph in the first book, when he asked to look at the text. I begged him to help me, and he took it up with a sudden revival of teaching-instinct. A question revealed the fact that I had been taught nothing of parsing, very little of the applica- tion of rules, nor had I memorized either declensions or conjuga- tions any too well. He was horrified.
"Your mother and I," he declared, "would either one of us have died of shame if we had ever been discovered in such a plight as this. In our day we studied Latin; we should never have dared to trifle with it as you have done."
He informed me sternly that his help was going to consist of a thorough drilling, with every phrase and noun and verb accounted for. It was a racking experience, lasting until nearly midnight; for once in the swing of constructive activity he would not give up, even though the yawns of a sleepy pupil might appeal to him for mercy. At the end of the lesson I had mastered the translation, but had vowed inwardly never to ask for assistance again. The reac- tion, however, came in an access of diligence and more systematic study. After a winter of absorption in the military manoeuvres of the famous Roman, I sailed into Virgil with real enthusiasm.
There was one priceless gain for which I bless my good father and his toleration of my presence in his study. He came and went, put me out now and then temporarily when important interviews took place, and let me pretty generally alone, for our mother was his real consultant and confidante, and he took his letters and prob- lems to her, dependent upon her criticism. One summer a slight ac- cident to his right hand resulted in stiff fingers, and his handwriting was ever after illegible. Proof-readers and type-setters were not able to decipher it, so when writing for print he was obliged to have his manuscript copied. It occurred to him finally to dictate as he composed, and for this the round hand of a school girl was as useful as that of a paid copyist. So he made the experiment with the young bookworm who shared his work-room, and to my infinite delight I
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was installed as a regular secretary when he was preparing material for the press.
It was my happiest task of all. I sat at his own desk with the square sheet of sermon-paper spread out, and the fine inkstand be- fore me, wielding a steel pen which by that time had superseded the squeaking quill. Luckily I was sound on spelling and grammar. To follow the keen mind, the fine literary style, and the argument that was almost too ready and rapid for transcription, was stimulating beyond measure. He was a master of English, the recipient of more honorary degrees than any other dignitary of the Episcopal church at that time; also a stern self-critic, pruning ruthlessly as he wrote, even ridiculing his own rhetorical excesses when on rare occasions the swiftness of a conception momentarily outstripped his power of expression. His fondness for words and his delicacy in determining their fitness for his purpose, gave him an almost human companion- ship with language. His young amanuensis became accustomed to halt her pen instantly at the call of "Stop! Strike that out!"-fol- lowed by a pause, out of which would come a substitution that changed a sentence or perfected a paragraph. Now and then a few words of explanation or the invoking of a rule would add to the treasures tucked away in my memory; points which in a textbook would have been difficult to assimilate.
In rare instances he allowed me to search for a synonym to give me practice. But if I showed him a composition or even an examina. tion-paper of my own, he read it thoroughly, sometimes twice, and handed it back with the remark, "You can do better than that." I like to fancy that I hear him say it now, when the longing comes for his judgment on anything I have done. It was dampening at the moment, but it gave me the assurance that I might one day deserve the praise for which I was working. I learned afterward that a strengthened faith in one's own ability is infinitely better than the passing approbation.
There were claims upon the young person in those days. I was introduced to a new set of interests, wholly apart from music or education, in the early years of my adolescence. I had been helping my older sister with Sunday afternoon work at a mission
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Sunday-school in the South part of the city, teaching an infant-class, and sometimes playing the melodeon, when it occurred to the Bishop to start another mission, this time in the picturesque north district, at the foot of Round Top, a wooded hill at the base of which a large population mostly Germans, was settling. Why not let me help, he thought. I was now about fourteen, tall for my age, and outwardly mature. Why not let me do some of the scouting in the neighborhood, and then assist, under direction, with the start- ing of a little Sunday class? I was enchanted with the idea, especially the prospect of going about the picturesque German neighborhood to gather in scholars.
Mother did not feel quite easy about this entering wedge, as she termed it. She knew how far I could be carried by enthusiasm. Despite my apparent hardiness, I had weak nerves, and lame feet which had not yet been pronounced flat, since broken arches were then undiscovered. My astigmatic eyes, though fitted with glasses, were victims of my carelessness. But downs which sometimes kept one inert on week days, yielded to ups on Saturday and Sunday, and I became a different being when pursuing any of my special inter- ests.
The first steps did not seem to involve undue effort: afternoon walks through the unpaved streets of the Round Top neighbor- hood, stopping at each story-and-a-half house, and telling its ten- ants about a Sunday-school which was to be started shortly, and asking them to send their children. The practice in English was an inducement, and the hours would not interfere with the services in the Lutheran church, to which most of the people went on Sunday mornings. Three girls went out on bright October Saturdays, and mnade calls upon the immigrants' households. Often the mother of the family could not speak English, and her rosy-cheeked youngster would have to act as interpreter. But we struck common ground somehow, and collected a primitive vocabulary in which the word Schule played a conspicuous part.
The project advanced, in spite of our parents' concern, into very active work. We founded and furnished a little chapel, made out of a barn, with a small wooden cross over the door, and space inside
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for the crowds which appeared at our first meeting. Soon afterward someone gave us a melodeon, on which I played hymns that we stencilled on cloth. Later we held evening choir-practice to which I sometimes had young girl-escorts. If I did not, I went alone; the German people respected me as "Miss Hunnikum," the organist and the Bishop's daughter, and did not realize how young I was.
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My brother George had been married at Emmanuel church in Boston in the spring of 1874. Dressed in a pale blue and white summer silk which came to my ankles, and a white leghorn hat decorated with a large wreath of apple-blossoms, I had felt very im- portant at the wedding. Thereafter my mind became occupied with love-making, but the Harvard boys who came home with my brother James did not give me a great deal of attention, so when they went hunting or fishing, I picked up the books which they had been discussing. Among them were Turgenieff's novels which I found as hard to understand at the time as Russian music. There were Mallock and Hamerton, and two Tauchnitz' volumes of Richard Feverel which I read because I wanted to believe myself clever. I did not learn to enjoy the work of George Meredith until later, but I remember that some of my brother's friends secretly considered themselves highbrow if enthusiastic over him. The boys had a tendency to consider Harvard a stronghold of informed pub- lic opinion, and they had many discussions in which the various members of our household took part according to their capacities.
My brother James' hopes for a lifework in his chosen profes- sion now began to crystallize. As soon as he graduated from college, he came home to study in the small divinity school which the Bishop had started in Syracuse and to work in the mission chapel. He was a forceful character, with real gift as an orator. His clear mind was reenforced by wide reading and a phenomenal memory. Dur- ing his years at Harvard the appearance of a pamphlet entitled Modern Christianity; A Civilized Heathenism had stirred thought-
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ful men and wide-awake students, especially those who were look- ing toward the ministry.
It was written in 1873 by an English clergyman named Pullen, the author also of a book entitled The Fight at Dame Europa's School, and was a biting arraignment of the Christian Church, questioning "whether there is any creed whatever that is worth re- citing; not whether this form of Christianity is preferable to that, but whether all forms of Christianity pretending to come from God through Christ, are not gross impositions from beginning to end." It was actually an arraignment of the hypocrisy, unreality and in- consistency existing in a so-called Christian world-violently enunciated half-truths put together with the idea of constructing from them one complete and unanswerable truth.
It was in its fifth thousand when it reached the young thinkers at Harvard, and perhaps agitated their ranks more violently than any book of that generation. James Huntington was deeply af- fected by it and by the many truths it contained, however crudely put. A revolt against the easy, comfortable aspect of church life in America after the reaction from Calvinism, along with the growing energy of the Oxford Movement in England and its revival of ritual and reverence, brought about a crisis in the young man's thinking. Finally, the counsels of his father, a moderate church- man but intensely sympathetic with youth and its questionings, came to the rescue. "He saved my life," the son admitted afterward.
I felt no theological stirrings whatever, and recoiled from the belligerent tone of the book; for me the Christian life signified struggle with temptation, a challenge to sincerity, a sense of ac- cepted authority and a dread of an all-too-common disturbance in a somewhat complacent faith. I was not aware of the deeper changes then taking place within my brother's mind. We two, in happy companionship, carried on the mission work, for older volunteers untrained in its activities came and went; only the people them- selves, who loved it, were permanent and faithful. It was a youth movement in the fullest sense. I liked the intimacy with the Ger- man and English girls, workers mostly, and healthy, eager crea- tures; my brother loved and captivated the boys. We trained a
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boy-choir, led by a whole family which had brought church tradi- tions and beautiful voices from England. We had clubs and enter- tainments, classes, discussions. At the little parish house, next to the church, life was as animated as in the social gatherings on James Street.
We used to take our young people from the mission for picnics on spring nights, leaving the city after business hours, and driving them ourselves. We made a departure from custom in allowing the girls to invite boys to those parties, but our chaperonage was rec- ognized, apparently, for we had response in good behavior, and the boys were all devoted to their young rector, who kept them busy exploring wood-paths, or making camp-fires. But one night, sitting with him on the driver's seat as we were returning to town, I hap- pened to look around into the body of the "barge," as we called it, to discover that each girl had her head on the shoulder of the ac- companying boy, and her hand clasped blissfully in his. The Bishop's daughter was properly scandalized.
"James," she whispered to her brother, "What sort of chaperons are we? Look in there."
"They look very comfortable!" he declared with a chuckle. When the horses stopped, most of the passengers were fast asleep. There was no question that the trip had given perfect satisfaction. It did us an immense amount of good. I think we acknowledged by degrees, the right of every woman, beginning in her youth, to male friendship, love, and marriage. It seemed to me exceptionally pleasant that our friends at the mission chapel should take some- what franker means of acknowledging these things than were al- lowed in our own set, especially since many of them were chained to hard work, long hours, and infrequent holidays. But it was only in Little Germany that I could indulge these emancipated ideas. People muttered occasionally at the laxity allowed the Hunting- ton girls, but as they gave no evidence of it in more exalted circles, it was not considered of great moment.
The religious zeal which I believed was my inspiration was not like that of my brother; not the flame that animated Elizabeth of Hungary or Joan of Arc. A love of importance and passion for
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leadership, a social instinct and joy in imparting, had far more to do with these activities. With my German girls, I was not the neu- rotic, over-enthusiastic child whose companionship with books and music-makers might have unfitted me for realities. But still my imagination was dominant, and although I was far from maturity, responsibilities at the mission were not then a strain upon me.
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CONGRESS OF WOMEN
Syracuse continued to be a gay place with many distractions. Public events, advertising schemes, frauds like the Cardiff Giant, an absurd statue, faked, "discovered," and supposed to be an ossi- fied man; a barbecue at which tons of bread were distributed to the. public, and oxen roasted whole in a public square; rumors of one description or another, and experiments which came to naught. Things of that sort enlivened the succeeding years of the city's his- tory. Excitement flickered up and died down; but in 1875 came an event really important and definite in its influence: a Women's Congress. Its object was not the furtherance of any one particular cause, but the gathering together of a body of women leaders for the advance of civilization, to exchange ideas, and report oppor- tunities and educational methods.
When it became known that a quantity of "Women's Rights women" were coming to town, there was a great stir. Some people were frankly apprehensive, as they might be today if it were an- nounced that a party of Soviet ladies from Moscow were coming to hold a convention in New York. Others were curious; they were used to the few radicals in our own city, and their doubtful ideas, and rather wanted to know more about the Advanced Woman. A few were frankly inimical. But Miss Jackson, always broad-minded, stimulated her girls to a genuine interest in the meetings, and gave us all permission to attend, even during school hours.
We were tremendously enthusiastic when we heard that Louisa Alcott was coming, and would stay with our friends, the Mills family. Their daughter Harriet Mills was at Cornell, and was looked upon with intense respect by the rest of us. Miss Alcott's
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father, that quiet and completely unworldly Concord student, had held one of the interesting lecture-discussions which he called "con- versations" at our own house, and justified the portrait she had painted of him in Little Women; and that book was then, as it has been ever since, a favorite story of growing girls. To see its author in person and hear her talk was a prospect which enlisted feminine interest, old and young, in the Congress itself. Even timorous par- ents who dreaded "masculinity" in women could not refuse their offspring that boon. And in truth, when we spied her walking up James Street hill with her hostess, one morning, there was nothing conspicuous about the tall, well-poised figure in a gray suit and sinall black hat of contemporary mould, although we had heard that the Alcotts were as a family somewhat "regardless" when it came to fashions.
The locally conspicuous specimen of independent womanhood had thus far been Dr. Mary Walker, the extremist, who had ap- peared every now and then on the streets of Syracuse, an odd little figure in masculine attire, very dapper black coat and pants, as I recollect, with a shiny shirt-bosom, high hat and cane. The police of various cities had arrested her frequently, it was said, but had become tired of it, and left her to circulate freely in New York state. Far from averting its countenance, the public stared at her as if she had been a chimpanzee, and went its way with a laugh. She had, however, something to do with the strong community preju- dice against feminism.
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