Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/26

Rh a very stimulating effect on the emotions of the sensitive child, and to its far-reaching influence may be ascribed the tinge of melancholy found in many of her pages. Not that they are not often illuminated with all the joy of being, but that, whenever the sun is bright, she has seen and felt the shadow. "One would not ignore," she says, "the gladness of the dawn, the strong splendor of the midday sun; but, all the .same, the shadows lengthen, and the day wears late. And yet the dawn comes again after the night; and one has faith—or is it hope rather than faith?—that the new world, which swims into the ken of the spirit to whom death gives wings, may be fairer even than the dear familiar earth, . . . this mocking sphere, where we have never been quite at home, because, after all, we are but travellers, and this is our hostelry, and not our permanent abode."

The child Louise had a great vitality, and, when free from the burdens and terrors of "election" and "damnation," she exulted in the breath she drew. Running in the face of a great wind was one of her joys, feeling how alive she was; and she realizeil the reverse of such emotion in listening to the sountl of the wind through an outer keyhole, which seemed to her the calling of trumpets, the crying of lost souls. She lived all this time so nuieh in a world of her own that when, in her fifteenth year, she first sent some verses to a ncwspaper she felt it a guilty secret.

Her home in Boston, after her marriage, was a delightful one. Her house was soon a centre of attraction; and, surrounded by friends, she exercised there a gracious hosjjitality, and met the brilliant men and women who made the Boston of that epoch famous. Here was born her daughter, the golden-hairetl Florence, who is now the wife of Mr. William Schaefer, of South Carolina. Here her husband died, and here she has remained through the days of her widowhood till the house has become historic.

She continued her literary work through all these years. Besides writing her stories and essays and poems, she sent to the New York Tribune a series of interesting anil brilliant letters concerning the literary life of Boston, giving advance reviews of new tjooks and telling of the affairs of the Radical Club, of which Mr. Emerson, Colonel Higginson, Jolin Weiss, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and others of eminence were members. In all the six years, during which these letters appeared she never made in them any unkind statement, or wrote a sen- tence that could cause pain. Through all her critical work, indeed, she has exercisetl a tender regard for the feelings of others, as well as great generosity of praise, preferring rather to be silent than to utter an unkindness.

Contributing poems and stories of power and grace to the leading magazines. Harper's, the Atlantic, the Galaxy, the first Scribner's, she also published a half-dozen very successful books for children, "Bedtime Stories," "Firelight Stories," "Stories Told at Twilight," and others that have always held the popular taste; and she collectetl a few of her many atlult tales into volumes, "Miss Eyre of Boston" and "Some Women's Hearts."

Her first voyage across the sea was made in the January of 1876. Pausing in London long enough to see the Queen open Parliament in person for the first time after the Prince Consort's death, she hastened through Paris on her way to Rome and to raptures of old palaces and gardens and galleries, touched to tears b)' the Pope's benediction, abandoned to the gayety of the Carnival, enjoying the hospitality of the studios of 'edder, Story, Rollin Tilton, anil others, and of the gracious and charming social life of Rome. Her descriptions of all this, overflowing with the sensitiveness to beauty which is a part of her nature, make her "Random Rambles" most enchanting reading. After Rome she visited Florence, and then Venice, feeling to the quick its mysterious and elusive spell, and then again Paris, and again London and the London season.

Entertained by Lord Houghton, she met Browning and Swinburne, George Eliot, Kinglake, Theodore Watts-Dunton, and a host of others, seeing especially a great deal of Brownhig—her personal beauty and charm, her exquisite manners and modest self-possession, her unerring tact, her voice, of which an English poet said, "Her voice, wherein all sweet-