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                            MARGARET SANGER

[Illustration: _Margaret Sanger_]

                                MARGARET
                                 SANGER

                           _An Autobiography_

                NEW YORK W·W·NORTON & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

                          Copyright, 1938, by
                      W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC.
                       70 Fifth Avenue, New York

                            _First Edition_

                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
              FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS

                          TO ALL THE PIONEERS
                    OF NEW AND BETTER WORLDS TO COME

                            ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

_My thanks are due especially to Rackham Holt for her discerning aid in
organizing material and for her untiring and inspired advice during the
preparation of this book; as well as to Walter S. Hayward whose able
assistance has helped to make the task lighter._

_In the course of preparing this narrative many books have been
consulted. I trust their authors will agree with me that a bibliography
in a personal history is cumbersome and accept a general but none the
less grateful acknowledgment._

_My admiration has always gone out to the person who can put himself in
print and set down for historical purposes an exact record of his honest
feelings and thoughts, even though they may seem to reflect upon many of
his friends and helpers. I have not in this story hurt any one by
intent. Because its thread has, of necessity, followed dramatic
highlights, many people who played prominent parts have not been
mentioned. These I have not forgotten, nor those numerous others who
made smaller offerings. Some have pioneered in their special fields and
localities; some have given generously and unfailingly of their
financial help; some have volunteered in full measure their time and
efforts as officers and Committee members; some have fought and labored
by my side throughout the years; some have stepped in for only a brief
but significant role. Although on the outskirts of the army, it is to
these last as well as to those in the vanguard that the advance has been
made. And particularly do I wish to thank those co-workers and members
of the various staffs whose contributions can in no way be measured by
their duties, and whose indefatigable, loyal devotion has been a bulwark
of strength to me at all times._

_It has been impossible to carry out my sincere desire to give personal
and individual recognition and expression of gratitude to all. Neither a
history of the birth control movement nor the part I have taken in it
could be complete, however, did I not pay tribute to the integrity,
valiance, courage, and clarity of vision of the men and women who, year
after year, maintained their principles, and never swerved from them in
a cause which belongs to all of us._

                           TABLE OF CONTENTS

                 I. FROM WHICH I SPRING                    11

                II. BLIND GERMS OF DAYS TO BE              24

               III. BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES                33

                IV. DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE        46

                 V. CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON                58

                VI. FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS          68

               VII. THE TURBID EBB AND FLOW OF MISERY      86

              VIII. I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP                93

                IX. THE WOMAN REBEL                       106

                 X. WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE         121

                XI. HAVELOCK ELLIS                        133

               XII. STORK OVER HOLLAND                    142

              XIII. THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS                153

               XIV. O, TO BE IN ENGLAND                   169

                XV. HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET               179

               XVI. HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE                  192

              XVII. FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 210

             XVIII. LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST          224

               XIX. THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE              238

                XX. A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL         251

               XXI. THUS TO REVISIT                       268

              XXII. DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING?      280

             XXIII. IN TIME WE CAN ONLY BEGIN             292

              XXIV. LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS                306

               XXV. ALIEN STARS ARISE                     316

              XXVI. THE EAST IS BLOSSOMING                327

             XXVII. ANCIENTS OF THE EARTH                 337

            XXVIII. THE WORLD IS MUCH THE SAME EVERYWHERE 349

              XXIX. WHILE THE DOCTORS CONSULT             358

               XXX. NOW IS THE TIME FOR CONVERSE          369

              XXXI. GREAT HEIGHTS ARE HAZARDOUS           376

             XXXII. CHANGE IS HOPEFULLY BEGUN             392

            XXXIII. OLD FATHER ANTIC, THE LAW             398

             XXXIV. SENATORS, BE NOT AFFRIGHTED           413

              XXXV. A PAST WHICH IS GONE FOREVER          431

             XXXVI. FAITH IS A FINE INVENTION             447

            XXXVII. WHO CAN TAKE A DREAM FOR TRUTH?       461

           XXXVIII. DEPTH BUT NOT TUMULT                  478

             XXXIX. SLOW GROWS THE SPLENDID PATTERN       493

                    INDEX                                 497

                            MARGARET SANGER

                             _Chapter One_

                          FROM WHICH I SPRING

        “_‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.
        ‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, very gravely,
        ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’_”

                                                   LEWIS CARROLL

The streets of Corning, New York, where I was born, climb right up from
the Chemung River, which cuts the town in two; the people who live there
have floppy knees from going up and down. When I was a little girl the
oaks and the pines met the stone walks at the top of the hill, and there
in the woods my father built his house, hoping mother’s “congestion of
the lungs” would be helped if she could breathe the pure, balsam-laden
air.

My mother, Anne Purcell, always had a cough, and when she braced herself
against the wall the conversation, which was forever echoing from room
to room, had to stop until she recovered. She was slender and straight
as an arrow, with head well set on sloping shoulders, black, wavy hair,
skin white and spotless, and with wide-apart eyes, gray-green, flecked
with amber. Her family had been Irish as far back as she could trace;
the strain of the Norman conquerors had run true throughout the
generations, and may have accounted for her unfaltering courage.

Mother’s sensitivity to beauty found some of its expression in flowers.
We had no money with which to buy them, and she had no time to grow
them, but the woods and fields were our garden. I can never remember
sitting at a table not brightened with blossoms; from the first spring
arbutus to the last goldenrod of autumn we had an abundance.

Although this was the Victorian Age, our home was almost free from
Victorianism. Father himself had made our furniture. He had even cut and
polished the slab of the big “marble-topped table,” as it was always
called. Only in the spare room stood a piece bought at a store—a
varnished washstand. The things you made yourself were not considered
quite good enough for guests. Sometimes father’s visitors were doctors,
teachers, or perhaps the village priest, but mostly they were the
artisans of the community—cabinet makers, masons, carpenters who admired
his ideas as well as shared his passion for hunting. In between tramping
the woods and talking they had helped to frame and roof the house,
working after hours to do this.

Father, Michael Hennessy Higgins, born in Ireland, was a nonconformist
through and through. All other men had beards or mustaches—not he. His
bright red mane, worn much too long according to the family, swept back
from his massive brow; he would not clip it short as most fathers did.
Actually it suited his finely-modeled head. He was nearly six feet tall
and hard-muscled; his keen blue eyes were set off by pinkish, freckled
skin. Homily and humor rippled unceasingly from his generous mouth in a
brogue which he never lost. The jokes with which he punctuated every
story were picked up, retold, and scattered about. When I was little
they were beyond me, but I could hear my elders laughing.

The scar on father’s forehead was his badge of war service. When Lincoln
had called for volunteers against the rebellious South, he had taken his
only possessions, a gold watch inherited from his grandfather and his
own father’s legacy of three hundred dollars, and had run away from his
home in Canada to enlist. But he had been told he was not old enough,
and was obliged to wait impatiently a year and a half until, on his
fifteenth birthday, he had joined the Twelfth New York Volunteer Cavalry
as a drummer boy.

One of father’s adventures had been the capture of a Confederate captain
on a fine mule, the latter being counted the more valuable acquisition
to the regiment. We were brought up in the tradition that he had been
one of three men selected by Sherman for bravery. That made us very
proud of him. Better not start anything with father; he could beat
anybody! But he himself had been appalled by the brutalities of war;
never thereafter was he interested in fighting, unless perhaps his Irish
sportsmanship cropped out when two well-matched dogs were set against
each other.

Immediately upon leaving the Army father had studied anatomy, medicine,
and phrenology, but these had been merely for perfecting his skill in
modeling. He made his living by chiseling angels and saints out of huge
blocks of white marble or gray granite for tombstones in cemeteries. He
was a philosopher, a rebel, and an artist, none of which was calculated
to produce wealth. Our existence was like that of any artist’s
family—chickens today and feathers tomorrow.

Christmases were on the poverty line. If any of us needed a new winter
overcoat or pair of overshoes, these constituted our presents. I was the
youngest of six, but after me others kept coming until we were eleven.
Our dolls were babies—living, wriggling bodies to bathe and dress
instead of lifeless faces that never cried or slept. A pine beside the
door was our Christmas tree. Father liked us to use natural things and
we had to rely upon ingenuity rather than the village stores, so we
decorated it with white popcorn and red cranberries which we strung
ourselves. Our most valuable gift was that of imagination.

We had little time for recreation. School was five miles away and we had
to walk back and forth twice a day as well as perform household duties.
The boys milked the cow, tended the chickens, and took care of Tom, the
old white horse which pulled our sleigh up and down the hill. The girls
helped put the younger children to bed, mended clothes, set the table,
cleaned the vegetables, and washed the dishes. We accepted all this with
no sense of deprivation or aggrievement, being, if anything, proud of
sharing responsibility.

And we made the most of our vacations. There were so many of us that we
did not have to depend upon outsiders, and Saturday afternoons used to
put on plays by ourselves in the barn. Ordinarily we were shy about
displaying emotions; we looked upon tears and temper in other homes with
shocked amazement as signs of ill-breeding. Play-acting, however, was
something else again. Here we could find outlet for histrionic talent
and win admiration instead of lifted eyebrows. I rather fancied myself
as an actress, and often mimicked some of the local characters, to the
apparent pleasure of my limited audience of family and neighbors. It was
not long before I slipped into declaiming. _The Lady of Lyons_ was one
of my specialties:

            This is thy palace, where the perfumed light
            Steals through the mist of alabaster lamps,
            And every air is heavy with the sighs
            Of orange groves, and music from the sweet lutes
            And murmurs of low fountains, that gush forth
            I’ the midst of roses!

All outdoors was our playground, but I was not conscious at the time of
my love for the country. Things in childhood change perspective. What
was taken for granted then assumes great significance in later life. I
knew how the oak tree grew and where the white and yellow violets could
be found, and with a slight feeling of superiority I showed and
expounded these mysteries to town children. Not until pavements were my
paths did I realize how much a part of me the country was, and how I
missed it.

We were all, brothers and sisters alike, healthy and strong, vigorous
and active; our appetites were curtailed only through necessity. We
played the same games together and shared the same sports—baseball,
skating, swimming, hunting. Nevertheless, except that we all had red
hair, shading from carrot to bronze, we were sharply distinct
physically. The girls were small and feminine, the boys husky and
brawny. When I went out into the world and observed men, otherwise
admirable, who could not pound a nail or use a saw, pick, shovel, or ax,
I was dumfounded. I had always taken for granted that any man could make
things with his hands.

I expected this even of women. My oldest sister, Mary, possessed, more
than the rest of us, an innate charm and gentleness. She could do
anything along domestic lines—embroidery, dress making, tailoring,
cooking; she could concoct the most delicious and unusual foods, and mix
delicate pastries. But she was also an expert at upholstering,
carpentry, painting, roofing with shingles or with thatch. When Mary was
in the house, we never had to send for a plumber. She rode gracefully
and handled the reins from the carriage seat with equal dexterity; she
could milk a cow and deliver a baby; neighbors called her to tend their
sick cattle, or, when death came, to lay out the body; she tutored in
mathematics and Latin, and was well-read in the classics, yet she liked
most the theater, and was a dramatic critic whose judgment was often
sought. In all that she did her sweetness and dearness were apparent,
though she performed her many kindnesses in secret. She left the home
roof while I was still a child, but she never failed to send Christmas
boxes in which every member of the family shared, each gift beautifully
wrapped and decorated with ribbons and cards.

My brothers were ardent sportsmen, although they might not have been
outstanding scholars. They could use their fists and were as good shots
as their father. For that matter, we all knew how to shoot; any normal
person could manage a gun. Father was a great hunter. Our best times
were when friends of his came to spend the night, talking late, starting
early the next morning for the heavy woods which were full of foxes,
rabbits, partridge, quail, and pheasant.

Someone was always cleaning and oiling a gun in the kitchen or carrying
food to the kennels. The boys were devoted to their fox and rabbit
hounds, but father lavished his affection on bird dogs. Our favorite
came to us unsought, unbought, and I had a prideful part in his joining
the family. One afternoon I was sitting alone by the nameless brook
which ran by our house, clear and cool, deep enough in some places to
take little swims on hot summer days. I was engaged in pinning together
with thorns a wreath of leaves to adorn my head when a large, white dog
ambled up, sniffed, wagged his tail, and seemed to want to belong. This
was no ordinary cur, but a well-bred English setter which had evidently
been lost. How father would love him!

Even though the dog had no collar, I was slightly uneasy as to my right
of ownership. One conspicuous brown-red spot on the back of his neck
simplified my problem. Unobtrusively I slipped him into the barn, tied
him up, selected a brush, dipped it in one of the cans of paint always
on hand, and multiplied the one spot by ten. For a day, waiting for them
to dry, I fed him well with food filched from the rations of the other
kennel occupants, then led him forth, his hairy dots stiffened with
paint, and offered him to father as a special present.

Accepting the gift in the spirit in which it was intended, father
admired the dog’s points, and, with an unmistakable twinkle, lent
himself to a deception which, of course, could deceive nobody. When
Saturday night came, the neighborhood looked the animal over; none knew
him so we named him Toss and admitted him to the house. Later he bred
with an Irish setter of no importance, and one of the resultant puppies,
Beauty, shared his privileges.

Toss, as well as everybody else, subscribed to the idea that the
“artist” in father must be catered to. With the first sound of his
clearing his throat in the morning Toss picked up the shoes which had
been left out to be cleaned, and carried them one at a time to the
bedroom door, then stood wagging his tail, waiting to be patted.
Father’s shoes were always polished, his trousers always creased. Every
day, even when going to work, he put on spotless white shirts with
starched collars and attachable cuffs; these were something of a luxury,
because they had to be laundered at home, but they got done somehow.

Father took little or no responsibility for the minute details of the
daily tasks. I can see him when he had nothing on hand, laughing and
joking or reading poetry. Mother, however, was everlastingly busy
sewing, cooking, doing this and that. For so ardent and courageous a
woman he must have been trying, and I still wonder at her patience. She
loved her children deeply, but no one ever doubted that she idolized her
husband, and through the years of her wedded life to her early death
never wavered in her constancy. Father’s devotion to mother, though
equally profound, never evidenced itself in practical ways.

The relation existing between our parents was unusual for its day; they
had the idea of comradeship and not merely loved but liked and respected
each other. There was no quarreling or bickering; none of us had to take
sides, saying, “Father is right,” or, “Mother is right.” We knew that if
we pleased one we pleased the other, and such an atmosphere leaves its
mark; we felt secure from emotional uncertainty, and were ourselves
guided towards certainty in our future. We were all friends together,
though not in the modern sense of familiarity. A little dignity and
formality were always maintained and we were invariably addressed by our
full names. The century of the child had not yet been ushered in.

In those days young people, unless invited to speak, were seen and not
heard. But as soon as father considered us old enough to have ideas or
opinions, we were given full scope to express them, no matter how
adolescent. He hated the slavery of pattern and following of examples
and believed in the equality of the sexes; not only did he come out
strongly for woman suffrage in the wake of Susan B. Anthony, but he
advocated Mrs. Bloomer’s bloomers as attire for women, though his wife
and daughters never wore them. He fought for free libraries, free
education, free books in the public schools, and freedom of the mind
from dogma and cant. Sitting comfortably with his feet on the table he
used to say, “You should give something back to your country because you
as a child were rocked in the cradle of liberty and nursed at the breast
of the goddess of truth.” Father always talked like that.

Although the first Socialist in the community, father also took single
tax in his stride and became the champion and friend of Henry George.
_Progress and Poverty_ was one of the latest additions to our meager
bookshelf. He laughed and rejoiced when he came upon what to him were
meaty sentences, reading them aloud to mother, who accepted them as fine
because he said they were fine. The rest of us all had to plow through
the book in order, as he said, to “elevate the mind.” To me it still
remains one of the dullest ever written.

Mother’s loyalty to father was tested repeatedly. Hers were the
responsibilities of feeding and clothing and managing on his income,
combined with the earnings of the oldest children. But father’s
generosity took no cognizance of fact. Once he was asked to buy a dozen
bananas for supper. Instead, he purchased a stalk of fifteen dozen, and
on his way home gave every single one to schoolboys and girls playing at
recess. On another occasion he showed up with eight of a neighbor’s
children; the ninth had been quarantined for diphtheria. They lived with
us for two months, crowded into our beds, tucked in between us at the
table. Mother welcomed them as she did his other guests. The house was
always open. She was not so much social-minded as inherently hospitable.
But with her frail body and slim pocketbook, it took courage to smile.

Once only that I can remember did mother’s patience give way. That was
when father invaded her realm too drastically and invited Henry George
to lecture at the leading hotel—with banquet thrown in. From the money
saved for the winter coal he had taken enough to entertain fifty men
whose children were well-fed and well-clothed. This was the sole time I
ever knew my parents to be at odds, though even then I heard no
quarreling words. Whatever happened between them I was not sure, but
father spent several days wooing back the smile and light to her eyes.

After Henry George’s visit we had to go without coal most of the winter.

With more pleasure than _Progress and Poverty_ I recall a _History of
the World_, _Lalla Rookh_, _Gulliver’s Travels_, and _Aesop’s Fables_.
The last-named touched a sympathetic, philosophical chord in father.
“Wolf! Wolf!” and “Sour Grapes” were often used to exemplify the
trifling imperfections to which all human beings were subject. For his
parables he drew also on the Bible, the most enormous volume you ever
laid eyes on, brass bound, with heavy clasps, which was the repository
of the family statistics; every birth, marriage, death was entered
there. The handbooks to father’s work were the physiologies, one of
which was combined with a materia medica. These were especially
attractive to me, perhaps because they were illustrated with vivid
plates, mostly red and blue, and described the fascinating, unknown
interior of the human body.

Neighbors were constantly coming to father for help. “What do you think
is the matter with this child?” Even without a thermometer he could tell
by feeling the skin whether you were feverish. He prescribed bismuth if
the diagnosis were “summer complaint,” castor oil if you had eaten
something which had disagreed with you, and always sulphur and molasses
in the spring “to clean the blood.”

Father’s cure-all was whiskey—“good whiskey,” which “liberated the
spirit.” There was nothing from a deranged system to a depressed mind
that it could not fix up. He never drank alone, but no masculine guest
ever entered the door or sat down to pass the time of day without his
producing the bottle. “Have a little shtimulant?”

The chief value of whiskey to father, however, was medicinal. If mumps
turned into a large, ugly abscess, he put the blade of his jackknife in
the fire, lanced the gland, and cleaned the wound with whiskey—good
whiskey. When my face was swollen with erysipelas, he painted it
morning, afternoon, and evening with tincture of iodine; the doctor had
so ordered. I was held firmly in place each time this torture was
inflicted, and, as soon as released, jumped and ran screaming and
howling into the cellar, where I plunged my burning face into a pan of
cool buttermilk until the pain subsided. This went on for several days,
and I was growing exhausted from the dreaded iodine. Finally father
decided to abandon the treatment and substitute good whiskey. Then I
recovered.

As necessary to father as the physiologies was a book by the famous
phrenologist, Orson Fuller, under whom he had studied. Father believed
implicitly that the head was the sculptured expression of the soul.
Straight or slanting eyes, a ridge between them, a turned-up nose, full
lips, bulges in front of or behind the ears—all these traits had
definite meaning for him. A research worker had to be inquisitive, a
seeker with more than normal curiosity-bumps; a musician had to have
order and time over the eyebrows; a pugilist could not be made but had
to have the proper protuberances around the ears.

One of father’s phrases was, “Nature is the perfect sculptor; she is
never wrong. If you seem to have made a mistake in reading, it is
because you have not read correctly.” He himself seldom made a mistake,
and his reputation spread far and wide. Young men in confusion of mind
and the customary puzzled, pre-graduation state came from Cornell and
other colleges to consult him about their careers. He examined heads and
faces, told them where he thought their true vocations lay, and
supplemented this advice later with voluminous interested
correspondence. I could not help picking up his principles and some of
his ardor, though I have never been able to analyze character so well.
No amount of front or salesmanship could divert him, whereas I have
often been taken in by a person’s self-confidence and estimation of
himself.

In the predominantly Roman Catholic community of Corning, set crosses in
the cemeteries were the rule for the poor and, before they went out of
style, angels in various poses for the rich. I used to watch father at
work. The rough, penciled sketch indicated little; even less did the
first unshaped block of stone. He played with the hard, unyielding
marble as though it were clay, making a tiny chip for a mouth, which
grew rounder and rounder. A face then emerged, a shoulder, a sweep of
drapery, praying hands, until finally the whole stood complete with
wings and halo.

Although Catholics were father’s best patrons, by nature and upbringing
he deplored their dogma. He joined the Knights of Labor, who were
agitating against the influx of unskilled immigrants from Catholic
countries, and this did not endear him to his clientele. Still less did
his espousal of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, a man after his own heart,
whose works he had eagerly studied and used as texts. Once when the
challenger was sounding a ringing defiance in near-by towns, father
extended an invitation to speak in Corning and enlighten it. He
collected subscriptions to pay for the only hall in town, owned by
Father Coghlan. A notice was inserted in the paper that the meeting
would be held the following Sunday, but chiefly the news spread by word
of mouth. “Better come. Tell all your friends.”

Sunday afternoon arrived, and father escorted “Colonel Bob” from the
hotel to the hall, I trotting by his side. We pushed through the waiting
crowd, but shut doors stared silently and reprovingly—word had also
reached Father Coghlan.

Some were there to hear and learn, others to denounce. Antipathies
between the two suddenly exploded in action. Tomatoes, apples, and
cabbage stumps began to fly. This was my first experience of rage
directed against those holding views which were contrary to accepted
ones. It was my first, but by no means my last. I was to encounter it
many times, and always with the same bewilderment and disdain. My father
apparently felt only the disdain. Resolutely he announced the meeting
would take place in the woods near our home an hour later, then led
Ingersoll and the “flock” through the streets. I trudged along again, my
small hand clasped in his, my head held just as high.

Who cared for the dreary, dark, little hall! In the woodland was room
for all. Those who had come for discussion sat spellbound on the ground
in a ring around the standing orator. For them the booing had been
incidental and was ignored. I cannot remember a word of what Colonel
Ingersoll said, but the scene remains. It was late in the afternoon, and
the tall pines shot up against the fiery radiance of the setting sun,
which lit the sky with the brilliance peculiar to the afterglows of the
Chemung Valley.

Florid, gray-haired Father Coghlan, probably tall in his prime, came to
call on mother. He was a kindly old gentleman, not really intolerant.
Shutting the hall had been a matter of principle; he could not have an
atheist within those sacred walls. But he was willing to talk about it
afterwards. In fact, he rather enjoyed arguing with rebels. He was full
of persuasion which he used on mother, begging her to exercise her
influence with father to make him refrain from his evil ways. She had
been reared in the faith, although since her marriage to a freethinker
which had so distressed her parents, she had never attended church to my
knowledge. The priest was troubled to see her soul damned when she might
have been a good Catholic, and implored her to send her children to
church and to the parochial school, to stand firm against the intrusion
of godlessness. Mother must have suffered from the conflict.

None of us realized how the Ingersoll episode was to affect our
well-being. Thereafter we were known as children of the devil. On our
way to school names were shouted, tongues stuck out, grimaces made; the
juvenile stamp of disapproval had been set upon us. But we had been so
steeped in “heretic” notions that we were not particularly bothered by
this and could not see ahead into the dark future when a hard childhood
was to be made harder. No more marble angels were to be carved for local
Catholic cemeteries, and, while father’s income was diminishing, the
family was increasing.

Occasionally big commissions were offered him in adjacent towns where
his reputation was still high, and he was then away for days at a time,
coming back with a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket; we
all had new clothes, and the house was full of plenty. Food was bought
for the winter—turnips, apples, flour, potatoes. But then again a year
might pass before he had another one, and meanwhile we had sunk deeply
into debt.

Towards orthodox religion father’s own attitude remained one of
tolerance. He looked upon the New Testament as the noble story of a
human being which, because of ignorance and the lack of printing
presses, had become exaggerated. He maintained that religions served
their purpose; some people depended on them all their lives for
discipline—to keep them straight, to make them honest. Others did not
need to be so held in line. But subjection to any church was a
reflection on strength and character. You should be able to get from
yourself what you had to go to church for.

When we asked which Sunday School we should attend, he suggested, “Try
them all, but be chained to none.” For a year or two I made the rounds,
especially at Christmas and Easter, when you received oranges and little
bags of candy. It was always cold at the Catholic church and the wooden
benches were very bare and hard; some seats were upholstered in soft,
red cloth but these were for the rich, who rented the pews and put
dollars into the plate at collection. I never liked to see the figure of
Jesus on the cross; we could not help Him because He had been crucified
long ago. I much preferred the Virgin Mary; she was beautiful,
smiling—the way I should like to look when I had a baby.

Saying my prayers for mother’s benefit was spasmodic. Ethel, the sister
nearest my own age, was more given than I to religious phases and I
could get her in bed faster if I said them with her. One evening when we
had finished this dutiful ritual I climbed on father’s chair to kiss him
good night. He asked quizzically, “What was that you were saying about
bread?”

“Why, that was in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Give us this day our daily
bread.’”

“Who were you talking to?”

“To God.”

“Is God a baker?”

I was shocked. Nevertheless, I rallied to the attack and replied as best
I could, doubtless influenced by conversations I had heard. “No, of
course not. It means the rain, the sunshine, and all the things to make
the wheat, which makes the bread.”

“Well, well,” he replied, “so that’s the idea. Then why don’t you say
so? Always say what you mean, my daughter; it is much better.”

Thereafter I began to question what I had previously taken for granted
and to reason for myself. It was not pleasant, but father had taught me
to think. He gave none of us much peace. When we put on stout shoes he
said, “Very nice. Very comfortable. Do you know who made them?”

“Why, yes, the shoemaker.”

We then had to listen to graphic descriptions of factory conditions in
the shoe industry, so that we might learn something of the misery and
poverty the workers suffered in order to keep our feet warm and dry.

Father never talked about religion without bringing in the ballot box.
In fact, he took up Socialism because he believed it Christian
philosophy put into practice, and to me its ideals still come nearest to
carrying out what Christianity was supposed to do. Unceasingly he tried
to inculcate in us the idea that our duty lay not in considering what
might happen to us after death, but in doing something here and now to
make the lives of other human beings more decent. “You have no right to
material comforts without giving back to society the benefit of your
honest experience,” was one of his maxims, and his parting words to each
of his sons and daughters who had grown old enough to fend for
themselves were, “Leave the world better because you, my child, have
dwelt in it.”

This was something to live up to.

                             _Chapter Two_

                        BLIND GERM OF DAYS TO BE

        “_I think, dearest Uncle, that you cannot _really_ wish
        me to be the ‘mamma d’une nombreuse famille,’ for I
        think you will see the great inconvenience a _large_
        family would be to us all, and particularly to the
        country, independent of the hardship and inconvenience
        to myself; men never think, at least seldom think, what
        a hard task it is for us women to go through this _very
        often_._”

                                QUEEN VICTORIA _to_ KING LEOPOLD

Often when my brothers and sisters and I meet we remind each other of
funny or exciting adventures we used to have, but I never desire to live
that early part of my life again. Childhood is supposed to be a happy
time. Mine was difficult, though I did not then think of it as a
disadvantage nor do I now.

It never occurred to me to ask my parents for pocket money, but the day
came during my eighth year when I was desperately in want of ten cents.
_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ was coming to town. On Saturday afternoon I started
out with one of my playmates, she with her dime, I with nothing but
faith. We reached the Corning Opera House half an hour early. The throng
at the entrance grew thicker and thicker. Curtain time had almost come,
and still no miracle. Nevertheless, I simply had to get into that
theater. All about me had tickets or money or both. Suddenly I felt
something touch my arm—the purse of a woman who was pressed close beside
me. It was open, and I could see the coveted coins within. One quick
move and I could have my heart’s desire. The longing was so deep and
hard that it blotted out everything except my imperative need. I _had_
to get into that theater.

I was about to put out my hand towards the bag when the doors were
thrown wide and the crowd precipitately surged forward. Being small, I
was shoved headlong under the ropes and into the safety of the nearest
seat. But I could take no joy in the play.

As I lay sleepless that night, after a prayer of thanks for my many
blessings, the crack of Simon Legree’s whip and the off-stage hounds
baying after Eliza were not occupying my mind. Their places were taken
by pictures of the devil which had tempted me and the hand of God which
had been stretched out to save me from theft.

Following this experience, which might have been called a spiritual
awakening, I began to connect my desires with reasoning about
consequences. This was difficult, because my feelings were strong and
urgent. I realized I was made up of two Me’s—one the thinking Me, the
other, willful and emotional, which sometimes exercised too great a
power; there was danger in her leadership and I set myself the task of
uniting the two by putting myself through ordeals of various sorts to
strengthen the head Me.

To gain greater fortitude, I began to make myself do what I feared
most—go upstairs alone to bed without a light, go down cellar without
singing, get up on the rafters in the barn and jump on the haystack
thirty feet below. When I was able to accomplish these without flinching
I felt more secure and more strong within myself.

But ahead of me still lay the hardest task of all.

Across the Chemung some friends of ours had a farm. Their orchard, heavy
with delectable apples, seemed to me a veritable Eden. But to reach it
by the wooden wagon bridge was three miles around; my brothers preferred
the shorter route over the high, narrow, iron span of the Erie Railroad,
under which the river raced deep and fast. The spaced ties held no
terrors for their long legs, and they often swung them over the edge
while they fished the stream beneath. When I made the trip father and
brother each gave a hand to which I clung fiercely, and they half lifted
me over the gaps which my shorter legs could hardly compass unaided.
Held tight as I was, I became dizzy from the height, and a panic of
terror seized me. In fact, the mere thought of the journey, even so well
supported, made me feel queer.

The younger children were forbidden to cross the bridge unaccompanied.
But I had to conquer my fear; I had to take that walk alone. I trembled
as I drew near. The more I feared it, the more determined I was to make
myself do it. I can recall now how stoically I put one foot on the first
tie and began the venturesome and precarious passage stretching
endlessly ahead of me. I dared not look down at the water; I wanted
terribly to see that my feet were firmly placed, but could not trust my
head.

About halfway over I heard the hum of the steel rails. My second dread
had come upon me—the always possible train. I could not see it because
of the curve at the end of the bridge. The singing grew louder as it
came closer. I knew I could not get across in time, and turned towards
the nearest girder to which I might cling. But it was six feet away. The
engine with a whistling shriek burst into view—snorting, huge, menacing,
rushing. I stumbled and fell.

In those days I was plump, and this plumpness saved me. Instinctively my
arms went out and curled around the ties as I dropped between them.
There I dangled over space. The bridge shook; the thunder swelled; the
long, swift passenger cars swooped down. I was less than three feet from
the outer rail, and a new terror gripped me. I had seen the sharp,
sizzling steam jet out as locomotives drew near the station. I screwed
my eyes shut and prayed the engineer not to turn on the steam.

After the blur of wheels had crashed by I could feel nothing. I hung
there, I do not know how long, until a friend of my father, who had been
fishing below, came to my rescue. He pulled up the fat, aching little
body, stood me on my feet again, asked me severely whether my father
knew where I was, gave me two brisk thwacks on the bottom, turned my
face towards home, and went back to his rod and line.

After waiting a few moments to think matters over I realized that it
would be impossible for me to retrace my course. Common sense aided me.
The journey forward was no further than the journey back. I stepped
ahead far more bravely, knowing if I could reach the end of the bridge I
would never be so terrified again. Though bruised and sore I continued
my cautious march and had as good a time at the farm as usual.

However, I returned home by the wooden bridge, the long way round, but
the practical one.

When Ethel asked me that night why I was putting vaseline under my arms
I merely said I had scratched myself. Foolhardiness was never highly
esteemed by anyone in the family. Though resourcefulness was taken for
granted, running into unnecessary danger was just nonsense, and I wanted
no censure for my disobedience.

We were seldom scolded, never spanked. If an unpleasant conversation
were needed, no other brother or sister was witness; neither parent ever
humiliated one child in front of another. This was part of the
sensitiveness of both. Mother in particular had a horror of personal
vehemence or acrimonious arguments; in trying to prevent or stop them
she would display amazing intrepidity—separating fighting dogs, fighting
boys, even fighting men.

Peacemaker as she was, on occasion she battled valiantly for her loved
ones, resenting bitterly the corporal punishment then customary in
schools. Once my brother Joe came home with his hands so swollen and
blistered that he could not do his evening chore of bringing in the
wood. Mother looked carefully at them and asked him what had happened.
He explained that the teacher had fallen asleep and several boys had
started throwing spitballs. When one had hit her on the nose she had
awakened with a little scream.

Most children had the trick of burying their faces behind their big
geographies and appearing to be studying the page with the most innocent
air in the world. But Joe had no such technique. He was doubled up with
laughter. The teacher first accused him of throwing the spitball, and,
when he denied it, insisted that he name the culprit. She had been
embarrassed by her ridiculous situation, and had turned her emotion into
what she considered righteous indignation. Joe had paid the penalty of
being beaten for his unwillingness to violate the schoolboy code of
honor.

This was injustice and the surest road to mother’s wrath. She started at
once the long trip to the school. When she found no one there, she
walked more miles to the teacher’s home. Reproof was called for and she
administered it. But that was not enough. She then demanded that father
go to the Board of Education and take Joe with him. There would have
been no sleeping in the house with her had he not done so. An
investigation was promised, which soon afterwards resulted in the
teacher’s dismissal.

The teachers at the Corning School were no worse than others of their
day; many of them were much better. The brick building was quite modern
for the time, with a playground around it and good principals to guide
it. Its superiority was due in part to the influence of the Houghtons,
the big industrialists of the town. For three generations they had been
making glassware unsurpassed for texture and beauty of design, and
hardly a family of means in the country did not have at least one
cut-glass centerpiece from Corning. The factories had prospered during
the kerosene lamp era, and now, with electricity coming into its own,
they were working overtime blowing light bulbs.

Corning was not on the whole a pleasant town. Along the river flats
lived the factory workers, chiefly Irish; on the heights above the
rolling clouds of smoke that belched from the chimneys lived the owners
and executives. The tiny yards of the former were a-sprawl with
children; in the gardens on the hills only two or three played. This
contrast made a track in my mind. Large families were associated with
poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, fighting, jails; the
small ones with cleanliness, leisure, freedom, light, space, sunshine.

The fathers of the small families owned their homes; the young-looking
mothers had time to play croquet with their husbands in the evenings on
the smooth lawns. Their clothes had style and charm, and the fragrance
of perfume clung about them. They walked hand in hand on shopping
expeditions with their children, who seemed positive in their right to
live. To me the distinction between happiness and unhappiness in
childhood was one of small families and of large families rather than of
wealth and poverty.

In our home, too, we felt the economic pressure directly ascribable to
size. I was always apprehensive that we might some day be like the
families on the flats, because we always had another baby coming,
another baby coming. A new litter of puppies was interesting but not out
of the ordinary; so, likewise, the cry of a new infant never seemed
unexpected. Neither excited any more curiosity than breakfast or dinner.
No one ever told me how they were born. I just knew.

I was little more than eight when I first helped wash the
fourteen-and-a-half-pound baby after one of mother’s deliveries. She had
had a “terrible hard time,” but father had pulled her through, and, in a
few weeks, tired and coughing, she was going about her work, believing
as usual that her latest was the prize of perfect babies. Mother’s
eleven children were all ten-pounders or more, and both she and father
had a eugenic pride of race. I used to hear her say that not one of hers
had a mark or blemish, although she had the utmost compassion for those
who might have cleft palates, crossed eyes, or be “born sick.”

Late one night a woman rushed into our house, seeking protection,
clutching in her shawl a scrawny, naked baby, raw with eczema. When her
hysteria was calmed sufficiently we learned that her husband had reeled
home drunk and had thrown the wailing infant out into the snow. Father
was all for summoning the police, but mother was too wise for that. She
dispatched him to talk to the man while she gave the weeping woman a
warm supper and comforted her. Father returned shortly to say it was
safe for her to go back to the multitude of other children because her
husband had fallen asleep. Ugly and taciturn though he was I could
picture him coming home after a hard day’s work to a household racked
with the shrieks of the suffering little thing. I could see that he too
was pathetic and a victim; I had sympathy for his rage.

But mother did lose one of her beautiful babies. Henry George McGlynn
Higgins had been named for two of the rebel figures father most admired.
The four-year-old was playing happily in the afternoon; a few hours
later he was gasping for breath. Father heated his home-made croup
kettle on the stove until it boiled, and then carried it steaming to be
put under the blanket which rose like a covered wagon above the bed. As
soon as he realized that home remedies were failing he sent for the
doctor. But events moved too swiftly for him. We had gone to bed with no
suspicion that by morning we should be one less. I was shocked and
surprised that something could come along and pick one of us out of the
world in so few hours.

I had no time, however, to consider the bewildering verity of death. We
all had to turn to consoling mother. Perhaps unconsciously she had
subscribed to father’s theory that the face was the mirror to the soul.
She complained she had no picture of her lovely boy, and kept reminding
herself of the fine shape of his head, the wide, well-set eyes, the
familiar contours which had been wiped forever from her sight, and might
soon be sponged from her memory as well.

Mother’s grief over her lost child increased father’s. Because in part
he blamed himself, he was desperate to assuage her sorrow. The day after
the burial he was constantly occupied in his studio, and when evening
fell he took me affectionately by the hand asking me to stay up and help
him on a piece of work he was about to do. I agreed willingly.

About eleven o’clock we went forth together into the pitch-black night,
father pushing ahead of him a wheelbarrow full of tools and a bag of
plaster of Paris. We walked on and on through the stillness for fully
two miles to the cemetery where the little brother had been buried.
Father knew every step, but it was scary and I clung to his hand.

Just beyond the gateway father hid the lighted lantern in the near-by
bushes over a grave and told me to wait there unless I heard somebody
coming. He expected me to be grown up at the age of ten. Nerves meant
sickness; if any child cried out in the night it was merely considered
“delicate.” Consequently I obeyed and watched, shivering with cold and
excitement, darting quick glances at the ghostly forms of some of
father’s monuments which loomed out of the darkness around me. I could
hear the steady chunk, chunk, chunk of his pick and shovel, and the
sharper sound when suddenly he struck the coffin.

Father had taken it as a matter of course that I should understand and
had not explained what he was about to do. But I never questioned his
actions. I did not know there was a law against a man’s digging up his
own dead child but, even had I known, I would have believed that the law
was wrong.

We traveled back the long, weary way, arriving home in the early hours
of the morning. Nothing was said to mother or to the others about that
amazing night’s adventure; I was not told to keep silent, but I knew
there was mystery in the air and it was no time to talk.

For two evenings I worked with father, helping him break the death mask,
mold and shape the cast. I remember the queer feeling I had when I
discovered some of the hair which had stuck in the plaster. On the third
day, just after supper, father said to us all, “Will you come into the
studio?” With tender eyes on mother he uncovered and presented to her
the bust of the dead little boy.

She was extraordinarily comforted. Though to me the model, perfect as it
was, seemed lifeless, every once in a while she entered the studio, took
off the cloth which protected it from the dust, wept and was relieved,
recovered it and went on.

Not one of us dared to utter a word of criticism about mother’s adored
and adoring husband; nevertheless her soul was harassed at times by his
philosophy of live and let live, by his principles against locked doors
and private property. She was merely selfless. Often when one of her
children was feverish she went to the kitchen pump for water so that it
might be cooler and fresher for parched lips. Once, groping her way on
such an errand, she stumbled over a tramp who had taken advantage of the
unlatched door and lay sprawled on the floor. She rushed back to arouse
father, telling him he must put the man out. But he only turned over on
his side and muttered, “Oh, let him alone. The poor divil needs sleep
like the rest of us.”

Another night mother was awakened by noises outside. “Father,” she
called, “there’s somebody at the hencoop!”

“What makes you think so?” he answered sleepily.

“I hear the chickens. They wouldn’t make a noise unless somebody was in
there. Get up!”

Obediently father put on his trousers and coat; not even before thieves
would he appear in his nightshirt out of his bedroom. He proceeded to
the kitchen door, and, holding a lamp on high, addressed the two men,
one of whom was handing out chickens to the other, “Hey, you, there!
What do you mean by coming to a man’s house in the middle of the night
and shtealing his chickens? What kind of citizens are you?”

This seemed to mother no time for a moral lecture. “Why don’t you go
out?” she prodded.

“It’s raining.”

“Give me the lamp!” she demanded, exasperated.

She started towards our nearest neighbor, splashing through the little
brook, getting her feet wet, calling, “Some one’s in our chicken house!”

Our neighbor armed himself and came running. A man with a gun sent the
marauders scurrying up the hill. That was mother’s philosophy. I think
father fell in her estimation for a few days after this. She expected
him to be the guardian of the home, but he was never that. His liberal
views were so well known that our house was marked with the tramp’s
patrin of the first degree. “Always get something here. Never be turned
away.” If it happened to be pay day they could count on a quarter as
well as a meal.

One particular evening we were expecting father home, his pockets
bulging with the money from his latest commission, but by nightfall he
had not yet returned. When mother heard a rap at the door she went
eagerly to open it. Two ragged strangers were standing there.

“Is the boss in?”

“No, but I’m looking for him any minute.”

“We want something to eat.”

With no more ceremony than was customary among the knights of the open
road they pushed through the door and made for the kitchen, plainly
knowing their way about.

“How dare you come into this house!” exclaimed mother indignantly.
“Toss! Beauty!” she cried sharply. The fear in her voice brought the
dogs lunging downstairs with fangs bared and hackles bristling. They
leaped at the backs of the uninvited guests.

Father came in a few hours later. The door was swinging wide, the snow
was blowing in. Torn scraps of clothing, spots of blood were about, and
mother was unconscious on the floor. He poured whiskey down her throat.
“It was only good whiskey that brought you to,” he often said
afterwards, recalling his alarm. He used the same remedy to pull her
through the ensuing six weeks of pneumonia. But he had been so
thoroughly worried that his generosity towards tramps lessened and his
largesse was curtailed.

After this illness mother coughed more than ever and it was evident the
pines were not helping her. Father decided to move; the house was so
obviously marked and he had to be gone so much he thought it unsafe for
us to live alone so far away.

                            _Chapter Three_

                        BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES

So we moved into town, still on the western hills. It marked the
beginning of my adolescence, and such breaks are always disturbing. In
the house in the woods we had all been children together, but now some
of us were growing up.

Nevertheless, there were always smaller ones to be put to bed, to be
rocked to sleep; there were feet and knees to be scrubbed and hands to
be washed. Although we had more space, home study sometimes seemed to me
impossible. The living room was usually occupied by the older members of
the family, and the bedrooms were cold. I kept up in my lessons, but it
was simply because I enjoyed them.

In most schools teachers and pupils then were natural enemies, and the
one I had in the eighth grade was particularly adept at arousing
antagonism. She apparently disliked her job and the youngsters under her
care as much as we hated her. Sarcasm was both her defense and weapon of
attack. One day in mid-June I was delayed in getting off for school.
Well aware that being tardy was a heinous crime, I hurried, pulling and
tugging at my first pair of kid gloves, which Mary had just given me.
But the bell had rung two minutes before I walked into the room, flushed
and out of breath.

The teacher had already begun the class. She looked up at the
interruption. “Well, well, Miss Higgins, so your ladyship has arrived at
last! Ah, a new pair of gloves! I wonder that she even deigns to come to
school at all.”

Giggles rippled around me as I went into the cloakroom and laid down my
hat and gloves. I came back, praying the teacher would pay no more
attention to me, but as I walked painfully to my seat she continued
repeating with variations her mean comments. Even when I sat down she
did not stop. I tried to think of something else, tried not to listen,
tried to smile with the others. I endured it as long as I could, then
took out my books, pyramiding arithmetic, grammar, and speller, strapped
them up, rose, and left.

Mother was amazed when I burst in on her. “I will never go back to that
school again!” I exclaimed dramatically. “I have finished forever! I’ll
go to jail, I’ll work, I’ll starve, I’ll die! But back to that school
and teacher I will never go!”

As older brothers and sisters drifted home in the evening, they were as
horrified as mother. “But you have only two weeks more,” they
expostulated.

“I don’t care if it’s only an hour. I will not go back!”

When it became obvious that I would stick to my point, mother seemed
glad to have me to help her. I was thorough and strong and could get
through a surprising amount of work in no time. But the rest of the
family was seriously alarmed. The next few months were filled with
questions I could not answer. “What can you ever be without an
education?” “Are you equipped to earn a living?” “Is factory life a
pleasant prospect? If you don’t go back to school, you’ll surely end
there.”

“All right. I’ll go to work!” I announced defiantly. Work, even in the
factory, meant money, and money meant independence. I had no rebuttal to
their arguments; I was acting on an impulse that transcended reason, and
must have recognized that any explanation as to my momentous decision
would sound foolish.

Then suddenly father, mother, my second older sister Nan, and Mary, who
had been summoned to a family council, tried other tactics. I was sent
for two weeks to Chautauqua, there to take courses, hear lectures from
prominent speakers, listen to music. This was designed to stimulate my
interest in education and dispel any idea I might have of getting a job.

My impulse had been misconstrued. I was not rebelling against education
as such, but only against that particular school and that particular
teacher. When fall drew near and the next session was at hand I was
still reiterating that I would not go back, although I still had no
answer to Nan’s repeated, “What are you going to do?”

Nan was perhaps the most inspiring of all my brothers and sisters. The
exact contrary to father, she wanted us all to conform and was in tears
if we did not. To her, failure in this respect showed a lack of
breeding. Yet even more important than conformity was knowledge, which
was the basis for all true culture. She herself wanted to write, and had
received prizes for stories from _St. Nicholas_ and the _Youth’s
Companion_. But the family was too dependent upon the earnings of the
older girls, and she was obliged to postpone college and her equally
ardent desire to study sculpture. She became a translator of French and
German until these aspirations could be fulfilled.

At the time of my mutiny Nan was especially disturbed. “You won’t be
able to get anywhere without an education,” she stated firmly. She and
Mary, joining forces, together looked for a school, reasonable enough
for their purses, but good enough academically to prepare me for
Cornell. Private education was not so expensive as today, and families
of moderate means could afford it. My sisters selected Claverack College
and Hudson River Institute, about three miles from the town of Hudson in
the Catskill Mountains. Here, in one of the oldest coeducational
institutions in the country, the Methodist farmers of the Dutch valley
enrolled their sons and daughters; unfortunately it is now gone and with
it the healthy spirit it typified. One sister paid my tuition and the
other bought my books and clothes; for my board and room I was to work.

Going away to school was epochal in my life. The self-contained family
group was suddenly multiplied to five hundred strangers, all living and
studying under one roof. The girls’ dormitory was at one end, the boys’
at the other, but we shared the same dining room and sat together in
classes; occasionally a boy could call on a girl in the reception hall
if a teacher were present. I liked best the attitude of the teachers;
they were not so much policemen as companions and friends, and their
instruction was more individual and stimulating than at Corning.

I did not have money to do things the other girls did—go off for
week-ends or house-parties—but waiting on table or washing dishes did
not set me apart. The work was far easier than at home, and a girl was
pretty well praised for doing her share. At first the students all
appeared to me uninteresting and lacking in initiative. I never found
the same imaginative quality I was used to in my family, but as certain
ones began to stand out I discovered they had personalities of their
own.

I had been at Claverack only a few days and was still feeling homesick
when in the hall one morning I encountered the most beautiful creature I
had ever seen. Long hair flying from her shoulders, she was so slender
and wraithlike that she seemed unreal. I have never since been so moved
by human loveliness as I was by Esther’s. I cried at night because I
sensed it was something I could not reach. Even her clothes were unlike
all others. Many girls envied their taste and quality, but I knew they
belonged to her of right. Of every book I had read she was the heroine
come alive.

Worlds apart though we were in tradition, looks, behavior, experience,
Esther and I had the same romantic outlook. Having aspirations for the
theater, she remained only one year and then left to attend Charles
Frohman’s dramatic school. I had been too overpowered by my admiration
for her to be happy in it, and it kept me from caring particularly about
anyone else. Nevertheless, I am convinced that in any interchange of
affection the balance is unequal; one must give and the other be able to
receive. My second year I was the recipient of devotion from a younger
girl similar to that I had showered upon Esther. The loyalty and praise
of Amelia Stuart, my laughing friend, fed all the empty spaces in my
heart. She was gay and clever, a Methodist by upbringing but not by
conviction. Each Sunday afternoon, given over to the reading of the
Bible, we received permission to study together in my room, and there
occupied ourselves dutifully, I in mending and darning, and she reading
aloud, but interspersing solemn passages with ridiculous exaggerations.
What was intended to be a serious exercise of the spirit was turned into
merriment.

My friendship with these two girls has been interrupted, but never
broken.

Very shortly after my arrival at Claverack I had been infected by that
indefinable, nebulous quality called school spirit, and before long was
happily in the thick of activities. Assembly was held in the chapel
every morning, during which we all in turn had to render small speeches
and essays, or recite selections of poetry. I had a vivid feeling of how
things should be said, putting more dramatic fervor into certain lines
than my limited experience of the theater would seem to explain, and on
this account the elocution teacher encouraged me to have faith in my
talents.

Every girl, I suppose, at some time or other wants to be an actress.
Mary had taken me to the theater now and then, once when Maude Adams was
playing Juliet to John Drew’s Romeo, and had gone to some pains to
explain to me the difference between artistes like Mary Anderson or
Julia Marlowe and mere beauty as such. She would not have been pleased
at my seeing Lillian Russell, which I did during a Christmas holiday in
New York; Lillian Russell was too glamorous and, furthermore, she was
said to have accepted jewelry from men.

One vacation I announced to my family that I was thinking of a stage
career. Disapproval was evident on all sides. Father pooh-poohed; Mary
alone held out hope. She said I had ability and should go to dramatic
school in New York as soon as I had finished Claverack. She would apply
immediately to Charles Frohman to have me understudy Maude Adams, whom I
at least was said to resemble physically—small and with the same
abundant red-brown hair. Lacking good features I took pride only in my
thick, long braids. I used to decorate them with ribbons and admire the
effect in the mirror.

The application was made; I was photographed in various poses with and
without hats. A return letter from the school management came, enclosing
a form to be filled in with name, address, age, height, weight, color of
hair, eyes, and skin.

But additional data were required as to the exact length of the legs,
both right and left, as well as measurements of ankle, calf, knee, and
thigh. I knew my proportions in a general way. Those were the days when
every pack of cigarettes carried a bonus in the shape of a pictured
actress, plump and well-formed. In the gymnasium the girls had compared
sizes with these beauties. But to see such personal information go
coldly down on paper to be sent off to strange men was unthinkable. I
had expected to have to account for the quality of my voice, for my
ability to sing, to play, for grace, agility, character, and morals.
Since I could not see what legs had to do with being a second Maude
Adams, I did not fill in the printed form nor send the photographs, but
just put them all away, and turned to other fields where something
beside legs was to count.

Chapel never bored me. I had come to dislike ritual in many of the
churches I had visited—kneeling for prayer, sitting for instruction,
standing for praise. But in a Methodist chapel anyone could get up and
express a conviction. Young sprouts here were thinking and discussing
the Bible, religion, and politics. Should the individual be submerged in
the state? If you had a right to free thought as an individual, should
you give it up to the church?

We scribbled during study periods, debated in the evenings. Without
always digesting them but with great positiveness I carried over many of
the opinions I had heard expounded at home. To most of the boys and
girls those Saturday mornings when the more ambitious efforts were
offered represented genuine torture. They stuttered and stammered
painfully. I was just as nervous—more so probably. Nevertheless, I was
so ardent for suffrage, for anything which would “emancipate” women and
humanity, that I was eager to proclaim theories of my own.

Father was still the spring from which I drank, and I sent long letters
home, getting in reply still longer ones, filled with ammunition about
the historical background of the importance of women—Helen of Troy,
Ruth, Cleopatra, Poppaea, famous queens, women authors and poets.

When news spread that I was to present my essay, “Women’s Rights,” the
boys, following the male attitude which most people have forgotten but
which every suffragette well remembers, jeered and drew cartoons of
women wearing trousers, stiff collars, and smoking huge cigars.
Undeterred, I was spurred on to think up new arguments. I studied and
wrote as never before, stealing away to the cemetery and standing on the
monuments over the graves. Each day in the quiet of the dead I repeated
and repeated that speech out loud. What an essay it was!

“Votes for Women” banners were not yet flying, and this early faint
bleating of mine aroused little enthusiasm. I turned then to an equally
stern subject. The other students had automatically accepted the cause
of solid money. I espoused free silver. At Chautauqua I had heard echoes
of those first notes sounded by Bryan for the working classes. The
spirit of humanitarianism in industry had been growing and swelling, but
it was still deep buried. I believe any great concept must be present in
the mass consciousness before any one figure can tap it and set it free
on its irresistible way.

I had not seen the “Boy Orator of the Platte,” but the country was
ringing with his words, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor
this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of
gold.” These rich and sonorous phrases made me realize the importance of
clothing ideas in fine language. Far more, however, they struck a solemn
chord within me. I, also, in an obscure and unformed way, wanted to help
grasp Utopia from the skies and plant it on earth. But what to do and
where to start I did not know.

Due to my “advanced ideas,” for a time, at least, I am sorry to say, it
was chiefly the grinds with whom I “walked in Lovers’ Lane,” nodding
wisely and answering their earnest aspirations with profound advice. But
this did not last. Soon I was going through the usual boy and girl
romances; each season brought a new one. I took none of them very
seriously, but adroitly combined flirtatiousness with the conviction
that marriage was something towards which I must develop. Therefore I
turned the vague and tentative suggestions of my juvenile beaus by
saying, “I would never think of jumping into marriage without definite
preparation and study of its responsibilities.” Practically no women
then went into professions; matrimony was the only way out. It seems
ages ago.

Various pranks occurred at Claverack, such as taking walks with boys out
of bounds and going to forbidden places for tea. Towards the end of my
last year I thought up the idea that several of us should slip out
through the window and down to the village dance hall where our special
admirers would meet us. About eleven-thirty, in the midst of the gayety,
in walked our principal, Mr. Flack, together with the preceptress who
had come for the “ladies.” We were all marched back to school, uneasy
but silent.

The next morning I received a special invitation to call at The Office.
I entered. Mr. Flack, a small, slight, serious, student type of man,
with a large head and high brow, was standing with his back to me. I sat
down. He gave me no greeting but kept on at his books. To all
appearances he did not know I was there. Then, without looking around,
he said, “Miss Higgins, don’t you feel rather ashamed of yourself for
getting those girls into trouble last night, by taking them out and
making them break the rules? They may even have to be sent home.”

Although surprised that he should have known I was the one responsible,
I could not deny it, but it flashed across my mind at first that someone
must have told him. He went on with rapid flow, almost as though talking
to himself, “I’ve watched you ever since you came and I don’t need to be
told that you must have been the ringleader. Again and again I’ve
noticed your influence over others. I want to call your attention to
this, because I know you’re going to use it in the future. You must make
your choice—whether to get yourself and others into difficulty, or else
guide yourself and others into constructive activities which will do you
and them credit.”

I do not quite recall what else he said, but I have never forgotten
going out of his room that day. This could not exactly be called a
turning point in my life, but from then on I realized more strongly than
before that there was a something within myself which could and should
be kept under my control and direction.

Long afterwards I wrote to thank Mr. Flack for his wisdom in offering
guidance instead of harsh discipline. He died a few years later, and I
was glad I had been able to place a rose in his hand rather than on his
grave.

I spent three happy years at Claverack. The following season I decided
to try my hand at teaching, then a lady-like thing to do. A position was
open to me in the first grade of a new public school in southern New
Jersey. The majority of the pupils—Poles, Hungarians, Swedes—could not
speak English. In they came regularly. I was beside myself to know what
to do with eighty-four children who could not understand a word I said.
I loved those small, black-haired and tow-headed urchins who became
bored with sitting and, on their own, began stunts to entertain
themselves. But I was so tired at the end of the day that I often lay
down before dressing for dinner and awakened the next morning barely in
time to start the routine. In very short order I became aware of the
fact that teaching was not merely a job, it was a profession, and
training was necessary if you were to do it well. I was not suited by
temperament, and therefore had no right to this vocation. I had been
struggling for only a brief while when father summoned me home to nurse
mother.

She was weak and pale and the high red spots on her cheek bones stood
out startlingly against her white face. Although she was now spitting
blood when she coughed we still expected her to live on forever. She had
been ill so long; this was just another attack among many. Father
carried her from room to room, and tried desperately to devise little
comforts. We shut the doors and windows to keep out any breath of the
raw March air, and in the stuffy atmosphere we toiled over her bed.

In an effort to be more efficient in caring for mother I tried to find
out something about consumption by borrowing medical books from the
library of the local doctor, who was a friend of the family, and in
doing this became so interested in medicine that I decided definitely I
would study to be an M.D. When I went back for more volumes and
announced my decision the doctor gave them to me, but smiled tolerantly,
“You’ll probably get over it.”

I had been closely confined for a long time when I was invited to
Buffalo for the Easter holidays to meet again one of the boys by whom I
had been beaued at Claverack. Mother insisted that I needed a vacation.
Mary and Nan were both there; I could stay with them, and we planned a
pleasant trip to Niagara Falls for the day.

With me out of the way mother sent off the little children one by one on
some pretext or another. She had more difficulty with father. The fire
bricks in the stove had split and she told him he must go to town and
get new ones. Much against his will, because he was vaguely unquiet, he
started for the foundry. He had left only because mother seemed to want
it so much, but when he had walked a few blocks, he found he could not
go on. For some Celtic mystic reason of his own he turned abruptly
around and came back to the house. Mother was gasping in death. All the
family hated scenes, she most of all. She had known she was to die and
wanted to be alone.

It was a folk superstition that a consumptive who survived through the
month of March would live until November. Mother died on the
thirty-first of the month, leaving father desolate and inconsolable. I
came flying home. The house was silent and he hardly spoke. Suddenly the
stillness of the night was broken by a wailing and Toss was found with
his paws on the coffin, mourning and howling—the most poignant and
agonizing sound I had ever heard.

I had to take mother’s place—manage the finances, order the meals, pay
the debts. There was nothing left for my clothing nor for any outside
diversions. All that could be squeezed out by making this or that do had
to go for shoes or necessities for the younger brothers. Mend, patch,
sew as you would, there was a limit to the endurance of trousers, and
new ones had to be purchased.

To add to my woes, father seemed to me, who was sensitive to criticism,
suddenly metamorphosed from a loving, gentle, benevolent parent into a
most aggravating, irritating tyrant; nobody in any fairy tale I had ever
read was quite so cruel. He who had given us the world in which to roam
now apparently wanted to put us behind prison bars. His unreasonableness
was not directed towards the boys, who were in bed as soon as lessons
were done, but towards his daughters, Ethel and me. Whatever we did was
wrong. He objected particularly to young men.

Ethel was receiving the concentrated attention of Jack Byrne. Father in
scolding her said she should mix more. My beaus were a little older than
the ones I had had at school, and more earnest in their intentions.
Though not one really interested me—their conversation seemed flat,
consisting of foolish questions and smart, silly replies—father scolded
me also about them, “Why aren’t you serious like your sister? Can’t you
settle yourself to one? Do you have to have somebody different every
evening?”

Messages were coming to me from a young man going West, postmarked
Chicago or San Francisco. These daily letters and sometimes telegrams as
well, were not father’s idea of wooing. What could anyone have to say
every day? To his way of thinking, a decent man came to the house and
did his talking straight; he sat around with the family and got
acquainted. Father said, “That fellow’s a scoundrel. He’s too worldly.
He’s not even known in town.”

We had to ask permission whether Tom or Jack or Henry could call.
Without reason or explanation father said, “No,” and that was an end to
it. If we went out, we had to be back at ten and give an account of
ourselves.

Then came the climax. Ethel and I had gone to an open-air concert. On
the stroke of ten we were a full block away from home running with all
our might. When we arrived, three minutes late, the house was in utter
darkness—not a sight nor sound of a living creature anywhere. We banged
and knocked. We tried the front door, the back, and the side, then again
the front. It opened part way; father looked out, reached forth a hand
and caught Ethel’s arm, saying, “This outrageous behavior is not your
fault. Come in.” With that he pulled her inside, and the door slammed,
leaving me in the dark, stunned and bewildered. I did not know this
monster.

Hurt beyond words, I sat down on the steps, worrying not only about this
night but about the next day and the next, concerned over the children
left at home with this new kind of father. I was sure if I waited long
enough he would come out for me, but it was a chilly evening in October.
I had no wrap, and began to grow very cold.

I walked away from the house, trying to decide where I should go and
what I should do. I could not linger on the streets indefinitely, with
the possibility of encountering some tipsy factory hand or drummer
passing through. At first there seemed no one to turn to. Finally,
exhausted by stress of emotion, I went to the home of the girl who had
been with us at the concert. She had not yet gone to bed, and her mother
welcomed me so hospitably that I shall be eternally grateful. The next
morning she lent me carfare to go to Elmira, where I had friends with
whom I could stay.

Meantime father had found me gone. He had dressed and tramped up and
down First Street, searching every byway, inquiring whether I had been
seen. When he had returned at daybreak to find me still missing he had
sent word to Mary, who received his message at almost the same time as
one from me, telling her not to worry; I was all right. Both of them
urged me to come back to Corning, and in a few days I did so, taking up
again my responsibilities. Father and I tried to talk it over, but we
could not meet on the old ground; between us a deep silence had fallen.

Father had almost stopped expounding; instead, he was reading more. Debs
had come on his horizon, and the Socialist papers cropping up all over
the country were appearing in the house. From the Free Library, which he
had helped to establish years earlier, he was borrowing Spencer, who was
modern for that time, and other books on sociology.

I had given up encouraging young men to see me, but I, too, was
patronizing the library. My books were fiction. “All nonsense,” father
snorted at the mention of such titles as _Graustark_, _Prisoners of
Hope_, or _Three Musketeers_. The word “novel” was still shocking to
many people, and he classed them all as “love stories.” “Read to
cultivate and uplift your mind. Read what will benefit you in the battle
of life,” he admonished. But I continued my escape from the daily
humdrum to revel in romances, devouring them in the evenings and hiding
them under the mattress during the day.

One noon when I was waiting for the children to come in to lunch I was
buried in _David Harum_, finding it very funny, and did not hear father
enter. He stood ominously in the doorway. I should have felt trapped,
but, instead, without warning and without reason, the old love flamed up
again. I laughed and laughed. I was no longer afraid nor did I care for
his scowls or his silly old notions. The long silence was broken.

“Do listen to this.” And I started reading. The frown began to melt away
and soon father too was chuckling. This was the first laughter that had
been heard in that dreary household since mother’s death. The book
disappeared into his room, and soon thereafter he was caught seeking
more of “that nonsense.”

At last I realized why father had been so different. He had been lonely
for mother, lonely for her love, and doubtless missed her ready
appreciation of his own longings and misgivings. Then, too, he had
always before depended on her to understand and direct us. He was
probably a trifle jealous, though not consciously, because he considered
jealousy an animal trait far beneath him, and refused to recognize it in
himself. Nevertheless, beaus had been sidetracking the affections of his
little girls. So oppressed had he been by his sense of responsibility
that he had slipped in judgment and in so doing slid into the small-town
rut of propriety. His belated discipline, caused by worry and anxiety,
was merely an attempt to guide his children.

I, however, considered the time had passed for such guidance. I had to
step forth by myself along the experimental path of adulthood. Though
the immediate occasion for reading medical books had ceased with
mother’s death, I had never, during these months, lost my deep
conviction that perhaps she might have been saved had I had sufficient
knowledge of medicine. This was linked up with my latent desire to be of
service in the world. The career of a physician seemed to fulfill all my
requirements. I could not at the moment see how the gap in education
from Claverack to medical school was to be bridged. Nevertheless, I
could at least make a start with nursing.

But father, though he proclaimed his belief in perfect independence of
thought and mind, could not approve nursing as a profession, even when I
told him that some of the nicest girls were going into it. “Well, they
won’t be nice long,” he growled. “It’s no sort of work for girls to be
doing.” My argument that he himself had taught us to help other people
had no effect.

Father’s notions, however, were not going to divert me from my
intention; no matter how peaceful the home atmosphere had become, still
I had to get out and try my wings. For six months more we jogged along,
then, just a year after mother had died, Esther asked me to visit her in
New York. I really wanted to train in the city, but her mother knew
someone on the board of the White Plains Hospital, which was just
initiating a school. There I was accepted as a probationer.

                             _Chapter Four_

                    DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE

The old White Plains Hospital, not at all like a modern institution, had
been a three-storied manor house, long deserted because two people had
once been found mysteriously dead in it and thereafter nobody would rent
or buy. The hospital board, scoffing at superstition, had gladly
purchased it at the low price to which it had been reduced. However, in
spite of rearrangements and redecorating, many people in White Plains
went all the way to the Tarrytown Hospital rather than enter the haunted
portals.

Once set in spacious grounds the building was still far back from the
road; a high wall immediately behind it shut off the view of the next
street and nothing could be seen beyond except the roof of what had been
the stable. The surrounding tall trees made it shadowy even in the
daytime. To reach the office you had to cross a broad pillared veranda.
Parlor and sitting room had been thrown together for the male ward, and
an operating room had been tacked on to the rear. The great wide
stairway of fumed oak, lighted at night by low-turned gas jets, swept up
through the lofty ceiling. On the second floor were the female ward and
a few private rooms. The dozen or so nurses slept in the made-over
servants’ quarters under the gambrel roof.

Student nurses in large modern hospitals have little idea what our life
was like in a small one thirty-five years ago. The single bathroom on
each floor was way at the back. We did not have a resident interne, and,
consequently, had to depend mainly upon our own judgment. Since we had
no electricity, we could not ring a bell and have our needs supplied,
and had to use our legs for elevators. A probationer had to learn to
make dressings, bandages, mix solutions, and toil over sterilizing. She
put two inches of water in the wash-boiler, laid a board across the
bricks placed in the bottom, and balanced the laundered linen and gauze
on top. Then, clapping on the lid, she set the water to boiling briskly,
watched the clock, and when the prescribed number of minutes had elapsed
the sterilizing was over.

The great self-confidence with which I entered upon my duties soon
received a slight shock. One of our cases was an old man from the County
Home. He complained chiefly of pains in his leg and, since his condition
was not very serious, the superintendent of nurses left him one
afternoon in my care. This was my first patient. When I heard the
clapper of his little nickeled bell, I hurried with a professional air
to his bedside.

“Missy, will you please bandage up my sore leg? It does me so much
good.”

Having just had my initial lesson in bandaging, I was elated at this
opportunity to try my skill. I set to work with great precision, and,
when I had finished, congratulated myself on a neat job, admiring the
smooth white leg. My first entry went on his record sheet.

A little later the superintendent, in making her rounds, regarded the
old man perplexedly.

“Why have you got your leg bandaged?”

“I asked the nurse to do it for me.”

“Why that leg? It’s the other one that hurts.”

“Oh, she was so kind I didn’t want to stop her.”

I bowed my head in embarrassment, but I was young and eager, and it did
not stay bowed long.

Within a short period I considered myself thoroughly inured to what many
look upon as the unpleasant aspects of nursing; the sight of blood never
made me squeamish and I had watched operations, even on the brain, with
none of the usual sick giddiness. Then one day the driver of a Macy
delivery wagon, who had fallen off the seat, was brought in with a split
nose. I was holding the basin for the young doctor who was stitching it
up, when one of the other nurses said something to tease him. He dropped
his work, leaving the needle and cat-gut thread sticking across the
patient’s nose, and chased her out of the room and down the hall. The
patient, painless under a local anesthetic, gazed mildly after them; but
the idea that doctor and nurse could be so callous as to play jokes
horrified me.

When pursuer and pursued returned they found me in a heap on the floor,
the basin tipped over beside me, instruments and sponges scattered
everywhere. The patient was still sitting quietly waiting for all the
foolishness to stop. I am glad to say this was the one and only time I
ever fainted on duty.

The training, rigid though it was, would have been far less difficult
had it not been for the truly diabolical head nurse. In the morning she
was all smiles, so saintly that you could almost glimpse the halo around
her head. But as the day wore on the demon in her appeared. She could
always think up extra things for you to do to keep you from your regular
afternoon two hours off. This was particularly hard on me because I had
developed tubercular glands and was running a temperature. In my second
year I was operated on, and two weeks later assigned to night duty,
where I stayed for three awful months.

My worst tribulation came during this period. People then seldom went to
hospitals with minor ailments; our patients were commonly the very sick,
requiring a maximum of attention. There was no orderly and I could use
only my left hand because my right shoulder was still bandaged. I took
care of admissions, entered case histories, and, when sharp bells
punctuated the waiting stillness, sometimes one coming before I had time
to answer the first, I pattered hurriedly up and down the three flights,
through the shadows relieved only by the faint red glow from the gas
jets. I suppose adventures were inevitable.

One night an Italian was picked up on the street in a state of almost
complete exhaustion, and brought to the hospital. He was so ill with
suspected typhoid that he should have had a “special,” but instead he
was placed in the ward. An old leather couch stood across the windows,
and whenever a pause came in my duties I lay down. From there I could
keep an eye on my new patient. Sick as he was he insisted on making the
long trip through the ward to the bathroom. I could not explain how
unwise this was, because he could not understand a word of English. He
must have reeled out of his bed between thirty and forty times.

Just as the early spring dawn came creeping in the window behind me I
grew drowsy. I was on the point of dozing off when some premonition
warned me and I opened my eyelids enough to see the man reach under his
pillow, take something out cautiously, glide from his bed. Spellbound I
watched him slithering soft-footedly as he edged his way towards me. I
seemed to be hypnotized with sleep and could not stir. He came nearer
and nearer with eyes fixed, hands behind him. Suddenly I snapped into
duty, arose quickly, ordered him back to bed, and ran ahead to
straighten his sheets and pillows, not realizing my danger until he
loomed over me, his knife in his hand. Before he could thrust I grabbed
his arm and held it. Though I was small-boned I had good muscles, and he
was very ill.

Meanwhile, another patient snatched up his bell and rang, and rang and
rang. Nobody answered. The nurses were too far away to hear; the other
patients in the ward were unable to help me. But the man quickly used up
what little energy he had, and I was able to get the knife from him,
push him back in bed, and take his temperature. I assumed he had
suddenly become delirious.

About seven o’clock I answered a summons to the front door and found
three policemen who wanted to know whether we had an Italian patient.
“Indeed we have,” I answered feelingly and called the superintendent.

When the red tape was unwound, I learned that my Italian belonged to a
gang which had been hiding in a cave between Tarrytown and White Plains,
holding up passers-by. Amongst them they had committed five murders. The
others had all been hunted down, but this man’s collapse had temporarily
covered his whereabouts. The attack on me had apparently been merely
incidental to his attempt at escape through the open window behind me.
He was carried off to the County Hospital Jail, and I was not sorry to
see him go.

After this incident an orderly was employed and, though he was allowed
to sleep at night, it was reassuring to know he could be called in an
emergency. The emergency soon arose. A young man of about twenty-five,
of well-to-do parents, was admitted as an alcoholic. I remember that I
was impressed by the softness of his handshake when I greeted him. He
had the first symptoms of delirium tremens but he was now perfectly
conscious and needed no more than routine attention.

Sometime in the night the new arrival asked me to get him a drink of
water. When I came back into the room and offered it to him he knocked
me into the corner ten feet away. As my head banged against the wall, he
leaped out of bed after me and reached down for my throat. Though
half-stunned and off my feet, I yet had more strength than the man whose
flabby muscles refused to obey his will. The patient in the adjoining
bed rang and in a few moments the orderly came to my assistance. Between
us we got the poor crazed youth into a strait jacket. The doctor who was
summoned could do nothing and in the morning the young man mercifully
died.

To differentiate between things real and things imaginary was not always
easy at nighttime. One morning about two o’clock I was writing my case
histories in the reception office on the ground floor just off the
veranda. Both window and curtain behind my back were up about ten inches
to let in the cool, moist air. Abruptly I had a feeling that eyes were
staring at me. I could not have explained why; I had heard no sound, but
I was certain some human being was somewhere about. Anybody who had come
on legitimate business would have spoken. Perhaps it was another patient
with a knife. Should I sit still? Should I look behind me?

I turned my head to the window, and there an ugly, grinning face with a
spreading, black mustache was peering in at me. It might have been
disembodied; all I could see was this extraordinary face, white against
the inky background. It was not a patient, not anyone in my charge.
Relief was immediate and action automatic. I seized the long window
pole, twice as tall as I, dashed to the outer door, and shooed him off
the veranda. He ran for the outer gate while I brandished my weapon
after him.

Such instantaneous responses must have been the result of having in
childhood sent fears about their business before they could gather
momentum. Now I could usually act without having to think very much
about them or be troubled in retrospect. They were all in the day’s work
of the night nurse.

Probably the fact that I was low in vitality made me more susceptible to
mental than physical influences. Realistic doctors and stern head nurses
tried to keep tales of the old house from the probationers, but not very
successfully. When the colored patients could not sleep they used to
tell us weird stories, and with rolling eyes solemnly affirmed they were
true. One old darky woman, hearing the hoot owls begin their mournful
“too-whoo, too-whoo,” would sit straight up in her bed and whisper,
“Suppose dat callin’ me? Hit’s callin’ someone in dis hospital.”

Again and again after the owls’ hooting either somebody in the hospital
died, or was brought in to die from an accident. Reason told me this was
pure coincidence, but it began to get on my nerves.

And then stranger events, for which I could find no explanation,
followed. Once when I was making my rounds a little after midnight, I
turned into the room occupied by the tubercular valet of a member of the
Iselin family. I had expected him to be sleeping quietly because he was
merely there to rest up before being sent back home to England, but he
was awake and asked for ice. I started for the refrigerator, which was
two flights down in the cellar. But at the top of the stairs I suddenly
stopped short—“One—Two—Three!” I heard dull, distinct knocks directly
under the stairway.

Not one, single, tangible thing near by could have made those sounds. In
the space of a few seconds I took an inventory of the importance of my
life as compared to the proper care of my patient. I had to walk
deliberately down those steps, not knowing what might be lying in wait
for me below. As I stepped on the first tread the same knocks came
again—“One—Two—Three!”

I tried to hurry but it seemed to me that each foot had tons of iron
attached to it. The little red devils of night lights blinked at me and
seemed to make the shadows thicker in the corners. But nothing clutched
me from the dim and ghostly hall. I got down those steps somehow and
passed through the dining room into the kitchen. There I paused again.
Should I take a butcher knife with me? “No, I won’t do that,” I answered
myself resolutely, and started for the cellar stairs.

For the third time came the knocking. Glancing to right and left, my
back against the dark, I crept down, reached the refrigerator, broke off
some chunks of ice with trembling hands, put them in a bowl, steeled
myself while I chopped them into still finer pieces, and set out on the
return, my feet much lighter going up than down.

I had been away only a brief while altogether, but the patient, for no
apparent cause, had had a hemorrhage, and died in a few minutes.

Many times after that I heard these nocturnal sounds, usually overhead.
They began to seem more like footsteps—“tap, tap, tap, tap,”—very quick
and a bit muffled. Soon I was not sleeping well in the daytime.

One morning I asked at breakfast table, “Who was walking around last
night?”

“I wasn’t.” “Not I.” “Certainly not me,” came a chorus. “What makes you
think someone was up?”

“I distinctly heard footsteps the full length of the third floor.”

“What time?”

“Around four o’clock.”

But nobody admitted to having been up. “Then one of you must have been
walking in your sleep,” I insisted.

The nurse who had preceded me on night duty timidly contributed, “I
always heard somebody. I didn’t want to say anything about it for fear
you’d think I was queer.”

Towards morning of the very next night when I was in the second floor
ward, I heard the patter again above my head. I ran upstairs to the
nurses’ quarters as fast as I could and looked down the corridor. Every
door was tight shut. I tore down two flights to the first floor. The
noise came once more above me. Back to the second floor. All patients
were in their beds. I asked the only wakeful one, “Did you get up just
now?”

“No.”

“Did anybody else get up?”

“No.”

Some nights went by quietly. But I heard the noises often enough to
become truly concerned for fear I might be imagining things. I said to
one of the older nurses, “I’m going to wake you up and see whether you
hear them too.”

“I’ll sit up with you,” she offered.

“No, I’ll call you. They never come until almost morning.”

The next time, at the first tap, I hurried to her room, shook her awake,
led her to the floor below, “There, do you hear it?”

Her expression was confirmation enough.

Leaving her I raced down another flight, and waited. In a moment the
“Tap, tap, tap, tap” came again from overhead. Up I went. She said she
had heard it all right but it had come from over _her_ head. At least my
senses were not playing me tricks. My accounts were given greater
credence, and other nurses sometimes interrupted their slumbers to
listen.

One of my companions told a young and intelligent doctor on the staff
that I had better be taken off night duty before I had a nervous
breakdown. Though he thought this was girlish nonsense, he could see I
was being seriously affected, and anyhow the strain of three continuous
months at such a hard task was far too much. Another nurse relieved me.

After my second glandular operation I was placed in one of the private
rooms on the upper floor. I had not come through very well, and this
same doctor remained in the hospital all night to be on call. Being
restless, I woke up, only to hear the identical noises which had haunted
me for so long. I called him and exclaimed, “There it is. Don’t you hear
it?”

He did, but confidently he strode upstairs to the nurses’ floor. I knew
he would find nothing. When he came back, I asked, “Did you see anyone?”

“No. Apparently everybody was asleep. I looked in all the rooms.”

Immediately the raps came again. He moved a little faster to get
downstairs. In a few minutes he put his head back in the door. “You’re
in bed? You haven’t been up?” I assured him I had not moved, knowing
well he must have heard them as always I had, from above.

Though still believing somebody was walking around the place, the doctor
by this time was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, and
returned every night for a week. But the sound was a will-o’-the-wisp.
He never could catch up with it. He was so eager to exhaust every
possibility that he even brought the matter before the board. One of
them patronizingly explained that it was probably the echo from some rat
in the walls; they were in the habit of dismissing thus lightly the
superstitions which clung about the old house.

The doctor continued his detective work until one day he appeared in
great good humor. From the rear windows he pointed to the roof which
rose beyond the high back wall. “I’ve found it. That stable is built on
the same timbers as this house. When some horse grows restless towards
morning he stamps and the vibration is carried through them underground
to this building. Now do you believe in ghosts?”

Life was by no means so serious as all this sounds. Amelia had followed
me into the hospital and we continued our gay times together. For that
matter nursing itself often presented amusing aspects. The supply of
registered nurses was very small, and in our last year of training we
were sent out on private cases, thus seeing both the highlights and
lowlights of life, which prepared us well in experience.

One which had romantic overtones took place immediately after Howard
Willett had transferred his house-party from Aiken, South Carolina, to
Gedney Farms Manor in White Plains. The indisposition of young Eugene
Sugney Reynal was pronounced scarlet fever. The contagion began
spreading among the guests and servants, and Dr. Julius Schmid, old and
honored, a noteworthy figure in the community and also our chief of
staff, detailed three of us nurses for service there, practically
turning the place into a hospital for five weeks.

My special charge was Adelaide Fitzgerald, Reynal’s fiancée, but as
necessity arose we shifted around. Reynal’s condition grew steadily
worse. One morning at daybreak when the patient was almost in a coma Dr.
Schmid sent for the priest to administer extreme unction, and said to
me, “You’d better get Miss Fitzgerald and tell her there’s very little
hope.”

She knelt by his bed, “Gene,” she called to him, “Gene, we’re going to
be married—right now.”

Reynal was as near death as a man could be, but her voice reached into
his subconscious and summoned him back. Another nurse and I, hastily
called upon to act as bridesmaids, stood in starched and rustling white
beside the bed. It was extraordinary to watch; Reynal seemed to shake
himself alive until he was conscious enough to respond “I do” to the
priest who had arrived to perform quite a different office.

As an anti-climax to all the excitement, and to my intense disgust, I
myself came down with a mild attack of scarlet fever. I was so
embarrassed that I went right on working and did not take to my bed
until I actually began to peel.

My usual cases offered drama of another sort. Often I was called in the
middle of the night on a maternity case, perhaps ten miles away from the
hospital, where I had to sterilize the water and boil the forceps over a
wood fire in the kitchen stove while the doctor scrubbed up as best he
could. Many times labor terminated before he could arrive and I had to
perform the delivery by myself.

To see a baby born is one of the greatest experiences that a human being
can have. Birth to me has always been more awe-inspiring than death. As
often as I have witnessed the miracle, held the perfect creature with
its tiny hands and tiny feet, each time I have felt as though I were
entering a cathedral with prayer in my heart.

There is so little knowledge in the world compared with what there is to
know. Always I was deeply affected by the trust patients, rich or poor,
male or female, old or young, placed in their nurses. When we appeared
they seemed to say, “Ah, here is someone who can tell us.” Mothers asked
me pathetically, plaintively, hopefully, “Miss Higgins, what should I do
not to have another baby right away?” I was at a loss to answer their
intimate questions, and passed them along to the doctor, who more often
than not snorted, “She ought to be ashamed of herself to talk to a young
girl about things like that.”

All such problems were thus summarily shoved aside. We had one woman in
our hospital who had had several miscarriages and six babies, each by a
different father. Doctors and nurses knew every time she went out that
she would soon be back again, but it was not their business or anybody’s
business; it was just “natural.”

To be polished off neatly, the nurses in training were assigned to one
of the larger city hospitals in which to work during the last three or
six months of our course. Mine was the Manhattan Eye and Ear at
Forty-first Street and Park Avenue, across the street from the Murray
Hill Hotel, and I welcomed the chance to see up-to-date equipment and
clockwork discipline. My new environment was considerably less harsh and
intense, more comfortable and leisurely.

At one of the frequent informal dances held there my doctor partner
received a message—not a call, but a caller. His architect wanted to go
over blueprints with him. “Come along,” he invited. “See whether you
think my new house is going to be as fine as I do.”

The architect was introduced. “This is William Sanger.”

The three of us bent over the plans. The doctor was the only one unaware
of the sudden electric quality of the atmosphere.

At seven-thirty the next morning when I went out for my usual
“constitutional,” Bill Sanger was on the doorstep. He had that type of
romantic nature which appealed to me, and had been waiting there all
night. We took our walk together that day and regularly for many days
thereafter, learning about each other, exploring each other’s minds, and
discovering a community of ideas and ideals. His fineness fitted in with
my whole destiny, if I can call it such, just as definitely as my
hospital training.

I found Bill’s mother a lovely person—artistic, musical, and highly
cultured. His father had been a wealthy sheep rancher in Australia. When
you travel anywhere from there, you practically have to go round the
world, and on his way to San Francisco he had passed through Central
Europe. In a German town he had fallen in love with the Mayor’s youngest
daughter, then only fourteen. When she was of marriageable age he had
returned for her, and it was from this talented mother that Bill had
derived his fondness for music and desire to paint.

Bill was an architect only by profession; he was pure artist by
temperament. Although his heart was not in mechanical drawing, he did it
well. Stanford White once told me he was one of the six best draftsmen
in New York. He confided to me his dream of eventually being able to
leave architecture behind and devote himself to painting, particularly
murals. I had had instilled in me a feeling for the natural relationship
between color and symmetry of line, and sympathized not merely with his
aspirations but was intensely proud of his work. Some day we were going
to be married, and as soon as we had saved enough we would go to Paris,
whither the inspiration of the great French painters was summoning
artists from all over the world.

These plans were nebulous and had nothing to do with my abrupt departure
from New York. One afternoon, about four o’clock, I was standing under a
skylight putting drops in the eyes of a convalescent patient.
Unexpectedly, inexplicably, the glass began to fall apart. Almost by
instinct I pulled my patient under the lintel of the door. A great blast
followed and pandemonium was let loose; the ruined skylight went
crashing down the stairs, plaster and radiators tumbled from the walls,
doors fell out, windows cracked.

I rushed to the bed of the man who needed my first attention. He had
been operated on for a cataract only a few hours previously and my
orders had been not to let him move too soon lest the fluid in his eye
run out and damage his sight permanently. But he with the other
terrified patients was already on his feet.

Rounding up all those under my care and checking their names took
several minutes, and while I was still trying to quiet them, ambulances
from other hospitals came clanging up. By the time I had ushered my
charges down to the ground floor, a way had been cleared through the
debris of fallen brick and wood. Since mine were not stretcher cases I
was able to crowd ten of them into one ambulance, and we were taken to
the New York Hospital. Not until I had them all safely installed did I
learn what had happened to our building. A tremendous explosion in the
new Park Avenue subway had practically demolished it, and it had to be
evacuated.

I returned to White Plains, where Bill came up frequently to see me. On
one of our rambles he idly pulled at some vines on a stone wall, and
then, with his hands, tilted my face for a kiss. The next morning, to my
mortification, four telltale finger marks were outlined on my cheek by
poison ivy blisters. The day after that, my face was swollen so that my
eyes were tight shut, and I was sick for two months; since my training
was finished, I was sent home to convalesce.

                             _Chapter Five_

                        CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON

For a while I stayed at Corning, and then went back to New York to start
nursing in earnest. On one of my free afternoons in August, Bill and I
went for a drive, and he suggested we stop in at the house of a friend
of his who was a minister. All had been prepared. License and rice were
waiting. And so we were married.

The first year is half taken up with love and half with planning a
future together which is to endure forever. These dreams feed youthful
ambitions, but they seldom can come true in their entirety. In our case
the obstacles arose with undue speed.

I was not well. I was paying the cost of long hours in mother’s closely
confined room and of continuous overwork in the hospital. Medical advice
was to go West to live, but I would not go without Bill, and he had a
commission which kept him in New York. Accordingly, I was packed off to
a small semi-sanitarium near Saranac where the great Dr. Trudeau,
specialist in pulmonary tuberculosis, was consulted.

Existence there was depressing. A man might be talking to me one day,
full of life and spirit and hope, and the next morning not appear. The
dead were ordinarily removed in the quiet of the night, and the doctors
made no comment. In this gloomy environment I rested, preparing myself
for motherhood. The flood of treatises on child psychology had not yet
started, and even the books on the care and feeding of infants were few.
But I read whatever I could.

Just before it was time for the baby to be born I returned to the little
apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue at 149th Street, then practically
suburban. Taking every precaution, we had engaged four doctors in a row.
Dr. Schmid had said he would perform the ceremony unless it came at
night, in which case his assistant would have to take charge. The
assistant had provided that, if he were not available, his assistant
would be on call, and this assistant had another assistant to assist
him.

When towards three o’clock one morning I felt the first thin, fine pains
of warning, Bill tried one after the other of our obstetricians—not one
could be located. He had to run around the corner to the nearest general
practitioner. Due almost as much to this young doctor’s inexperience as
to my physical state, the ordeal was unusually hard, but the baby
Stuart, given Amelia’s family name, was perfectly healthy, strong, and
sturdy. I looked upon this as a victory, although it was only partial,
because I had to go right back to the mountains. It was a wrench to
leave again so soon and at such a time, but I could not believe it would
be for long.

With Stuart and a nurse I took rooms in a friendly farmhouse near a
small Adirondack village; I did not want the baby in the midst of sick
people, and, moreover, I was not welcome at Saranac itself, since Dr.
Trudeau did not like to have in residence patients whose illness had
progressed beyond a certain stage. One of the most important parts of
the treatment was stuffing with food. I was being filled with the then
recognized remedy, creosote, and gulped capsule after capsule, which
broke my appetite utterly. Still I had to pour down milk and swallow
eggs, and always I had to rest and rest and rest.

At the end of eight months I was worse instead of better, and had no
interest in living. Nan and Bill’s mother were summoned, and two of Dr.
Trudeau’s associates came to see me. They advised that I should go
nearer Saranac and be separated from all personal responsibilities.

“What would you yourself like to do?” they asked.

“Nothing.”

“Where would you like to go?”

“Nowhere.”

“Would you like to have the baby sent to your brother, or would you
rather have your mother-in-law take it?”

“I don’t care.”

To every suggestion I was negative. I was not even interested in my
baby.

The two doctors left. The younger, however, apparently not satisfied
with the professional attitude, returned almost immediately, not so much
in a medical capacity as one of anxious friendliness. I was still
sitting in the same state of listlessness. He laid his hand on my
shoulder quietly, but I had all the feeling of being violently shaken.
“Don’t be like this!” he exclaimed. “Don’t let yourself get into such a
mental condition. Do something! Want something! You’ll never get well if
you keep on this way.”

I could not sleep that night. I had been rudely jolted from my stupor by
the understanding doctor. Obviously preparations were being made for a
lingering illness which would terminate in death. But if I had to die I
would rather be with those I loved than disappear in the night as a part
of the cold routine.

As the first glimmer of dawn appeared through the curtains I got up and
stared at the steadily ticking clock. It was not yet five. I dressed
quickly, then tiptoed into the bedroom where the nurse and baby were
slumbering soundly. I roused her and told her to pack up; we were going
back to New York. She looked up in drowsy dismay, but obeyed meekly. The
farmer hitched up his horse and we jogged along all the way to the
station in the early summer morning, bright with sunshine and cheery
with birds.

Bill was waiting at the Grand Central Terminal, quite naturally
perplexed. He had that morning received two telegrams, one saying I was
to be removed to Saranac at once, pending his approval as to the care of
the baby by relatives, and the other from me asking him to meet me
because I was coming home. I told him as best I could the reasons for my
sudden decision. Though I probably sounded incoherent he understood and,
instead of scolding, soothed me tenderly and exclaimed, “You did just
the right thing. I won’t let you die.”

“And don’t make me eat! Don’t even mention food to me!” He promised to
let me have my own way.

At the small family hotel in Yonkers in which we settled, I lived pretty
much by myself, keeping the baby and everyone else away from me; I had
by now learned the dangers of contact in spreading tuberculosis. Once
free from the horrors of invalidism and comforted by love and devotion I
began to regain a normal interest in life, and by the end of three weeks
had recovered from my hysterical rejection of food.

As soon as I was strong enough we started to explore Westchester County
for a home site. We wanted something more than a mere house. We wanted
space, we wanted a view, we wanted a garden. At Hastings-on-Hudson we
found what we sought. There on fifty acres of hillside overlooking the
river about ten families—doctors, teachers, college professors,
scientists—had combined to construct the sort of dwellings they liked in
the environment they considered best suited for their children. We too
had in mind a family and a comfortable, serene, suburban existence, and
we joined this Columbia Colony, as it was called, renting a small
cottage until we could build our own.

The other wives and I spent our afternoons conferring over the momentous
problems of servants, gardens, and schools. If we went to town, we took
the children with us, fitting them with special shoes at Coward’s,
introducing them to museums, libraries, or art galleries. Life centered
around them. When Stuart and his little friends began to ask questions,
“Where do babies come from?” I collected them and tried to answer, using
the simple phenomena of nature as illustrations—flowers, frogs, fish,
and animals. I still consider this approach has its place with many
children, although modern sex educationists may smile at this method,
thinking it old-fashioned.

None of the colony played cards. Instead, the women formed a literary
club where we read papers on George Eliot, Browning, and Shakespeare, as
well as on some current authors, and we had occasional political
discussions. Out of this grew the Women’s Club of Hastings.

It was all very pleasant, and at first I was busy and contented. The
endless details of housekeeping did not seem to me drudgery; conquering
minor crises was exciting. Though I was never slavishly domestic, I was
inclined to be slavishly maternal. Bill was a devoted husband. He took
care of me in the little ways—starting for the train and coming back to
put his head in the door and call, “It’s awfully cold. Don’t go out
without your wrap,” or, if it were hot, he offered, “Give me your list
and I’ll send up the groceries.”

I was again leading the life of an artist’s family. Bill was a hard
worker; I can rarely remember one evening of just reading together. I
did the reading and he drew or painted. But I was never quite sure
whether we were rich or poor. He possessed the finest qualities of
creative genius, and with them some of its limitations and liabilities.
When he was paid for a big commission he brought me orchids and
embroidered Japanese robes which I had no occasion to wear, and filled
the house with luxuries. This did not go with my practical sense. If the
grocery account were long unpaid, I protested, “They’re beautiful. Thank
you, but can we afford them?”

“Certainly,” and out of his pocket came tickets for the opera or
theater, his chief pleasures.

“But we shouldn’t,” I remonstrated as I ruffled a sheaf of bills before
him.

Nevertheless, we used the tickets.

Every architect wants to embody his ideas at least once in his own home.
Ours was “modern” in its square simplicity and unadorned surfaces of
stuccoed hollow tile, even being called a show house; people came from
afar to study it. It was designed to have a large nursery opening on a
veranda overlooking the Hudson, a studio, a bath with each bedroom,
fireplaces everywhere, and one especially capacious in the big library.
From this room the open stairway, forking at the lower landing with a
few steps leading down into the kitchen, reached up the wall to the
second story.

The house took long to complete, but it was fun. The moment Bill
finished his work in New York he was back at it. Theoretically he
supervised at night and the builder built by day. But when an arch did
not turn out to be a perfect arch, seizing an ax, he chopped out part of
it, usually pounding his fingers in the process. The neighbors, careful
of their pennies, held their ears at the clatter and clamor and
exclaimed, “There goes another partition.” When the contractor returned
in the morning he found his previous day’s work demolished. Some
portions were entirely done over two or three times.

The color on the woodwork we applied ourselves by artificial light,
plumped on our knees or stretching high overhead. If the effect were
wrong, we had to match it all up again. Evening after evening we labored
on the rose window which was to crown with radiance the head of the
staircase. Far into the night we leaded and welded together every
glowing petal. Our fingers were cut, our nerves were irritated, our eyes
fatigued. But tireless love went into the composition of this rose
window which symbolized the stability of our future. We were aiming at
permanence and security, and our efforts seemed to be fused into
indestructible unity. It was our keystone of beauty.

After the tedious worrying over details we suddenly became too impatient
to wait any more, and, in spite of the raw condition of the house, late
one February afternoon of half-sleet, half-rain, a moving van pulled up
to our front door. Through the semi-twilight boxes, crates, and barrels
were carted in.

The four-year-old Stuart was not well. We put him early to bed, and Bill
stirred up a roaring fire in the furnace against the increasing cold.
Then with hammer and claw we turned to our treasures, which we had not
seen for such a time. It was like opening packages on Christmas morning.
We had almost forgotten the tapestry Mary had sent from Persia, the rug
from Egypt, Bill’s paintings. “What’s in this box? Oh, look here! See
what I’ve found!” A flood of color inundated us. We tried out their
warmth against our immaculate walls and floors. I was carrying my second
baby and was tired hours before I wanted to stop. As I climbed up to bed
I gazed down happily on the litter below.

Some time later I heard dimly through my sleep a pounding, and woke to
realize it was the German maid at the door, crying, “Madam. Come! Fire
in the big stove!”

We jumped out of bed. Acrid smoke was in our nostrils, and we were swept
by the horror of fire by night. Bill shouted to me, “Get right out! I’ve
got to give the alarm.”

Away he rushed in his pajamas; there was no telephone within half a
mile. I seized Stuart from his crib, bedclothes and all. This took only
a few seconds, but the kitchen was already ablaze and flames were
leaping up the staircase. I pulled the blanket over his head and started
cautiously down, hugging the outer side. The blistering treads crunched
as they gave under my feet, but did not collapse until I had reached the
smoke-filled library.

The family across the street welcomed us in. When I had tucked Stuart
into an impromptu bed I went to watch. Not merely was the fire engine
trying to get up the icy hill, two steps forward and one back, but the
whole village was accompanying it to help organize a bucket brigade.

The clouds had cleared and the bright moon was shining on the strange
scene. The weather had turned much colder, and the rain had frozen into
crystals which glittered on the branches of trees and shrubbery. It was
unbelievably fantastic, and in that unreal setting the flames, as though
directed by devilish intent, spurted only through our prized rose
window. I stood silently regarding the result of months of work and love
slowly disintegrate. Petal by petal it succumbed to the licking tongues
of fire; one by one they fell into the gray-white snow. Fitting them
together had taken so long; now relentlessly they were being pulled
apart. A thing of beauty had perished in a few moments.

It was as though a chapter of my life had been brought to a close, and I
was neither disappointed nor regretful. On the contrary, I was conscious
of a certain relief, of a burden lifted. In that instant I learned the
lesson of the futility of material substances. Of what great importance
were they spiritually if they could go so quickly? Pains, thirsts,
heartaches could be put into the creation of something external which in
one sweep could be taken from you. With the destruction of the window,
my scale of suburban values was consumed. I could never again pin my
faith on concrete things; I must build on myself alone. I hoped I should
continue to have lovely objects around me, but I could also be happy
without them.

The next day was filled with neighbors coming to condole and offer help,
and with insurance adjusters peering about and questioning. They found
the too-heavy fire in the furnace had overheated the pipes around which
the asbestos had not yet been wrapped. We lost a good deal because,
although the house was covered, the insurance on the furniture had not
been shifted to its new location, and, moreover, many of our possessions
were irreplaceable, their worth having lain in the sentiment attached to
them.

A personal catastrophe may in the end prove to be a public benefit.
People in the community are brought together in sympathy, and learn by
the experience of others how to protect themselves. After our mischance
every householder in Columbia Colony began to look to his furnace and
insure his home.

Our walls were fireproof, and much of the house could be saved, but it
was really more disheartening than complete demolition would have been,
for in the latter case we could have started to rebuild from the
beginning. I admired Bill greatly for the resolute way he set about the
painful business again. He went over every inch, here saying, “This
board is all right,” and there tearing out black pieces of charred wood.
It was a dirty job, but he stuck to it. Nevertheless, paint and stain as
we would, we could not quite get rid of the unmistakable and
ineradicable odor which clings around a burned building, almost like the
smell of death.

Next summer we moved in once more. But the house was never the same.
Never could I recapture that first flush of joy.

Grant, my second son, was born almost immediately. I loved having a baby
to tend again, and wanted at least four more as quickly as my health
would permit. I could not wait another five years. I yearned especially
for a daughter, and twenty months later my wish came true. After Peggy’s
birth, the doctor went downstairs and saw Bill sitting in the library
with Grant in his arms and tears welling from his eyes.

“Why, what’s the matter? There’s a nice little girl upstairs.”

“I’m thinking of this poor little boy. Margaret has wanted a girl so
long—now she’ll have no room in her heart for him.”

Bill’s fears were groundless. Grant was not supplanted, but Peggy was so
satisfactory a baby that I was not particularly disappointed when my
illness cropped up again and the doctor said my family must end at this
point. I was quite content with things as they were.

Even as a little fellow, the sandy-haired, square-built Stuart was
practical, loved sports, and had a reasoning, logical mind, always
experimenting with life as well as with mechanical things. A thorough
Higgins, he had to find out for himself and prove it. He used to stamp
and scold when presented with a chore, such as mowing the lawn or
bringing in wood for the fireplaces, but his rebellions were brief, and,
when he realized the inevitable, he turned it into a game. “Come on
over,” he hailed his friends. “We’ve lots to do. Let’s get to it! We’re
going to have great fun.”

The other boys, taken in by his enthusiastic invitations, also believed
that mowing the lawn or bringing in wood were among the best games
invented.

Grant was more self-conscious than Stuart, and more inarticulate, but
more affectionate. He followed the baby Peggy slavishly. They were
usually hand in hand, and Grant’s darkness contrasted with her bright,
blond hair. From the time she could talk they referred to themselves as
“we.” Peggy was the most independent child I have ever seen. At three
she knew what she wanted and where she was going. She was vivacious,
mischievous, laughing—the embodiment of all my hopes in a daughter.

Stuart typified the scientist, Grant the artist, Peggy the doer. It was
maternally gratifying to wonder whether they would carry out these
propensities in their later lives.

I enjoyed my literary activities along with my children, and Bill
encouraged me. “You go ahead and finish your writing. I’ll get the
dinner and wash the dishes.” And what is more he did it, drawing the
shades, however, so that nobody could see him. He thought I should make
a career of it instead of limiting myself to small-town interests.

Both Bill and I were feeling what amounted to a world hunger, the pull
and haul towards wider horizons. For him Paris was still over the next
hill. I was not able to express my discontent with the futility of my
present course, but after my experience as a nurse with fundamentals
this quiet withdrawal into the tame domesticity of the pretty riverside
settlement seemed to be bordering on stagnation. I felt as though we had
drifted into a swamp, but we would not wait for the tide to set us free.

It was hopeless to emphasize the importance of practical necessities to
an artist, and consequently I decided to resume nursing in order to earn
my share. We had spent years building our home and used it only for a
brief while. I was glad to leave when, in one of our financial doldrums,
we plunged back into the rushing stream of New York life.

                             _Chapter Six_