Title Page
The Author
Maine to the Rescue
The Coming of the King
The Golden Windows
The Shed Chamber
The Green Satin Gown
The Scarlet Leaves
Don Alonzo
About the Publisher
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Autobiograhical Sketch from the Junior Book of Authors, 1935.
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DEAR JUNIOR READERS,
I am asked to tell you something about myself and my work.
I must begin with my father and mother, since without them I should neither have worked nor existed. Dr. Samuel G. Howe, the friend and teacher of the blind, the man who first brought a blind deaf-mute (Laura Bridgman) into communion with ordinary persons; Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"; these were my dear and honored parents.
I was born in Boston, Massachusets, on February 27, 1850. I had three sisters and two brothers, and much of our childhood was passed in a delightful old house set in a lovely garden in a suburb of Boston. I have described this place, which my mother named Green Peace, in When I Was Your Age and in Five Little Mice in a Mouse-Trap, and in several books besides. I loved the place so much, my thoughts have always lived in it more or less, wherever else my home might be. Lawton's Valley, near Newport, where we spent our summers, was hardly less dear to me. In these two houses we children lived, and played, very happily. My brother Henry was nearest me in age, and we were constant playmates. We loved Mayne Reid's books; much of our playtime was given to hunting elephants and rhinoceroses (which other persons did not see) in the garden, and we had wonderful adventures under the dining-room table.
My mother had a beautiful voice, and sang to us a great deal: I knew many songs and ballads of various nations before I could read. I learned them almost without knowing it, and ever since then I have gone on learning by heart—memorizing, it is called today—good poetry, the love of which has been one of the precious treasures of my life. If there were a tune to which the poem might be sung, so much the better; if not, my mother might make one; so singing, as well as memorizing, became a part of me.
When we were little, we had governesses and masters; then in due time we went to school. Always, our parents were the most delightful of teachers, playmates and companions.
The first of my own writing that I remember was a story called "Lost and Found," written when I was ten; it may be found in When I Was Your Age. I cannot read it now without laughing, but it was serious enough to me then.
I never thought seriously of writing till after my marriage to Henry Richards, in 1871; not indeed till after the birth of my first baby. I began to sing to her as my mother had sung to me; first the dear songs and ballads: "Old Crummles," "Fair Eleanor," and the rest; then jingles of my own, which came bubbling up as if from some spring of nonsense. Often they seemed to come without any conscious effort of mine.
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THE OWL AND THE EEL and the Warming-pan
They went to call on the soap-fat man!
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OF COURSE THEY DID; what else would they do?
In 1873, St. Nicholas came into being. My husband said, "Why not send some of your rhymes to the new magazine?" And that was the beginning.
Seven babies came; the songs bubbled and jingled. By and by the children wanted stories as well as songs. I wrote Five Mice in a Mouse-Trap, and the two "Toto" books, and When I Was Your Age; besides the two books of rhymes, Sketches and Scraps by Papa and Mamma (my husband making the delightful pictures) and In My Nursery.
By and by again, my babies were big girls and boys; I wrote Captain January and my first "girl book," Queen Hildegarde. Some scenes in this were laid in Lawton's Valley. In other "Hildegardes," and the "Margaret" books, I made houses out of Green Peace, and Vaucluse, a beautiful place not far from the Valley. I put in portraits here and there, too: some of them real ones; others mere suggestions, a glance here, a word there. When I read them over, as I do now and then, I seem to go back through the years to when the children were growing. One child said this, and another said that; this one had just such a dress, and that one went to school (call her the "Snowy Owl" if you like—she will not mind!); and these two little ones swung on the. gate.
No one can possibly imagine how I have enjoyed my writing. It was work, but it was also the most delightful play. I am still writing. I have had a very long and very happy life. I hope you will all live as long and be as happy.
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"Oh, dear! oh, dear! It's snowing!"
"Hurrah! hurrah! It's snowing!"
Massachusetts looked up from her algebra. She was the head of the school. She was rosy and placid as the apple she was generally eating when not in class. Apples and algebra were the things she cared most about in school life.
"Whence come these varying cries?" she said, taking her feet off the fender and trying to be interested, though her thoughts went on with "a 1/6 b =" etc.
"Oh, Virginia is grumbling because it is snowing, and Maine is feeling happy over it, that's all!" said Rhode Island, the smallest girl in Miss Wayland's school.
"Poor Virginia! It is rather hard on you to have snow in March, when you have just got your box of spring clothes from home."
"It is atrocious!" said Virginia, a tall, graceful, languishing girl. "How could they send me to such a place, where it is winter all the spring? Why, at home the violets are in blossom, the trees are coming out, the birds singing—"
"And at home," broke in Maine, who was a tall girl, too, but lithe and breezy as a young willow, with flyaway hair and dancing brown eyes, "at home all is winter—white, beautiful, glorious winter, with ice two or three feet thick on the rivers, and great fields and fields of snow, all sparkling in the sun, and the sky a vast sapphire overhead, without a speck. Oh, the glory of it, the splendor of it! And here—here it is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. A wretched, makeshift season, which they call winter because they don't know what else to call it."
"Come! come!" said Old New York, who was seventeen years old and had her own ideas of dignity. "Let us alone, you two outsiders! We are neither Eskimos nor Hindoos, it is true, but the Empire State would not change climates with either of you."
"No, indeed!" chimed in Young New York, who always followed her leader in everything, from opinions down to hair-ribbons.
"No, indeed!" repeated Virginia, with languid scorn. "Because you couldn't get any one to change with you, my dear."
Young New York reddened. "You are so disagreeable, Virginia!" she said. "I am sure I am glad I don't have to live with you all the year round—"
"Personal remarks!" said Massachusetts, looking up calmly. "One cent, Young New York, for the missionary fund. Thank you! Let me give you each half an apple, and you will feel better."
She solemnly divided a large red apple, and gave the halves to the two scowling girls, who took them, laughing in spite of themselves, and went their separate ways.
"Why didn't you let them have it out, Massachusetts?" said Maine, laughing. "You never let any one have a good row."
"Slang!" said Massachusetts, looking up again. "One cent for the missionary fund. You will clothe the heathen at this rate, Maine. That is the fourth cent to-day."
"'Row' isn't slang!" protested Maine, feeling, however, for her pocket-book.
"Vulgar colloquial!" returned Massachusetts, quietly. "And perhaps you would go away now, Maine, or else be quiet. Have you learned—"
"No, I haven't!" said Maine. "I will do it very soon, dear Saint Apple. I must look at the snow a little more."
Maine went dancing off to her room, where she threw the window open and looked out with delight. The girl caught up a double handful and tossed it about, laughing for pure pleasure. Then she leaned out to feel the beating of the flakes on her face.
"Really quite a respectable little snowstorm!" she said, nodding approval at the whirling white drift. "Go on, and you will be worth while, my dear." She went singing to her algebra, which she could not have done if it had not been snowing.
The snow went on increasing from hour to hour. By noon the wind began to rise; before night it was blowing a furious gale. Furious blasts clutched at the windows, and rattled them like castanets. The wind howled and shrieked and moaned, till it seemed as if the air were filled with angry demons fighting to possess the square white house.
Many of the pupils of Miss Wayland's school came to the tea-table with disturbed faces; but Massachusetts was as calm as usual, and Maine was jubilant.
"Isn't it a glorious storm?" she cried, exultingly. "I didn't know there could be such a storm in this part of the country, Miss Wayland. Will you give me some milk, please?"
"There is no milk, my dear," said Miss Wayland, who looked rather troubled. "The milkman has not come, and probably will not come to-night. There has never been such a storm here in my lifetime!" she added. "Do you have such storms at home, my dear?"
"Oh, yes, indeed!" Maine said, cheerfully. "I don't know that we often have so much wind as this, but the snow is nothing out of the way. Why, on Palm Sunday last year our milkman dug through a drift twenty feet deep to get at his cows. He was the only milkman who ventured out, and he took me and the minister's wife to church in his little red pung.
"We were the only women in church, I remember. Miss Betsy Follansbee, who had not missed going to church in fifteen years, started on foot, after climbing out of her bedroom window to the shed roof and sliding down. All her doors were blocked up, and she lived alone, so there was no one to dig her out. But she got stuck in a drift about half-way, and had to stay there till one of the neighbors came by and pulled her out."
All the girls laughed at this, and even Miss Wayland smiled; but suddenly she looked grave again.
"Hark!" she said, and listened. "Did you not hear something?"
"We hear Boreas, Auster, Eurus, and Zephyrus," answered Old New York. "Nothing else."