JULIA WARD HOWE.

with a certain joy over the extinction of old sufferings and false, disennobling conditions."

The distinction between Sumner and Phillips as orators which Mrs. Howe draws is, it seems to me, not only happily put, but mainly true. "Phillips was just as much in earnest as Sumner," she said, "but there was a touch of the rhetor about him; he was a dramatic fanatic. He had always an artistic sense of what he was saying, and with this, also, that artistic sense of proportion which made his fanaticism more attractive than that quality generally is. Sumner, on the other hand, was dominated alone by his intense perception of fundamental principles, and his lack of the dram

of

atic instinct led him to make his fanaticism of an exasperating character. I believe some other man might have said as much as he did in Congress without provoking that attack on him which ruined his lite." I once asked Mrs. Howe to tell me about her personal relations with Sumner, which I had heard were sometimes a little strained and she said: "Sumner was almost entirely destitute humor, or else his humor was deeply dormant, and to me who had been accustomed from girlhood to the society of witty and facetious men, he was sometimes very trying. Then, too, he could be very rude. He had received some pictures from abroad and was wondering who sent them. Whereupon I suggested that perhaps a certain Miss Porter (a rich young lady about whom his friends had teased him somewhat, and who was traveling in Europe) might have been the sender. He flared out at me with a glare on his handsome face, and in his rich, resounding voice said: "The supposition is gross." Not being accustomed to having such an adjective applied to any conduct of mine, I rose quietly and left the room. Two weeks later, he came forward to me on the street and said in his most charming, fresh, frank way, "I trust there is no controversy between us?" Of course, I thought it wise-life is so short-not to keep up a coolness over one harsh phrase, and he never offended again." There is a story about Mrs. Howe and Sumner that seems to me very char

acteristic of both. Mrs. Howe asked the great Senator to dinner to meet Edwin Booth, and Sumner replied in his starchiest, pouter-pigeon fashion,

Madam, I do not believe that I care to meet your friend Edwin Booth, estimable as he may be both in his calling and his character. I think I have arrived at the point where one ceases to take any interest in individuals." "Why, Charles," replied Mrs. Howe, with intensity, "God hasn't gotten there, yet." I asked I asked Mrs. Howe if this story was true and she said, "Oh, yes; Sumner told it on himself, possibly as an instance of my devoutness, though other persons took it differently, and some even asked me if I really dared to say such a thing to Charles Summer? Speaking of Sumner's beauty, Mrs. Howe said, “It was remarkable; though in early life he was so thin we used to call him the line, because he seemed to be length without breadth or thickness. At about thirty-five, after a severe sickness, he filled out and became an impressive figure, though never so impressive as some men, who, like Webster, were only of average height, yet yet whose impressiveness always seemed to come from within and not be dependent on their shoulders like a cape. Sumner had a voice of remarkable richness and a smile of strong sweetness. I remember once when in the Senate gallery, something happened that stirred his generally dormant sense of humor, or else it was something very noble had been said. My memory of the exact fact fails me. but my memory of the smile is very clear. He tossed his head back and looked up at me with a look that lit the whole place-so it seemed to me. It was as if lightning had suddenly illumined and melted an icebergas if the best of the man's nature had soared for a moment into intense expression. It was like a revelation. I saw glimpses of that smile several other times, but it was never quite so grand as then. Yes, Sumner was cold. I was never quite at my ease with him;

not because of his greater intellectuality, for I had companioned with men of superior mental grasp and mental gains, but he was different from other men. He was more original than most of the others, I mean in character, and harder, of course, to solve. Perhaps, however, behind that pride. of caste and coldness which both attracted and repelled mankind was a heart of splendid heat, if one could have found it, at which to warm the fingers of the soul. But to most of us he appeared a self-centered aristocrat, whose acrimonious eloquence sprang as much from scorn of the sinner as of the sin. I fancy it was that which so enraged the Southern Senators to find an assumption of authority greater than their own, and a scorn which in power of expression compared to theirs was like the midday sun to a tallow candle."

Those who think of Julia Ward Howe only as a lecturer, reformer and serious woman do not comprehend the roundness of her nature. The deeps of her earnestness and enthusiasm are fringed with gayety as the lakes of the ancient Peruvians were margined with masses of flowers. To dine with her is often a feast of wit, as well as of reason and flow of soul, and hers is almost always a wit without bitterness. The only sharp thing I remember her to have said was her remark when passing a place where a rather ostentatious sign of the Boston Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary" was displayed. "Why," she murmured, half as if to herself, after repeating the words, "I didn't know there was such a thing as a charitable eye and ear in Boston." But Boston forgave the hit for the wit, which perhaps in that day had more truth in it than

now.

Genius is of two kinds or qualities; that of the intellect which illumines and of the soul which warms. When these two are blended in a woman, the result is very rare and precious. It is this burning of the heart for humanity that has kept Julia Ward

Howe beautiful in the eyes of her friends, though time has written his victory on some lines of her brow. After a few moments in the presence of this simple, unpretentious, whitehaired woman, however, one forgets the years-one only feels the truth of the verses written to her two years ago:

Seventy years old! nay, madam, 'tis not

so;

For, in the apt phrase of your daughter's

tongue,

The hearts that know you do most surely know

For seventy splendid years you have been young.

In truth, your life reglimpsing, it would

seem

That you right early, by some magic skill, Found the fair fountain of DeJeon's dream, And keep its crystal inspiration still.

And then, after asking what is the secret of the magic that has kept the smile of youth on her face, and the ring of youth in her voice, and the grace of it in all her ways, the poet answers his question thus:

Not because birth and beauty have been yours

And yours the gift of music and of song, But this: that you have spent your richest

stores

To help humanity your whole life long.

Mrs. Howe's place in literature is secure, though most of her work has been ephemeral. She has made one of the songs of a nation, as well as helped to soften some of its laws. But I believe the personal influence of her genius has been far greater than that of many who have put themselves more forcibly into their art work. I believe her rich and radiant personality is destined to a long existence on earth after her presence has departed. It is characteristic of her that she should say to me as she did, when I told her I was going to write some things about her for the CALIFORNIAN, a copy of which I found on her table, "You can say of me that if I am to be remembered at all, I would like to be, not for what I have done in literature, but for what I have tried to do with pen and tongue and life for the moral and intellectual enfranchisement of woman."

M

OUNT TAMALPAIS, piercing the low flying clouds 3,000 feet in air, with its rugged cliffs and menacing crags is the sentinel of the Golden Gate. A rocky giant rising abruptly from the spurs of the Coast Range, of peculiar and striking appearance, it is one of the landmarks of the country and indicates the approach to San Francisco for miles at sea, and far over the heated plains where the snow-capped Sierra Nevadas reach away-the gold wall of California.

Who the white man was who first gazed upon the mountain is not known. Possibly centuries ago it was discoered by the first wanderers from Asia that are presumed by some to have crossed over from Bering's Straits and so found their way down the California coast. So far as we know, Drake probably was the first to investigate the country about Tamalpais. This was in 1567. Sebastian Cermenon undoubtedly saw the peak of Tamalpais in 1595, as he was wrecked near Point Reyes in that year, and in 1602, Vizcaino may have wandered among

the big redwoods at its base as he cruised along shore in that year. The great mountain is called after none of these, taking its singular name, it is said, from the original owners of the soil-the Tamal Indians who long ago were the dwellers at its base. Tamalpais stands to the north of the Golden Gate, across the bay from San Francisco, in Marin County, and with its green slopes often intensified by the lowering cloud banks, or the blaz ing California sun, it is suggestive of the attractive country about its base, so often a revelation and surprise to the stroller.

The contrast between the opposite shores of the Golden Gate could not be more strongly defined. San Francisco was originally a mass of sand hills, desolate and drear. A peculiar sand river having for ages slowly wound its way from the sea, south of what is now known as the Cliff House, east, covering the original soil to a depth of many feet, filling up depressions, rounding off hills, ever flowing on before the inshore wind, while to