they that know nothing fear nothing. away back in 1886 my alert young friend, miss anna gordon, and my ingenious young niece, miss katharine willard, took to the tricycle as naturally as ducks take to water. the very first time they mounted they went spinning down the long shady street, with its pleasant elms, in front of rest cottage, where for nearly a generation mother and i had had our home. even as the war-horse snuffeth the battle from afar, i longed to go and do likewise. remembering my country bringing-up and various exploits in running, climbing, horseback-riding, to say nothing of my tame heifer that i trained for a bucephalus, i said to myself, “if those girls can ride without learning so can i!” taking out my watch i timed them as they, at my suggestion, set out to make a record in going round the square. two and a half minutes was the result. i then started with all my forces well 64in hand, and flew around in two and a quarter minutes. not contented with this, but puffed up with foolish vanity, i declared that i would go around in two minutes; and, encouraged by their cheers, away i went without a fear till the third turning-post was reached, when the left hand played me false, and turning at an acute angle, away i went sidelong, machine and all, into the gutter, falling on my right elbow, which felt like a glassful of chopped ice, and i knew that for the first time in a life full of vicissitudes i had been really hurt. anna gordon’s white face as she ran toward me caused me to wave my uninjured hand and call out, “never mind!” and with her help i rose and walked into the house, wishing above all things to go straight to my own room and lie on my own bed, and thinking as i did so how pathetic is that instinct that makes “the stricken deer go weep,” the harmed hare seek the covert.
two physicians were soon at my side, and my mother, then over eighty years of age, 65came in with much controlled agitation and seated herself beside my bed, taking my hand and saying, “o frank! you were always too adventurous.”
our family physician was out of town, and the two gentlemen were well-nigh strangers. it was a kind face, that of the tall, thin man who looked down upon me in my humiliation, put his ear against my heart to see if there would be any harm in administering ether, handled my elbow with a woman’s gentleness, and then said to his assistant, “now let us begin.” and to me who had been always well, and knew nothing of such unnatural proceedings, he remarked, “breathe into the funnel—full, natural breaths; that is all you have to do.”
i set myself to my task, as has been my wont always, and soon my mother and my friend, anna gordon, who were fanning me with big “palm-leaves,” became grotesque and then ridiculous, and i remember saying (or at least i remember that i once 66remembered), “you are a couple of enormous crickets standing on your hind legs, and you have each a spear of dry grass, and you look as if you were paralyzed; and you wave your withered spears of grass, and you call that fanning a poor woman who is suffocating before your eyes.” i labored with them, entreated them, and dealt with them in great plainness—so much so that my mother could not bear to hear me talk in such a foolish fashion, and quietly withdrew to her own room, closed the door, and sat down to possess her soul in patience until the operation should be over.
then the scene changed, and as they put on the splints pain was involved, and i heard those about me laughing in the most unfeeling manner while i murmured: “she always believed in humanity—she always said she did and would; and she has lived in this town thirty years, and they are hurting her—they are hurting her dreadfully; and if they keep on she will lose her faith in human nature, 67and if she should it will be the greatest calamity that can happen to a human being.”
now the scene changed once more—i was in the starry heavens, and said to the young friends who had come in and stood beside me: “here are stars as thick as apples on a bough, and if you are good you shall each have one. and, anna, because you are good, and always have been, you shall be given a whole solar system to manage just as you like. the heavenly father has no end of them; he tosses them out of his hand as a boy does marbles; he spins them like a cocoon; he has just as many after he has given them away as he had before he began.”
then there settled down upon me the most vivid and pervading sense of the love of god that i have ever known. i can give no adequate conception of it, and what i said, as my comrades repeated it to me, was something after this order:
“we are like blood-drops floating through 68the great heart of our heavenly father. we are infinitely safe, and cared for as tenderly as a baby in its mother’s arms. no harm can come anywhere near us; what we call harm will turn out to be the very best and kindest way of leading us to be our best selves. there is no terror in the universe, for god is always at the center of everything. he is love, as we read in the good book, and he has but one wish—that we should love one another; in him we live, and move, and have our being.”
little by little, freeing my mind of all sorts of queer notions, i came back out of the only experience of the kind that i have ever known; but i must say that had i not learned the great evils that result from using anesthetics i should have wished to try ether again, just for the ethical and spiritual help that came to me. it let me out into a new world, greater, more mellow, more godlike, and it did me no harm at all.
during the time my arm was in a sling i 69“sat about”—something not easy to do for one of active mind and life. i learned to write with my left hand—for this was before the happy days of the many stenographers—and my hieroglyphics went out to all the leading temperance women of this country. one morning the bell, distant and musical, tolled in the steeple of the university. we knew it meant that general grant was dead, for the newspapers and despatches of the previous evening had prepared us. somehow a deep chord in my soul vibrated to the tone of the bell—a chord of patriotism—and i went away to the vine-covered piazza, where i was wont to sit, and in twenty minutes (which fact is my apology for their limping feet) wrote out my heart in the following lines. they had at least the merit of sincere devotion, and were telephoned to chicago, eleven miles away, by anna gordon, and appearing in the daily inter-ocean were read at their breakfast-tables by many other patriots next morning. i do not know when anything has 70given me more real pleasure than to be told that a stalwart soldier belonging to the grand army of the republic read my crude but heartfelt lines aloud to his wife and daughter, and at the close brushed away a manly tear.
grant is dead.
on hearing the university bell at evanston, ill., toll for
the death of general grant at nine o’clock a.m.,
july 23, 1885.
toll, bells, from every steeple,
tell the sorrow of the people;
moan, sullen guns, and sigh
for the greatest who could die.
grant is dead.
never so firm were set those moveless lips as now,
never so dauntless shone that massive brow;
the silent man has passed into the silent tomb.
ring out our grief, sweet bell,
the people’s sorrow tell
for the greatest who could die.
grant is dead.
“let us have peace!” great heart,
that peace has come to thee;
thy sword for freedom wrought,
and now thy soul is free,
while a rescued nation stands
mourning its fallen chief—
the southern with the northern lands,71
akin in honest grief.
the hands of black and white
shall clasp above thy grave,
children of the republic all,
no master and no slave.
almost “all summer on this line”
thou steadily didst “fight it out”;
but death, the silent,
matched at last our silent chief,
and put to rout his brave defense.
moan, sullen guns, and sigh
for the bravest who could die.
grant is dead.
the huge world holds to-day
no fame so great, so wide,
as his whose steady eyes grew dim
on mount mcgregor’s side
only an hour ago, and yet
the whole great world has learned
that grant is dead.
o heart of christ! what joy
brings earth’s new brotherhood!
all lands as one,
buckner, grant’s bed beside,
the priest and protestant in converse kind;
prayers from all hearts, and grant
praying “we all might meet in better worlds.”
toll, bells, from every steeple,
tell the sorrow of the people;
so true in life, so calm and strong,
bravest of all, in death suffering so long
and without one complaint!72
moan, sullen guns, and sigh
for the greatest who could die;
salute the nation’s head.
our grant is dead.
