It is to be doubted, however, if Julia Ward ever saw anything on her drives to call her out of her day-dreaming self. Nor had she eyes for the marvels of nature. The larkspurs and laburnums in the garden had no language that she could understand. "I grew up," she said, "with the city measure of the universe--my own house, somebody else's, the trees in the park, a strip of blue sky overhead, and a great deal about nature read from the best authors, most of which meant nothing at all. Years later I learned to enjoy the drowsy murmur of green fields in midsummer, the song of birds and the ways of shy wood-flowers, when my own children opened the door into that 'mighty world of eye and ear.'" When Julia was sixteen, the return of her brother from Germany opened a new door of existence to her. She had just left school and had begun to study in real earnest. So serious was she in her devotion to her self-imposed tasks that she sometimes bade a maid tie her in a chair for a certain period. Thus, in bonds, with a mind set free from all temptation to roam, she wrestled with the difficulties of German grammar and came off victorious. But Brother Sam led her to an appreciation of something besides the poetry of Schiller and Goethe. He had a keen and wholesome enjoyment of the world of people, and in the end succeeded in giving his young sister a taste of natural youthful gaiety. "Sir," said Samuel, Junior, to his father one evening, "you do not keep in view the importance of the social tie." "The social what?" asked the amazed Puritan. "The social tie, sir." "I make small account of that," rejoined the father, coldly. "I will die in defense of it!" retorted the son, hotly. The young man found, however, that it was more agreeable to live for the social tie than to die for it. And Julia, beginning to long for something besides family evenings with books and music varied by an occasional lecture or a visit to the house of an uncle, seemed to herself "like a young damsel of olden times, shut up within an enchanted castle." When she was nineteen she decided upon a declaration of independence. If she could only muster the courage to meet her affectionate jailer face to face, she thought that the bars of his prejudice against fashionable society must surely fall. "I am going to give a party--_a party of my very own_," she announced to her brothers; "and you must help me with the list of guests." Having obtained her father's permission to invite a few friends "to spend the evening," she set about her preparations. This first party of her young life should, she resolved, be correct in every detail. The best caterer in New York was engaged, and a popular group of musicians. She even introduced a splendid cut-glass chandelier to supplement the conservative lighting of the drawing-room. "My first party must be a brilliant success," she said, with a smile and a determined tilt of her chin.