LAURA WAS FOUND IN THE SUGAR-BARREL 53
DR. SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE 79
THE DOCTOR TO THE RESCUE! 97
JULIA WARD AND HER BROTHERS, AS CHILDREN 109
(From a miniature by Miss Anne Hall.)
LIEUT.-COLONEL SAMUEL WARD 117
(Born Nov. 17, 1756; Died Aug. 16, 1832.)
JULIA WARD 125
JULIA WARD HOWE 131
JULIA ROMANA HOWE 149
JULIA WARD HOWE 157
(From a recent photograph.)
LAURA E. RICHARDS 177
WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE.
CHAPTER I.
OURSELVES.
There were five of us. There had been six, but the Beautiful Boy was
taken home to heaven while he was still very little; and it was good for
the rest of us to know that there was always one to wait for and welcome
us in the Place of Light to which we should go some day. So, as I said,
there were five of us here,--Julia Romana, Florence, Harry, Laura, and
Maud. Julia was the eldest. She took her second name from the ancient
city in which she was born, and she was as beautiful as a soft Italian
evening,--with dark hair, clear gray eyes, perfect features, and a
complexion of such pure and wonderful red and white as I have never
seen in any other face. She had a look as if when she came away from
heaven she had been allowed to remember it, while others must forget;
and she walked in a dream always, of beauty and poetry, thinking of
strange things. Very shy she was, very sensitive. When Flossy (this was
Florence’s home name) called her “a great red-haired giant,” she wept
bitterly, and reproached her sister for hurting her feelings. Julia knew
everything, according to the belief of the younger children. What story
was there she could not tell? She it was who led the famous
before-breakfast walks, when we used to start off at six o’clock and
walk to the Yellow Chases’ (we never knew any other name for them; it
was the house that was yellow, not the people) at the top of the long
hill, or sometimes even to the windmill beyond it, where we could see
the miller at work, all white and dusty, and watch the white sails
moving slowly round. And on the way Julia told us stories, from Scott or
Shakspere; or gave us the plot of some opera, “Ernani” or “Trovatore,”
with snatches of song here and there. “Ai nostri monti ritornaremo,”
whenever I hear this familiar air ground out by a hand-organ, everything
fades from my eyes save a long white road fringed with buttercups and
wild marigolds, and five little figures, with rosy hungry faces,
trudging along, and listening to the story of the gypsy queen and her
stolen troubadour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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