FullReads

Most truly yours, HULDAH ROOT.

IV.

ONE CHRISTMAS MORE.

This last Christmas party is Huldah’s own. It is hers, at least, as much as it is any one’s. There are five of them, nay, six, with equal right to precedence in the John o’ Groat’s house, where she has settled down. It is one of those comfortable houses which are still left three miles out from the old State House in Boston. It is not all on one floor; that would be, perhaps, too much like the golden courts of heaven. There are two stories; but they are connected by a central flight of stairs of easy tread (designed by Charles Cummings); so easy, and so stately withal, that, as you pass over them, you always bless the builder, and hardly know that you go up or down. Five large rooms on each floor give ample room for the five heads of the house, if, indeed, there be not six, as I said before.

Into this Saints’ Rest, there have drifted together, by the eternal law of attraction,–Huldah, and Ellen Philbrick (who was with her in Virginia, and in France, and has been, indeed, but little separated from her, except on duty, for twenty years), and with them three other friends. These women,–well, I cannot introduce them to you without writing three stories of true romance, one for each. This quiet, strong, meditative, helpful saint, who is coming into the parlor now, is Helen Touro. She was left alone with her baby when “The Empire State” went down; and her husband was never heard of more. The love of that baby warmed her to the love of all others; and, when I first knew her, she was ruling over a home of babies, whose own mothers or fathers were not,–always with a heart big enough to say there was room for one more waif in that sanctuary. That older woman, who is writing at the Davenport in the corner, lightened the cares and smoothed the daily life of General Schuyler in all the last years of his life, when he was in the Cabinet, in Brazil, and in Louisiana. His wife was long ill, and then died. His children needed all a woman’s care; and this woman stepped to the front, cared for them, cared for all his household, cared for him: and I dare not say how much is due to her of that which you and I say daily we owe to him. Miss Peters, I see you know. She served in another regiment; was at the head of the sweetest, noblest, purest school that ever trained, in five and twenty years, five hundred girls to be the queens in five hundred happy and strong families. All of these five,–our Huldah and Mrs. Philbrick too, you have seen before,–all of them have been in “the service;” all of them have known that perfect service is perfect freedom. I think they know that perfect service is the highest honor. They have together taken this house, as they say, for the shelter and home of their old age. But Huldah, as she plays with your Harry there, does not look to me as if she were superannuated yet.

“But you said there were six in all.”

Did I? I suppose there are. “Mrs. Philbrick, are there five captains in your establishment, or six?”

“My dear Mr. Hale, why do you ask me? You know there are five captains and one general. We have persuaded Seth Corbet to make his home here,–yes, the same who went round the world with Mrs. Cradock. Since her death, he has come home to Boston; and he reports to us, and makes his head-quarters here. He sees that we are all right every morning; and then he goes his rounds to see every grandchild of old Mr. Cradock, and to make sure that every son and daughter of that house is ‘all right.’ Sometimes he is away over night. This is when somebody in the whole circle of all their friends is more sick than usual, and needs a man nurse. That old man was employed by old Mr. Cradock, in 1816, when he first went to housekeeping. He has had all the sons and all the daughters of that house in his arms; and now that the youngest of them is five and twenty, and the oldest fifty, I suppose he is not satisfied any day until he has seen that they and theirs, in their respective homes, are well. He thinks we here are babies; but he takes care of us all the more courteously.”