



Produced by Chuck Greif (This file was produced from images
available at The Internet Archive)










                           THE ELEVENTH HOUR




                            JULIA WARD HOWE

                    From a Drawing by John Elliott




                           The Eleventh Hour

                            in the Life of

                            Julia Ward Howe

                                  BY

                               MAUD HOWE

                                BOSTON

                      LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

                                 1911

                           Copyright, 1911,

                    BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

                          All rights reserved

                       Published, October, 1911

                               Printers

                  S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U. S.




                               AD MATREM


The acorns are again ripe on your oaks, the leaves of your nut tree
begin to turn gold, the fruit trees you planted a lustre since, droop
with their weight of crimson fruit, the little grey squirrels leap
nimbly from bough to bough busily preparing for winter’s siege. The
air is fragrant with the perfume of wild grape, joyous with the voices
of children passing to the white school house on the hill. The earth
laughs with the joy of the harvest. What thank offering can I bring for
this year that has not yet taught me how to live without you? Only this
sheaf of gleanings from your fields!

OAK GLEN, September, 1911.




                               FOREWORD


This slight and hasty account of some of my mother’s later activities
was written to read to a small group of friends with whom I wished
to share the lesson of the Eleventh Hour of a life filled to the end
with the joy of toil. More than one of my hearers asked me to print
what I had read them, in the belief that it would be of value to that
larger circle of her friends, the public. Such a request could not be
refused.




                           THE ELEVENTH HOUR

                            IN THE LIFE OF

                            JULIA WARD HOWE


My mother’s diary for 1906, her eighty-seventh year, opens with this
entry:

“I pray for many things this year. For myself, I ask continued
health of mind and body, work, useful, honorable and as remunerative
as it shall please God to send. For my dear family, work of the
same description with comfortable wages, faith in God, and love to
each other. For my country, that she may keep her high promise to
mankind, for Christendom, that it may become more Christlike, for the
struggling nationalities, that they may attain to justice and peace.”

Not vain the prayer! Health of mind and body was granted, work, useful,
honorable, if not very remunerative, was hers that year and nearly five
years more, for she lived to be ninety-one and a half years old. When
Death came and took her, he found her still at work. Hers the fate of
the happy warrior who falls in thick of battle, his harness on his back.

How did she do it?

Hardly a day passes that I am not asked the question!

Shortly before her death, she spoke of the time when she would no
longer be with us--an almost unheard-of thing for her to do. We turned
the subject, begged her not to dwell on it.

“Yes!” she laughed with the old flash that has kindled a thousand
audiences, “it’s not my business to think about dying, it’s my business
to think about living!”

This thinking about living, this tremendous vitality had much to do
with her long service, for the important thing of course was not
that she lived ninety-one years, but that she worked for more than
ninety-one years, never became a cumberer of the earth, paid her scot
till the last. She never knew the pathos of doing old-age work, such
as is provided in every class for those inveterate workers to whom
labor is as necessary as bread or breath. The old ploughman sits by the
wayside breaking stones to mend the road others shall travel over;
the old prima donna listens to her pupils’ triumphs; the old statesman
gives after-dinner speeches, or makes himself a nuisance by speaking or
writing, _ex cathedra_, on any question that needs airing, whether it
is his subject or not; she did good, vigorous work till the end, in her
own chosen callings of poet and orator. What she produced in her last
year was as good in quality as any other year’s output. The artist in
her never stopped growing; indeed, her latest work has a lucidity, a
robust simplicity, that some of the earlier writings lack.

In the summer of 1909 she was asked to write a poem on Fulton for the
Fulton-Hudson celebration. Ever better than her word, she not only
wrote the poem, but recited it in the New York Metropolitan Opera House
on the evening of September 9th. Those who saw her, the only woman amid
that great gathering of representative men from all over the world,
will not forget the breathless silence of that vast audience as she
came forward, leaning on her son’s arm, and read the opening lines:

    A river flashing like a gem,
    Crowned with a mountain diadem,--

or the thunders of applause that followed the last lines:

    While pledge of Love’s assured control,
    The Flag of Freedom crowns the pole.

The poem had given her a good deal of trouble, the last couplet in
especial. The morning of the celebration, when I went into Mrs. Seth
Low’s spare bedroom to wake her, she cried out:

“I have got my last verse!”

She was much distressed that the poem appeared in Collier’s without
the amended closing lines. The fault was mine; I had arranged with the
editor Mr. Hapgood for its publication. She had done so much “free
gratis” work all her life that it seemed fitting this poem should at
least earn her, her travelling expenses.

“Let this be a lesson,” she said, “never print a poem or a speech till
it has been delivered; always give the eleventh hour its chance!”

It may be interesting here to recall that the Atlantic Monthly paid her
five dollars for the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the only money she
ever