id="Page_18" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 18]"/> damp newspaper, in her eagerness to read the theatre announcements. She also experienced a very severe humiliation. She, with her brother, Theodore, attended a large dinner party at the house of a friend of her father. "Our host asked me, the only stranger guest, which part of a huge turkey, in which he had put his carving fork, I would take. I knew only one point of manners for such occasions, dear Alice,—that I must specify some part, and as ill luck would have it, the side-bone came first into my head, and 'Side-bone, sir,' I said. Oh what a lecture I got when we got home, the wretched little chit that compelled a gentleman to cut up a whole turkey to serve her! I cried myself to sleep that night." It was too bad to spoil that dinner party for the little girl.

Her mother died when Miss Sedgwick was seventeen; her father when she was twenty-three. All her brothers and sisters were married and living, three of them in New York city, one in Albany, and one, her youngest brother, in Lenox. With this brother in Lenox, Miss Sedgwick for many happy years, had her home, at least her summer home, having five rooms in an annex to his house built for her, into which she gathered her household gods and where she dispensed hospitality to her friends. For many years, New York city was generally her winter home.

Theoretically, we have arrived with this maiden at the age of twenty-three, but we must go back and read from one or two early letters. She is ten years old when, under date of 1800, she writes her father: "My dear papa,—Last week I received a letter from you which gave me inexpressible pleasure." This is the child's prattle of a girl of ten summers. She writes very circumspectly for her years of a new brother-in-law: "I see—indeed I think I see in Mr. Watson everything that is amiable. I am very much pleased with him; indeed we all are." The following is dated 1801, when she is eleven: "You say in your last letters that the time will soon come when you will take leave of Congress forever. That day shall I, in my own mind, celebrate forever; yes, as long as I live I shall reflect upon the dear time when my dear papa left a public life to live in a retired one with his dear wife and children; then you will have the pleasure to think, when you quit the doors of the House, that you are going to join your family forever; but, my dear papa, I cannot feel as you will when looking back on your past life in Congress. You will remember how much you have exerted yourself in order to save your country."

There was something in the relations of this Sedgwick family, not perhaps without parallel, but very beautiful. These brothers and sisters write to each other like lovers. To her brother Robert, Miss Sedgwick writes, "I have just finished, my dear brother, the second perusal of your kind letter received to-day.... I do love my brothers with perfect devotedness, and they are such brothers as may put gladness into a sister's spirit.... Never, my dear Robert, did brother and sister have a more ample experience of the purity of love, and the sweet exchange of offices of kindness that binds hearts indissolubly together."

There are three letters from Robert Sedgwick to show how he reciprocated this affection. He says: "I can never be sufficiently grateful to my Maker for having given me such a sister. If I had no other sin to answer for than that of being so unworthy of her as I am, it would be more than I can bear, and yet when I read your letters I almost think that I am what I should be. I know I have a strong aspiration to be such, and I am sure they make me better as well as happier." Again, he says: "Thanks, thanks—how cold a word, my dearest Kate, in return for your heart-cheering letter! It came to me in the midst of my Nol Pros., special verdicts, depositions, protests, business correspondence, etc., like a visitant from the skies. Indeed, my dearest Kate, you may laugh at me if you will for saying so, but there is something about your influence over me which seems to have shuffled off this mortal coil of earthiness; to be unmixed with anything that remains to be perfected; to be perfectly spiritualized, and yet to retain its contact with every part of its subject.... Lest I should talk foolishly on this subject, I will dismiss it, only begging you not to forget how your letters cheer, rejoice, elevate, renovate me."

Here is a love-letter from Theodore, her eldest brother: "Having this moment perused your letter the third time, I could not help giving you an answer to it, though there be nothing in it interrogative. Nor was it meant to be tender or sentimental, or learned, but like all your letters, it is so sweet, so excellent, so natural, so much without art, and yet so much beyond art, that, old, cold, selfish, unthankful as I am, the tears are in my eyes, and I thank God that I have such a sister." Let us revenge ourselves upon these brother and sister lovers by saying that perhaps they did not feel any more than some other people, only they had a habit of expressing their feelings. If that was all, we cannot deny that the habit was very beautiful.

Why did Miss Sedgwick never marry? We are not distinctly told; but she did not need to, with such lovers in her own family. Besides, how could she find any one, in her eyes, equal to those brothers, and how could she marry any one of lower merit? "I am satisfied," she writes, "by long and delightful experience, that I can never love any body better than my brothers. I have no expectation of ever finding their equal in worth and attraction, therefore—do not be alarmed; I am not on the verge of a vow of celibacy, nor have I the slightest intention of adding any rash resolutions to the ghosts of those that have been frightened to death by the terrors of maiden life; but therefore—I shall never change my condition until I change my mind." This is at the age of twenty-three.

Later in life, after many changes had come, she seems to have wished she had not been so very hard to suit. Fifteen years roll away, during which we see one suitor after another, dismissed, when she writes in a journal not to be read in her life-time, "It is difficult for one who began life as I did, the primary object of affection to many, to come by degrees to be first to none, and still to have my love remain in its full strength, and craving such returns as have no substitute.... It is the necessity of a solitary condition, an unnatural state.... From my own experience I would not advise any one to remain unmarried, for my experience has been a singularly happy one. My feelings have never been embittered by those slights and taunts that the repulsive and neglected have to endure; there has been no period of my life to the present moment when I might not have allied myself respectably, and to those sincerely attached to me.... I have troops of friends, some devotedly attached to me, and yet the result of this very happy experience is that there is no substitute for those blessings which Providence has placed first, and ordained that they shall be purchased at the dearest sacrifice." Those who have paid the price and purchased the blessings may have the satisfaction of knowing that, according to Miss Sedgwick's mature opinion, they have chosen the better part.

We might call this statement the Confessions of an Old Maid who might have done better. She closes her testimony with an acknowledgment that she "ought to be grateful and humble," and the "hope, through the grace of God, to rise more above the world, to attain a higher and happier state of feeling, to order my house for that better world where self may lose something of its engrossing power."