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Three Famous Men -- Three Good Friends

DR. EDWARD EVERETT HALE is one of my very oldest friends. I have known him since I was eight, and any love for him has increased with my years. His wise, tender sympathy has been the support of Miss Sullivan and me in times of trial and sorrow, and his strong hand has helped us over many rough places; and what he has done for us he has done for thousands of those who have difficult tasks to accomplish. He has filled the old skins of dogma with the new wine of love, and shown men what it is to believe, live and be free. What he has taught we have seen beautifully expressed in his own life -- love of country, kindness to the least of his brethren, and a sincere desire to live upward and onward. He has been an inspirer of men, and a mighty doer of the Word, the friend of all his race -- God bless him!

I have already written of my first meeting with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. Since then I have spent many happy days with him at Washington and at his beautiful home in the heart of Cape Breton Island, near Baddeck, the village made famous by Charles Dudley Warner's book. In Doctor Bell's laboratory or in the fields on the shore of the Great Bras d'Or, I have spent many delightful hours listening to what he had to tell me about his experiments, and helping him fly kites by means of which he expects to discover the laws that shall govern the future airship. Doctor Bell is conversant in many fields of science and has the art of making every subject he touches interesting, even the most abstruse theories. He makes you feel that if you only had a little more time, you, too, might be an inventor. He has a humorous and poetic side, too, which is charming; and his dominating passion is his love for children. He is never quite so happy as when he has a little deaf child in his arms. His labors in behalf of the deaf will live on and bless generations of children yet to come; and we love him alike for what he himself has achieved and what he has evoked from others.

I remember well the first time I saw Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. He had invited Miss Sullivan and me to call on him one Sunday afternoon. It was early in the spring, just after I had learned to speak. We were shown at once to his library where we found him seated in a big armchair by a cheerful open fire which glowed and crackled on the hearth, thinking, he said, of other days. "And listening to the murmur of the river Charles," I suggested. "Yes," he replied, "the Charles has many dear associations for me." There was an odor of print and leather in the room which told me that it was full of books, and I stretched out my hand instinctively to find them. My fingers lighted upon a beautiful volume of Tennyson's poems, and when Miss Sullivan told me what it was I began to recite

"Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!"

But I stopped suddenly. I felt tears on my hand. I had made my beloved poet weep, and I was greatly distressed. He made me sit in his armchair while he brought different objects of interest for me to examine, and at his request I recited "The Chambered Nautilus," which was then my favorite poem. After that I saw Doctor Holmes many times and learned to love him. His mind was like a rich orchard, the ripe fruit of which dropped continually as he talked. Every remark had a spicy flavor of its own, and his conversation quickened my thoughts on many subjects.

One beautiful summer day, not long after my meeting with Doctor Holmes, Miss Sullivan and I visited Mr. Whittier in his quiet home on the Merrimac. His gentle courtesy and quaint speech won my heart. He had a book of his poems in raised print from which I read "In School Days." He was delighted that I could pronounce the words so well, and said that he had no difficulty in understanding me. Then I asked many questions about the poem and read his answers by placing my fingers on his lips. He said he was the little boy in the poem, and that the girl's name was Sally, and more which I have forgotten. I also recited "Laus Deo," and as I spoke the concluding verses he placed in my hands a statue of a slave from whose crouching figure the fetters were falling, even as they fell from Peter's limbs when the angel led him forth out of prison. Afterward we went into his study, and he wrote his autograph for my teacher and expressed his admiration of her work, saying to me, "She is your spiritual liberator." Then he led me to the gate and kissed me tenderly on my forehead. I promised to visit him again; but he died before the promise was fulfilled.

Meetings with Many Literary Men

DURING the two years I spent in New York I had many opportunities to talk with distinguished people whose names I had often heard, but whom I had never expected to meet. Most of them I met first in the house of my good friend, Mr. Laurence Hutton. It was a great privilege to visit him and dear Mrs. Hutton in their lovely home, and see their library and read the beautiful sentiments and bright thoughts gifted friends had written for them. Mr. Hutton introduced me to many of his literary friends, greatest of whom are Mr. William Dean Howells and Mark Twain. I have also met Mr. Richard Watson Gilder and Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman. They were all gentle and sympathetic, and I felt the charm of their manner as much as I had felt the brilliancy of their essays and poems. I knew Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, and once he brought to see me the dear poet of the woodlands -- Mr. John Burroughs. I could not keep pace with all these literary folk as they glanced from subject to subject and entered into deep dispute, or made conversation sparkle with witticisms. But they spoke many gracious words to me, which I keep among my heart's choicest treasures. Mr. Gilder told me about his moonlight journeys across the vast desert to the Pyramids, and I read from Mark Twain's lips one or two of his good stories. He has his own way of thinking, saying and doing everything. I feel the twinkle of his eye in his hand-shake. Even while he utters his cynical wisdom in an indescribably droll voice, he makes you feel that his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy.