Part 2

Many of the younger generation both within and without the family circle will have enduring memories of that house. Alan Gregg recalled in a few words childhood memories that were common to many; writing from his post in France he said: "Mrs. Bemis's death was a great surprise and shock, and the long time that elapsed between knowing of her illness and her death made me feel pretty far away. I remember her letting me play that music box to my heart's content, and the way she made Gregg laugh at an unexpected fall he took, instead of cry, better than anything else. She could also do nice things for you without spilling over into sentimentality."

Her grandchildren's recollections of her will be mostly in connection with events in their own homes, where her visits were looked for eagerly by those on the Atlantic coast and those on the Pacific, but happily some of them are old enough to remember and pass on to the others the impression made on them and on other children in the family connection, of the grandmother's great pleasure in being with them and her plans for their comfort and happiness. They recall the perfect housekeeping, where the wheels seemed to move easily and were always out of sight; the daintiness of all its appointments, which was shown too in the dress and personal adornments of her who made this home and of those who shared it with her. Here she welcomed many of her old friends and also new acquaintances with whom lasting friendships were formed; here the children gathered around them a fine group of congenial companions who became their lasting friends; here they grew to manhood and to womanhood; from thence they were all married, and hither they all returned many times, with wife, husbands, and their own sons and daughters for happy family reunions.

In this home the saddest as well as the most joyful experiences of her life came to her. The former were borne with the calmness and strength shown only by those with great capacity for suffering and great power of self-control. The hardest trial that she had ever known was at a time when she had little physical strength to meet it. After a year with the family in Colorado, the eldest son, Judson, was sent to a manual training school at St. Louis, Missouri, where there were many family friends. He was a lad of much promise, a great reader, with varied gifts and tastes. He had a very social nature and a warm interest in people, was noble in character, and deep in his affections. The separation was very hard for his mother, but it was met with the unselfishness she always showed when her children's interests were to be considered. She herself chose it, as she wanted him to have this special kind of training that could not be found nearer home. In the second year of his absence he was taken suddenly ill with pneumonia. His parents were summoned at once, and his father arrived before his death, but his mother could not reach St. Louis till some hours later. The loss of the little daughter Lucy, who had died in Newton of scarlet fever, was still fresh in her memory when the new sorrow came. This was borne wonderfully, but it changed all life for her as nothing else ever did. In 1904 came the third break in the family circle, when Mrs. Parsons with her beautiful little girl, Alice Loraine, nearly three years old, the first granddaughter in the family, was visiting her grandparents in Colorado Springs. No child could have been more tenderly loved and cared for than she, but nothing could avert the fatal illness that developed soon after their arrival.

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During the years that followed her going west, Mrs. Bemis spent only one summer there. For several successive seasons she went with her children to Minnetonka in Minnesota; but it was not possible for Mr. Bemis to be with them there more than he was during the winter, because of its distance from Boston, and a happy change came to all when later Mrs. Bemis had gained enough to make it safe for her to spend some months of each year by the sea on Cape Ann, where the family had headquarters for many summers. Twice she went abroad with her children; first during the summer of 1891 and five years later for a year of study and extended travel for her daughters. Marjorie Gregg, who knew her well, recalling her many journeys, says: "Few not loving travel for its own sake could or would have taken so many long journeys. The trips east in the spring and back to Colorado in the autumn became a habit, and she carried them out with precision and determination that did not ignore discomforts; she saw these, felt them and mentioned them, but never feared or regarded them. She planned and packed and made all arrangements without confusion or mistakes; never 'took it out' on other people, but refused help even in late years. It would be impossible to count up the miles travelled, the time spent on Pullman cars, the trunks packed--all not because of _Wanderlust_, curiosity, or restlessness, but for love of family--that she and her children might be with their father half of each year and that she might keep close to her sister and nieces, whose relation to 'Aunt Alice' was as close as if the two families had lived in the same town. Later Grandpa and Grandma Bemis journeyed together indefatigably."

When Mr. Bemis laid aside many of the details of his business, they chose Lake Mohonk, New York, for their summer home, and the last seven summers of her life were spent very happily there; so happily, that each year they engaged the same rooms for the following season and said they meant to do this as long as they lived. It became a real home to them. Mr. and Mrs. Smiley, wonderful host and hostess to all, were soon their warm personal friends, and many pleasant acquaintances with guests were renewed each year. Among their most valued friends there was Dr. Faunce, president of Brown University, who conducted the Sunday services year after year. They considered his sermons as among the best and most helpful they ever heard, and after each season thought and talked much of them, always looking forward to the coming of the summer Sundays, their brightest days at Mohonk. Here every condition met their tastes and their needs; the great beauty of the place itself, the quiet and peace of the house, the wise and unusual way in which it is ordered, all combined to give them an ideal residence for the summer. The fact that young people of a fine type were always there added much to Mrs. Bemis's pleasure. She enjoyed watching their sports and their life in the open. Her windows overlooked the lake, and she sat there hour after hour watching the parties coming and going in boats and climbing the hills. Her delight in the beauties of the whole picture before her, than which there are few to compare with it the world over, grew steadily with each day there. Just before leaving Mohonk for the last time, she wrote to a young cousin: "I wish I could transport you all here. I have always said that I would like to live on a beautiful estate and have no care of it; and here I have been for seven summers and no place by any possibility could be finer. Mr. Smiley did not spoil nature but kept its wonderful beauty and added to it."

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During the last years they were together, Mr. and Mrs. Bemis made several interesting trips to California and to Seattle, to be with their daughter, Mrs. Parsons. The mere recital of all these journeyings may give the impression that the life in Colorado Springs was a very broken one, but it did not seem so to her friends there, for at each return it was resumed so quickly and so quietly that they think of it rather as continuous. No friend and no interest she had in any work that helped on the general welfare was ever ignored or forgotten by her wherever she might be.

Probably there has never been any one in Colorado Springs with so many enforced absences and the same limitations of strength who has done as much as she in enriching individual lives with friendship and the community life with sympathy and generous material aid. Nothing that she counted a duty sat lightly on her mind or conscience.

Miss Ellen T. Brinley, who was for many years a friend and neighbor of Mrs. Bemis, wrote shortly after her death: "She was a real New Englander of a type all too rare in these degenerate days. For many years she was not very strong, and yet she was one of the least self-indulgent people that ever lived. Wealth to her was not a reason for luxury and pleasure seeking, but an opportunity for helping others--with a lack of ostentation characteristic of her whole nature. She was truly a secret helper. That the young should have their chance in life and that the paths of the needy should be made more easy, became increasingly the object of her life. Colorado College and the Young Women's Christian Association were the two organizations in Colorado Springs whose welfare she had most at heart, and for them she was constantly devising liberal things. In the wakeful hours of the night, she planned to relieve the sufferings of others, and her spirit of good will came from no weak sentimentality. She was a woman of good judgment, an incisive mind, and a strong character. She was a wonderfully loyal friend and her daily life centred in her own family circle, in a few personal friendships, and in the benevolence which was her avocation."

Even her closest friends knew but little of her constant and quiet deeds of kindness, and that rarely from her directly. It could never be said of her that she was "confidential with her left hand." From the recipients of her generosity more is known than could have been learned from her. Often with an apology lest she might seem to intrude, she learned if friends, and sometimes mere acquaintances and even strangers, needed assistance at a time when she knew an emergency had come to them, and often asked others to be the means of meeting such needs, not letting it be known whence the help came. "Just tell them you have it to give away," she would often say. Sometimes she gave to personal friends a check, asking that they spend it as they thought best in ministering to others.

This was done for many years to some who were in close touch with the students of Colorado College. "Don't take the trouble to give an account of this," she would say, "only be sure that it goes where it is really needed." But when the account was rendered, she wanted to hear all that could be told of the circumstances of each one who had been helped, and often arranged that certain of these should have further assistance. To a number this was voluntarily continued during their professional studies. The following, from a letter to her son in 1908, shows her sympathetic understanding of the students whom she helped:

"I wonder if I told you that the suit that you left here I gave to Mrs. S---- for one of the college boys. The lining was greatly worn and so I pinned on an envelope with $5.00 in it and she gave it to a very needy fellow who is working and attending college. She had a letter from him and from the mother. I am going to send her letter and some other letters from other boys to whom the President has given a little from time to time from a little that I gave him early in the winter. I want you to read them, for I don't think that any of us realize how brave these poor students are, and really they are the ones whom we hear of later; the rich men's sons fall short in some way."

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Mrs. Bemis was one of a group of women who, in the spring of 1889, organized the Women's Education Society of Colorado College. The resolutions passed by its executive board at the time of her death so adequately express her relation to the Society that they are here quoted in full:

"The Executive Board of the Women's Educational Society wishes to place on record its sense of irreparable loss in the passing of Alice Cogswell Bemis.

"Her association with the work of the Society has extended over a long period of years, and her part in it has always been characterized by fidelity to the purpose of the organization and keen discrimination in the execution of the trust. She brought to the problems confronting the Board rare insight and judgment, and her business acumen was invaluable.

"Many students of Colorado College are personally indebted to her for the removal of obstacles in the way of the successful prosecution of their work in which her interest was vital and perennial. A story of genuine need never failed to elicit her assistance. Of her general constructive planning for the many-sided life of the young women, Bemis Hall and Cogswell Theatre are enduring evidence.

"The Board has lost a useful member, her friends a wise counselor, and philanthropic agencies a generous helper to whom worthy cause or person never appealed in vain."

Another organization to which she contributed much pleasure and from which she received the same is the Art Club of Colorado Springs. A group of women whose personal relation to her was close and increasingly dear as the years passed, formed its membership. They met twice a month at each other's houses, read, and studied pictures, finding, as one says, "an alleviation not unwelcome in that life where tuberculosis and the gold fever of the early days alternately possessed the atmosphere." The Art Club owed much of its genuine life to Mrs. Bemis; her interest in art, her keenness to acquire and classify the knowledge that she loved, was as strong as her friendship and neighborliness. The utmost hospitality to invalid strangers was part and parcel of those Colorado Springs early days, and in goodness to obscure invalids and in lending a hand in hard times no one could tell the extent of her benefactions.

All that Mrs. Bemis did will never be known, and what she gave was never told at the time unless it seemed best for obvious reasons that her identification with a good movement should be made public. The unsolicited gifts must have been manifold compared with those she gave in response to appeals. It was always easy to approach her for any good cause. If she gave, it was always with good will; if she declined to do so, a distinct reason for the refusal was stated; and she was as careful not to pauperize by giving as she was not to withhold where it was due, and was entirely free from the bitterness common to a certain type of persons who are wont to think that their generosity is being imposed upon. She often afforded amusement to her friends by the way in which she prefaced an offer of help with a seeming apology. She even seemed at times to call those who were working in a good cause to account because its pressing needs had not been met, and then met them herself.

A notable instance of this was her gift of the gymnasium to the Young Women's Christian Association. When the present Association building was erected she gave generously to the building fund. A gymnasium was greatly needed then, but no money was available for it. A space was left on the lot that had been purchased in the hope that a building might be put there later. Very soon the growth of the work showed that no gymnasium adequate even for the present demands could be built on that limited space. The girls of the Association clamored for it and the members of the board, who even more than they knew how much it was needed, were heavy hearted. No one spoke of the situation to Mrs. Bemis until she herself broached it to one of the board in a tone that, to one who did not know her, might have seemed a reprimand. She prefaced what was on her mind thus: "I do not approve at all of your putting up a building on that small space. You ought to buy that lot to the north." The board member could but agree. The protest was again made, and the board member could only repeat her agreement, but knew from the manner of approach to the subject that something was back in Mrs. Bemis's mind that she would have to tell, though she wished it might be known without her telling it! And then it came. She would like to see that lot when no one would know that she was looking at it, and if it wasn't too much trouble, could it be arranged for her to do this? It was planned that she should go early one Sunday morning to the building, when very few were in the lower rooms. She looked out on the vacant space and said, "Don't you see _it will not do at all_?" Within twenty-four hours she asked some one to negotiate for the purchase of the lot at the north and gave it to the Association, adding a check that made possible the present beautiful gymnasium. She dismissed with no mistaken emphasis the proposal that this should bear her name. Her pleasure in the building was great, and in expressing this pleasure she always seemed only to be commending the Association for having it. Her part in it seemed nothing to her. "Others have had to do all the work," she would say if her gift was mentioned.

When Bemis Hall, the main residence for girls at Colorado College, was being built, it was found that by excavating under the dining-room there would be space for a theatre, in which the students could give plays and various college meetings might be held. This was done, and the room was named Cogswell Theatre in her honor. It must be admitted that the latter was done under protest, although aided and abetted by some of her family. "What would my ancestors say to having a theatre bear their name!" she said, laughing. Among the memories of the past nine years to those who have enjoyed that little theatre, none is happier than that of seeing the faces of two very dear friends following each word and movement on the stage, laughing at times till the tears came, and giving over and over their entire approval of the existence of the theatre, with no further protest against its name. These two friends rarely missed seeing whatever was presented on that stage, though seldom tempted by public entertainments to give up their quiet evenings at home. Indeed, everything in that beautiful hall named for Mr. Bemis--whose generosity, to the college is there made known only in part--seemed to give them pleasure, and no one else will ever cross its threshold who can receive just the kind of welcome they always found awaiting them.

While the number of organizations which Mrs. Bemis helped is not known, and it is impossible to mention those which for many years counted on her interest and liberal support, one must be noted as showing her abiding interest in all that related to her native town and the region about it. This is the Ipswich Historical Society, which was organized in 1890, and of which she was the first life member. On its twenty-fifth anniversary, in response to what was only a printed appeal, she sent the first substantial gift of money it received. Within a few months of her death, learning that a fireproof building for the Society had been proposed, she wrote to Mr. T. Franklin Waters, its president, asking for particulars of the plan under consideration, and on receipt of his reply sent a check for so large a proportion of the estimated cost that she was asked to consent to have the building named for her. Following a determination made long before that her gifts should not be made conspicuous in any way, she would not consent to this.

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Mrs. Bemis was as quick, open, and generous in her recognition of what others did along philanthropic lines as she was reticent concerning her own good deeds. This was especially noticeable in her attitude toward all the private and public benefactions of her husband and children. Her quiet satisfaction in these was beautiful to see. Her children received all sympathy and encouragement in every good work they undertook, but she never assumed the right to dictate in these matters or took any credit to herself for anything they did, not thinking of the power of her example and the life-long training she had given them.

Her recognition of all her husband's benefactions and her sympathy in his planning for them were unfailing. One of the most important and far reaching of these was in connection with a work along social lines in the town of Bemis, Tennessee, where his firm had built a cotton mill. From the inception of the town the need of this work was much in the thought of their son, who has since succeeded his father as president of their company, and whose practical interest in the betterment of all social relations, especially of those between the employer and the employed, is widely known. Together they carried out their ideals in the new town of Bemis. The operators were those known in the south as poor whites. The opening of the mill gave to these people an undreamed of opportunity to earn money. It also offered to them a great privilege and at the same time a possibility of great danger. The privilege was that of being able for the first time in their lives to command money and to use it so that it would make them better and happier; the danger was that they might use it so that moral deterioration would follow. Both these possibilities were foreseen in the first plans for the town, and provision was made for the physical, mental, and spiritual needs of the people that would as far as possible avert the danger. A social worker was engaged to live as a friend among the people, and a church, school, and library were provided for them. Mrs. Bemis had much pleasure in following every step in the development of this work, while careful to disclaim any credit for its success, again not thinking what her encouragement and cooeperation meant to both husband and son. But they and all her children pay her full tribute for the stimulus of example and for the sympathy shown in every good work to which they put their hands.

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This woman of many noble traits was especially endowed with the rare gift of loyal and understanding friendship. Her relation to kindred and personal friends brought to her and to them an unusual degree of happiness. This was so great a factor in her life that it may seem as if special mention of many of these friends should be made in even so brief a sketch as this. But they themselves will realize how impossible this would be because the circle to which they belong is so large. She was not blind to the failings of her friends, but was clear in her comprehension of their fundamental traits, and her love for them, her strong though often undemonstrative interest in them, never abated. While she added to their number many times during her stay in different places, no new friend or new interest ever took the place of an old one. Her generous heart had room for all whom she took to it.

Her correspondence with friends was surprisingly large in view of the frequency of her letters to her own immediate circle; when the family became widely scattered this might easily have been made an excuse for dropping much of the general correspondence, but instead of that it grew as the circle of her interest widened. No one was neglected and all letters were written with her own hand. During the last years of her life much of her mail that was not personal became a distinct burden with its increasing appeals from all directions, but she conscientiously attended to it all herself. An abundance of good common sense helped her to ignore many of these, but any that could not be laid aside lightly she investigated in a way that took much time and strength.