Reminiscences, 1819-1899

I have been urgently asked to put together my reminiscences. I could wish that I had begun to do so at an earlier period of my life, because at this time of writing the lines of...

Although the New York of my youth had little claim to be recognized as a literary centre, it yet was a city whose tastes and manners were much influenced by people of culture. O...

It has been explained that the continued prosperity of France under very varying forms of government is due to the fact that the municipal administration of the country is not a...

I left school at the age of sixteen, and began thereafter to study in good earnest. Until that time a certain over-romantic and imaginative turn of mind had interfered much with...

As a love of study has been a leading influence in my life, I will here employ a little time, at the risk of some repetition, in tracing the way in which my thoughts had mostly...

My first peep at the great world in grown-up days was at a dinner party given by a daughter of General Armstrong, married to the eldest son of the first John Jacob Astor. Mrs. A...

Quite other experiences were in store for me. I chanced to pass the summer of 1841 at a cottage in the neighborhood of Boston, with my sisters and a young friend much endeared t...

In the autumn of 1844 we returned from our wedding journey, and took up our abode in the near neighborhood of the city of Boston, of which at intervals I had already enjoyed som...

In June, 1850, after a seven years' residence in and near Boston, during which I labored at study and literary composition, I enjoyed an interval of rest and recreation in Europ...

If I may sum up in one term the leading bent of my life, I will simply call myself a student. Dr. Howe used to say of me: "Mrs. Howe is not a great reader, but she always studies."

Returning to Boston in 1851, I found the division of public sentiment more strongly marked than ever. The Fugitive Slave Law was much in the public mind. The anti-slavery people...

I must here ask leave to turn back a little in the order of my reminiscences, my narrative having led me to pass by certain points which I desire to mention.

The Boston Radical Club appears to me one of the social developments most worthy of remembrance in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. From a published record of its me...

This decade, 1860-1870, marks a new epoch in my intellectual life. In the period already described, I had found my way to recognized authorship. In this later time, an even grea...

I had felt a great opposition to Louis Napoleon from the period of the infamous act of treachery and violence which made him emperor. The Franco-Prussian war was little understo...

In the year 1872, Dr. Howe was appointed one of three commissioners to report upon the advisability of annexing Santo Domingo to the United States. The two other commissioners w...

I sometimes feel as if words could not express the comfort and instruction which have come to me in the later years of my life from two sources. One of these has been the better...

At a tea-party which took place quite early in my club career, Dr. Holmes expatiated at some length upon his own unfitness for club association of any kind. He then turned to me...

In 1877 I went abroad with my daughter Maud, now Mrs. Elliott, and with her revisited England, France, and Italy. In London we had the pleasure of being entertained by Lord Houg...

Time would fail me if I should undertake to mention the valued friendships which have gladdened my many years in Boston, or to indicate the social pleasures which have alternate...