CHAPTER XII.

MARY MAPES DODGE.

BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.

New York Society Forty Years Ago - Prof. James J. Mapes- An Ideal Home - Genuine Hospitality- Mary Mapes Dodge - Her Two BoysWhat First Turned Her Attention to Writing- First Workshop - A Cosy "Den"-Birthday Feasts for Jamie and Harry - A Birthday Poem -Red-Letter Days-How "Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates," came to be Written-Merited Reward - Mrs. Dodge's Remarkable Editorial Capacity-Her Clear Insight and Sound Judgment-Editing "St. Nicholas". A Model Magazine for Children - Who and What Makes it So - The Care and Labor Bestowed upon Each Number - Mrs. Dodge's Home Life and Happy Surroundings.

ORTY years ago, or so, New York still kept something of her earlier simplicity of manners. Her best society had passed the toil of poverty, without yet having entered upon the toil of wealth. The great fortunes of to-day were undreamed of, as the ostentation which vaunts them was unknown. Hospitality was not expressed in monumental dinners and balls, but in more intimate visiting. Strangers, bringing let

ters of introduction to well-known citizens, were invited to their houses in a friendly way, and contributed whatever brightness they possessed to the general household pleasure, as they received the best which the household could bestow.

Ceremony is a necessary defence in large communities, and the great city long since outgrew this period of grace. But it was the good fortune of the subject of this sketch to be born into one of the most hospitable homes upon the island, at a time when hospitality meant much. Professor James J.

Mapes was not only a scholar of distinction, an eminent scientist, and an inventor of note, but a man of wide social accomplishments, a brilliant talker, and famous wit. His wife, accustomed in her father's house to entertain a wide. circle, was a graceful and gracious hostess, unconsciously anticipating Emerson's precept: "Certainly, let the board be spread, and let the bed be dressed, but let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things."

In this household the children heard high affairs discussed in a high way. Men of science, poets, painters, musicians, statesmen, philosophers, journalists, were familiar friends. The talk was of scientific achievements, of music, painting, and the drama; of great philanthropic and benevolent movements all over the world; of contemporary history, as the news of the morning journal recorded it; of projected laws and the reasons for them. The petty gossip and small personalities which, in so many families, do duty as conversation never intruded their impertinent heads.

It was a great thing for bright children thus to have the round world rolled daily to their door. And this liberal education was balanced by a rigorous training in those disciplinary studies which teach the mind exactness.

It was a theory of Professor Mapes a theory which his distinguished daughter has done so much to make a popular article of faith that children instinctively like good reading if they are fortunate enough to find it. And, at a time when juvenile books represented a waste land of dreary facts and drearier morals, with only an occasional oasis of fancy or freshness, he taught his own flock to find a genuine delight in the old ballads, in Shakspeare, and in Walter Scott. To her thorough knowledge of English literature, and her love of it, Mrs. Dodge owes the excellence of her style; and this love and knowledge she owes to the influence of her father. Of the four daughters of the house, the eldest and youngest showed remarkable musical ability, and became accomplished musicians. The third had a talent for painting, studying diligently at home and abroad, and choosing the artist's pro

fession. The second, Mary, was one of those fortunate mortals from whose christening feast no ill-tempered fairy stayed away to give her a plague for a dowry. She had an aptitude for music, drawing, and modelling, a quick ear and tongue for languages, a clear and critical judgment, great executive capacity, and an indomitable cheerfulness and serenity of spirit, which made any labor or success seem possible to her. But in her girlhood, before she had decided between the claims of sculpture and painting, another voice appealed to her, and she left the home of her father for the home of her husband.

In the happy years which followed, the claims of husband and children, of domestic affairs, of friends and society, absorbed her time. But the constant contact with an exceptionally able mind stimulated her own mind to steady growth, while the new household, like the old, welcomed the best people and the best thought. From this house might have been drawn that famous picture of the ideal home which "should bear witness to all its economy that human culture is the end to which it is built and garnished. It stands there under the sun and moon to ends analogous and not less noble than theirs. It is not for festivity, it is not for sleep; but the pine and the oak shall gladly descend from the mountains to uphold the roof of men as faithful and necessary as themselves; to be the shelter always open to the good and the true; a hall which shines with sincerity, brows ever tranquil, and a demeanor impossible to disconcert; whose inmates know what they want; who do not ask your house how theirs should be kept; who have aims; who cannot stop for trifles."

Almost without warning this beautiful home was closed by the sudden death of its master, and Mrs. Dodge, with her two young children, returned to the house of her father, then living in New Jersey. To take up her life again in the old spirit of rejoicing; to rear and educate her boys as their father would have done; to do a man's work with the persistent application and faithfulness of a man, to gain a man's