to prophesy the separation of the colonies from the
mother country.]

[Illustration: SARAH MITCHELL (MRS. HOWE'S grandmother)

_From a painting by Waldo and Jewett._]

Let me here remark that an expert in chiromancy, after making a recent
examination of my hand, exclaimed, "You inherit military blood; your
hand shows it."

My own earliest recollections are of a fine house on the Bowling Green,
a region of high fashion in those days. In the summer mornings my nurse
sometimes walked abroad with me, and showed me the young girls of our
neighborhood, engaged with their skipping ropes. Our favorite resort was
the Battery, where the flagstaff used in the Revolution was still to be
seen. The fort at Castle Garden had already been converted into a
pleasure resort, where fireworks and ices might be enjoyed.

We were six children in all, yet Wordsworth's little maid would have
reckoned us as seven, as a sister of four years had died shortly before
my birth, leaving me her name and the dignity of eldest daughter. She
was always mentioned in the family as the _first little Julia_.

My two eldest brothers, Samuel and Henry Ward, were pupils at Round Hill
School. The third, Francis Marion, named for the General, was my junior
by fifteen months, and continued to be my constant playmate until, at
the proper age, he joined the others at Round Hill School.

A few words regarding my mother may not here be out of place. Married at
sixteen, she died at the age of twenty-seven, so beloved and mourned by
all who knew her that my early years were full of the testimony borne by
surviving friends to the beauty and charm of her character. She had been
a pupil at the school of Mrs. Elizabeth Graham, of saintly memory, and
had inherited from her own mother a taste for intellectual pursuits. She
was especially fond of poetry and a few lovely poems of hers remain to
show that she was no stranger to its sacred domain. One of these was
printed in a periodical of her own time, and is preserved in Griswold's
"Female Poets of America." Another set of verses is addressed to me in
the days of my babyhood. All of these bear the imprint of her deeply
religious character.

Mrs. Margaret Armstrong Astor, of whom more will be said in these
annals, remembered my mother as prominent in the society of her youth,
and spoke of her as beautiful in countenance. An old lady, resident in
Bordentown, N. J., where Joseph, ex-king of Spain, made his home for
many