tion, and their ultimate
success.

I had formerly seen Boston as a petted visitor from another city would
be apt to see it. I had found it altogether hospitable, and rather eager
to entertain a novelty. It was another matter to see it with its
consideration cap on, pondering whether to like or mislike a new
claimant to its citizenship. I had known what we may term the Boston of
the Forty, if New York may be called the city of the Four Hundred. I was
now to make acquaintance with quite another city,--with the Boston of
the teachers, of the reformers, of the cranks, and also--of the
apostles. Wondering and floundering among these new surroundings, I was
often at a loss to determine what I should follow, what relinquish. I
endeavored to enter reasonably into the functions and amusements of
general society, and at the same time to profit by the new resources of
intellectual life which opened out before me. One offense against
fashion I would commit: I would go to hear Theodore Parker preach. My
society friends shook their heads.

"What is Julia Howe trying to find at Parker's meeting?" asked one of
these one day in my presence.

"Atheism," replied the lady thus addressed.

I said, "Not atheism, but a theism."

The change had already been great, from my position as a family idol and
"the superior young lady" of an admiring circle to that of a wife
overshadowed for the time by the splendor of her husband's reputation.
This I had accepted willingly. But the change from my life of easy
circumstances and brilliant surroundings to that of the mistress of a
suite of rooms in the Institution for the Blind at South Boston was much
greater. The building was two miles distant from the city proper, the
only public conveyance being an omnibus which ran but once in two hours.
My friends were residents of Boston, or of places still more remote from
my dwelling-place, and South Boston was then, as it has continued to be,
a distinctly unfashionable suburb. My husband did not desire that I
should undertake any work in connection with the Institution under his
charge. I found its teachers pleasant neighbors, and was glad to have
Laura Bridgman continue to be a member of the household.

Dr. Howe had a great fancy for a piece of property which lay very near
the Institution. In due time he purchased it. We found an ancient
cottage on the place, and made it habitable by the addition of one or
two rooms. Our new domain comprised several acr