Jula Ward Howe, Reminiscences: 1819-1899

[322] Greek this summer, and was somewhat helped in this by an English scholar, a university man, who was passing the summer in Newport. He was ‘coaching’ two young men who intended to enter one of the English universities, and was obliged to pass my house on his way to his lessons. He often paid me a visit, and was very willing to help me over a difficult passage.

The report of my parlor readings soon brought me invitations to speak in public. The first of these that I remember came from a committee having in charge a meditated course of Sunday afternoon lectures on ethical subjects, to be given without other exercises, in Horticultural Hall. I was heard more than once in this course, and remember that one of my themes was ‘Polarity,’ on which I had written an essay, of which I thought, perhaps, too highly. In the course of the season I was engaged in preparing for another reading. Meeting Rev. Phillips Brooks one day in my sunset outing, I said to him, ‘Do you ever, in writing a sermon, lose sight of your subject? I have a discourse to prepare and have lost sight of mine.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, ‘it often happens to me.’ This confession encouraged me to persevere in my work, and I finished my lecture, and read it with acceptance.

I suppose that I may have greatly exaggerated in my own mind the value of these writings to