Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe, Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, in two volumes, with portraits and other illustrations: volume 1

“ [335] besetting sin, as it shows one must have had an ancestor from whom it was inherited!” She enjoyed a jewel as she did a flower or a song: she loved to deck her dear ones and herself with trinkets; a jeweller's window was a thing of delight to her, not to be passed without the tribute of a pause and a glance at its treasures. Yet a purchase of this kind seldom failed to bring its retributive pang the day after.

“Was sorry to have made so foolish a use of the money. Resolve never to do so again, unless some new light should make it seem right. God will not have my mind occupied with such nonsense.... Have written my sermon for to-morrow evening.”

They spent two months in Samana in almost absolute retirement. The Doctor read “Don Quixote” in Spanish, she Aristotle in Greek and Baur in German. The former “was early and late in the saddle, and dashed up and down the steep hillsides of Samana with all his old fearlessness.” The latter followed as she might, “in perils and dangers, in terrors often.”

“I had never been a bold rider, and I must confess that I suffered agonies of fear in following him on these expeditions. If I lagged behind, he would cry, ‘Come on! it's as bad as going to a funeral to ride with you.’ And so, I suppose, it was. I remember one day when a great palm branch had fallen across our path. I thought that my horse would certainly slip on it, sending me to the depths below. That very day, while Dr. Howe took his siesta, I went to the place where this impediment lay, and with a great effort threw it over the steep mountain-side. The whole neighborhood ”