Jula Ward Howe, Reminiscences: 1819-1899

[150] 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.