THE ELEVENTH HOUR
![[Image unavailable: JULIA WARD HOWE From a Drawing by John Elliott]](https://oldbook.b-cdn.net/kitaplar/6/pg56877-h/images/frontispiece_lg.jpg)
JULIA WARD HOWE
From a Drawing by John Elliott
The Eleventh Hour
in the Life of
Julia Ward Howe
BY
MAUD HOWE
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1911
Copyright, 1911,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
All rights reserved
Published, October, 1911
Printers
S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S.
AD MATREM
The acorns are again ripe on your oaks, the leaves of your nut treebegin to turn gold, the fruit trees you planted a lustre since, droopwith their weight of crimson fruit, the little grey squirrels leapnimbly from bough to bough busily preparing for winter’s siege. The airis fragrant with the perfume of wild grape, joyous with the voices ofchildren passing to the white school house on the hill. The earth laughswith the joy of the harvest. What thank offering can I bring for thisyear that has not yet taught me how to live without you? Only this sheafof gleanings from your fields!
Oak Glen, September, 1911.
FOREWORD
This slight and hasty account of some of my mother’s later activitieswas written to read to a small group of friends with whom I wished toshare the lesson of the Eleventh Hour of a life filled to the end withthe joy of toil. More than one of my hearers asked me to print what Ihad read them, in the belief that it would be of value to that largercircle of her friends, the public. Such a request could not berefused.{1}
THE ELEVENTH HOUR
IN THE LIFE OF
JULIA WARD HOWE
My mother’s diary for 1906, her eighty-seventh year, opens with thisentry:
“I pray for many things this year. For myself, I ask continued health ofmind and body, work, useful, honorable and as remunerative as it shallplease God to send. For my dear family, work of the same descriptionwith comfortable wages, faith in God, and love to each other. For mycountry, that she may keep her high promise to mankind, for Christendom,that it may become more Christlike, for{2} the struggling nationalities,that they may attain to justice and peace.”
Not vain the prayer! Health of mind and body was granted, work, useful,honorable, if not very remunerative, was hers that year and nearly fiveyears more, for she lived to be ninety-one and a half years old. WhenDeath came and took her, he found her still at work. Hers the fate ofthe happy warrior who falls in thick of battle, his harness on his back.
How did she do it?
Hardly a day passes that I am not asked the question!
Shortly before her death, she spoke of the time when she would no longerbe with us—an almost unheard-of thing for her to do. We turned thesubject, begged her not to dwell on it.{3}
“Yes!” she laughed with the old flash that has kindled a thousandaudiences, “it’s not my business