d partly in
Huxley's statement that "we are automata propelled by our ancestors."
Her grandfather, Moses Stuart, was Professor of Sacred Literature at
Andover, a teacher of Greek and Latin, and a believer in that stern
school of theology and teleology. It was owing perhaps to a
combination of severity in climatic and in intellectual environment
that New England developed an austere type of scholars and
theologians. Their mental vision was focused on things remote in time
and supernatural in quality, so much so that they often overlooked the
simple and natural expression of their obligation to things nearby. It
sometimes happened that their tender and amiable characteristics were
better known to learned colleagues with whom they were in intellectual
sympathy, than to their own wives and children. Sometimes their finer
and more lovable qualities were first brought to the attention of
their families when some distinguished professor or divine feelingly
pronounced a funeral eulogy.

It's a long way from the stern Moses Stuart, who believed firmly in
hell and universal damnation and who, with Calvin, depicted infants a
span long crawling on the floor of hell, to his gifted granddaughter,
who, although a member of an evangelical church, wrote: "Death and
heaven could not seem very different to a pagan from what they seem to
me." Her heart was nearly broken by the sudden death of her lover on
the battlefield. "Roy, snatched away in an instant by a dreadful God,
and laid out there in the wet and snow--in the hideous wet and
snow--never to kiss him, never to see him any more." Her _Gates Ajar_
when it appeared was considered by some to be revolutionary and
shocking, if not wicked. Now, we gently smile at her diluted,
sentimental heaven, where all the happy beings have what they most
want; she to meet Roy and find the same dear lover; another to have a
piano; a child to get ginger snaps. I never quite fancied the
restriction of musical instruments in visions of heaven to harps
alone. They at first blister the fingers until they are calloused. The
afflicted washerwoman, whose only daughter had just died, was not in
the least consoled by the assurance that Melinda was perfectly happy,
playing a harp in heaven. "She never was no musicianer, and I'd rather
see her a-settin' by my tub as she used to set when I was a-wringin'
out the clothes from the suds, than to be up there a-harpin'." Very
different, as a matter of fact, were the i