On Wednesday, October 5, 1910, Mrs. Howe, at the age of ninety-one, visited Smith College to receive the degree of Doctor of Laws. Her daughter describes the scene: "It was a day of perfect autumn beauty. She was early dressed in her white dress, with the college gown of rich black silk over it, the mortar-board covering in like manner her white lace cap. Thus arrayed, a wheeled chair conveyed her to the great hall, already packed with visitors and graduates. . . Opposite the platform, as if hung in air, a curving gallery was filled with white-clad girls, some two thousand of them; as she entered they rose like a flock of doves, and with them the whole audience. They rose once more when her name was called... and as she came forward, the organ pealed, and the great chorus of fresh young voices broke out with 'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.' It was the last time." Twelve days later the Lord came, and her eyes in very truth beheld his glory. On the Centennial of her birth, when speaking of her immortal lyric, that eminent British editor, Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, said, "It was for this end, for the writing of this hymn, that Julia Ward Howe was born into the world."

CHAPTER XVI

PALMER, SMITH

RAY PALMER

1808-1887

NOT far from Sakonnet Point, where southeastern Rhode Island thrusts itself out into the Atlantic Ocean, lies the quiet hamlet of Little Compton. The first settlers arrived there from the north, well back in the seventeenth century. Off a bit from the road stands an old house, of the pioneer days but sturdy as ever; with a broad shingled roof sloping toward the one-storied front, trellised windows, and huge square chimney rising from the center of the peak.

Here Ray Palmer was born, on November 12, 1808. No one would challenge the worth of his pedigree. He was a descendant of William Palmer, who came over to Plymouth in the ship "Fortune" in 1621, and also of John and Priscilla Alden, through their daughter Elizabeth. Not far from Ray's birthplace stands the Betty Alden house, built in 1680. Judge Palmer, the boy's father, gave him a home-education till he was thirteen, and then the lad started out on his own resources. He clerked in a Boston drygoods store for two years. Providentially he was

led to attend the Park Street Congregational Church, where Rev. Sereno E. Dwight was pastor, and where he was happily converted. Dr. Dwight saw what a bright mind the boy had and urged him to go to school, and as soon as possible a place was opened for him at the Phillips Andover Academy. Graduating from there he entered Yale in 1826, completing the course four years later.

He at once went to New York and accepted a teaching position in a school for young ladies which stood in the then fashionable quarter of Fulton Street, behind Saint Paul's Church. From there he returned to New Haven, where he taught in a Female Seminary. In the meantime he had been diligently studying theology, and in 1835 he was ordained and became pastor in Bath, Maine. In thirty years he held but two pulpits-fifteen years in each-the one in Bath and the other in Albany, New York. Then he moved to New York City once more, to become Corresponding Secretary of the American Congregational Union, and during the next twelve years he assisted in the erection of six hundred church buildings. In 1878, due to failing health, he gave up this laborious work, and retired to Newark, New Jersey. But he continued to write, and to render pastoral service as his strength permitted. He died on March 29, 1887.