Alice Cogswell Bemis: A Sketch by a Friend

								

He met there a business connection, Mr. Zenas Cushing, who had become
Alice Cogswell's guardian on the death of her father; knowing that Mr.
Bemis was from St. Louis, Mr. Cushing gave him a letter of introduction
to his ward and bespoke his interest in her and his help in any business
advice she might need. Mr. Bemis tells his story thus: "Some three weeks
after my return from Boston I gave myself the pleasure of calling one
evening and presenting the letter. As I am writing these lines I can see
'Miss Cogswell' coming into the parlor where I was awaiting her. She was
dressed in the fashion of the day, having on a silk dress with a very
full skirt held out by a hoop-skirt of large dimensions. She met me
cordially and asked me to be seated and we talked for an hour of my
first trip to Boston, of her guardian and others. As I was leaving and
closing the gate I heard myself saying that I might marry that girl if I
could win her. It was not so-called 'love at first sight,' but it
ripened into love with a few subsequent calls. I think it was a very
fortunate circumstance that I met Alice Cogswell when I did." And very
fortunate for many others did this union prove. The outward condition of
their early lives was very different, but the two families from which
they came were alike in the standards which they held for themselves and
instilled into their children.
The story of Mr. Bemis's early years is the familiar one of that type of
western pioneer to whom the whole country is deeply indebted. He was
born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, on May 18, 1833, of parents who had
all the best inheritance to give their children, but few material
possessions. When he was an infant the family moved to a small village
in Chemung County, New York, where his mother's brother, Henry Farwell,
lived with his family. The relation between the two families was a close
one, and five years later it was decided that they should move together
to Illinois. Reports of its fertile soil and what it promised for the
future had come back to them by the slow and uncertain mails. They knew
that it offered more for themselves, and what was far more important to
them, for their children, than they could ever have in their present
surroundings. When they made the great change they knew well the dangers
and difficulties that must be met on the journey when taken under the
most favorable conditions. They knew, too, how these would be increased
in their case, as they were taking so many young children, eight in all;
but the courageous band to which they belonged were men and women of
industry and personal integrity, with a strong sense of real values,
who, having made their decision, took no reckoning of obstacles to the
end before them.
It was a long, difficult journey. In a pleasant sketch of this that Mr.
Bemis has given, we have only the remembrance of such incidents as stay
in the memory of a child. There is no mention of hardships. He recalls