Lives of Girls Who Became Famous | Page 7

Sarah Knowles Bolton
the cultured town of Amherst, Mass., Oct. 18, 1831, she
inherited from her mother a sunny, buoyant nature, and from her father,
Nathan W. Fiske, professor of languages and philosophy in the college,
a strong and vigorous mind. Her own vivid description of the
"naughtiest day in my life," in St. Nicholas, September and October,
1880, shows the ardent, wilful child who was one day to stand out
fearlessly before the nation and tell its statesmen the wrong they had
done to "her Indians."
She and her younger sister Annie were allowed one April day, by their
mother, to go into the woods just before school hours, to gather
checkerberries. Helen, finding the woods very pleasant, determined to
spend the day in them, even though sure she would receive a whipping
on her return home. The sister could not be coaxed to do wrong, but a
neighbor's child, with the promise of seeing live snails with horns, was
induced to accompany the truant. They wandered from one forest to
another, till hunger compelled them to seek food at a stranger's home.
The kind farmer and his wife were going to a funeral, and wished to
lock their house; but they took pity on the little ones, and gave them
some bread and milk. "There," said the woman, "now, you just make
yourselves comfortable, and eat all you can; and when you're done, you
push the bowls in among them lilac-bushes, and nobody'll get 'em."
Urged on by Helen, she and her companion wandered into the village,
to ascertain where the funeral was to be held. It was in the
meeting-house, and thither they went, and seated themselves on the bier
outside the door. Becoming tired of this, they trudged on. One of them
lost her shoe in the mud, and stopping at a house to dry their stockings,
they were captured by two Amherst professors, who had come over to
Hadley to attend the funeral. The children had walked four miles, and
nearly the whole town, with the frightened mother, were in search of
the runaways. Helen, greatly displeased at being caught, jumped out of
the carriage, but was soon retaken. At ten o'clock at night they reached

home, and the child walked in as rosy and smiling as possible, saying,
"Oh, mother! I've had a perfectly splendid time!"
A few days passed, and then her father sent for her to come into his
study, and told her because she had not said she was sorry for running
away, she must go into the garret, and wait till he came to see her.
Sullen at this punishment, she took a nail and began to bore holes in the
plastering. This so angered the professor, that he gave her a severe
whipping, and kept her in the garret for a week. It is questionable
whether she was more penitent at the end of the week than she was at
the beginning.
When Helen was twelve, both father and mother died, leaving her to
the care of a grandfather. She was soon placed in the school of the
author, Rev. J.S.C. Abbott, of New York, and here some of her
happiest days were passed. She grew to womanhood, frank, merry,
impulsive, brilliant in conversation, and fond of society.
At twenty-one she was married to a young army officer, Captain,
afterward Major, Edward B. Hunt, whom his friends called "Cupid"
Hunt from his beauty and his curling hair. He was a brother of
Governor Hunt of New York, an engineer of high rank, and a man of
fine scientific attainments. They lived much of their time at West Point
and Newport, and the young wife moved in a fashionable social circle,
and won hosts of admiring friends. Now and then, when he read a paper
before some learned society, he was proud to take his vivacious and
attractive wife with him.
Their first baby died when he was eleven months old, but another
beautiful boy came to take his place, named after two friends, Warren
Horsford, but familiarly called "Rennie." He was an uncommonly
bright child, and Mrs. Hunt was passionately fond and proud of him.
Life seemed full of pleasures. She dressed handsomely, and no wish of
her heart seemed ungratified.
Suddenly, like a thunder-bolt from a clear sky, the happy life was
shattered. Major Hunt was killed Oct. 2, 1863, while experimenting in
Brooklyn, with a submarine gun of his own invention. The young

widow still had her eight-year-old boy, and to him she clung more
tenderly than ever, but in less than two years she stood by his dying bed.
Seeing the agony of his mother, and forgetting his own even in that
dread destroyer, diphtheria, he said, almost at the last moment,
"Promise me, mamma, that you will not kill yourself."
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