Three generations

Why did my mother want that mummy? Perhaps, like Théophile Gautier, she might have written a romance about it, had we not with youth’s cruelty ridiculed it! To my knowledge she made no use of that queer little bundle swathed in its ancient yellowed linen bands that lay for years in a trunk in our attic! She thought my sister Laura, mother of many children, might like it; but Laura refused the gift.

We reached Greece in the violet season, arriving at the Piraeus on the afternoon of a day in early spring. The drive to Athens remains an imperishable memory. We stopped at a half-way house to rest the horses and refresh ourselves with “loukoumia” and “resinata.” Here I picked my first Grecian violets. I remember that Mt. Hymettus was draped in a deep hyacinthine veil that looked solid enough to touch.

My mother’s friend, Mr. Kalopothakis, came down from Athens to greet us on board our steamer. During our three weeks’ stay in Athens he and my mother’s other friends were tireless in their kindness and hospitality.

“You will find that you are no stranger here,” Mr. Kalopothakis told me. “Your father’s daughter should feel at home in any Greek home. We have long memories. The name of Howe, the American Hero of the Greek Revolution, is known to every schoolboy.”

I remember two balls at the palace, when Queen Olga was very gracious, and King George danced with me. He waltzed extremely well, and was much interested in the dancing of the “Boston” by the Americans of our party, among whom were the Higginsons, who had come with us from Constantinople, and some of the officers from his ship that lay at the Piraeus.

Of the many entertainments given in our honor, the banquet with the Cretan chieftains was the most interesting. I lost it on account of illness, but my mother has described the meeting with the veterans and their expressions of gratitude to my father for his lifelong devotion to the cause of Cretan liberty. The banquet had a certain Homeric flavor. It was served in the open air on the seacoast. The pièce de résistance was a lamb roasted out of doors with fragrant herbs wrapped about it.

“To Howe.” Each chieftain rose and offered the toast, pronouncing the name as if it were Greek. One old fellow whom I afterwards met had served with my father when he was a boy. He was past eighty and strong as an ox. I remember his very words:

“It is my wish and I believe that it will be granted, to live long enough to fight another campaign and to kill a few more Turks with these hands!” This with a gesture as of choking an enemy.

We found Doctor and Mrs. Schliemann in Athens, and enjoyed much foregathering with them. One afternoon, when we had gone to take tea with Mrs. Schliemann, she brought in the baby to be admired. He was a fine handsome child, with something of a temper. My mother took him up and tried to coax him, “What’s wrong with poor little Agamemnon,” she asked, as the boy, refusing to be comforted, only roared and raged in her arms. Mrs. Schliemann turned upon him sternly:

“No, not poor little Agamemnon, nasty little Agamemnon!” she exclaimed, and bore him away to the nursery in disgrace.

Mrs. Schliemann went with us to the Museum and showed us the treasures from the royal tombs and the Treasure House of Mycenae which she had helped her husband to excavate and explore. These excavations of the Acropolis at Mycenae had thrilled the civilized world. Doctor Schliemann did not hesitate to proclaim that he had found the sepulcher of Atreus, of the “king of men”, Agamemnon, of his charioteer, and of Cassandra and their companions. Mrs. Schliemann, who was a Greek, knew her Homer by heart, so that when her husband wished to refer to some passage in the “Iliad”, he merely turned to her, instead of carrying a volume of Homer in his pocket.

My mother took every opportunity of talking with these interesting people about their work and their amazing discoveries. She parted with Mrs. Schliemann with real regret. At their last interview the famous woman archeologist, the pioneer of her sex, put into my mother’s hands a very small terra cotta cup, with the words:

“You will keep this, because it comes from the tomb of Agamemnon.”

As I write there lies beside me on my desk an album purchased in Athens. On the flyleaf is written in my mother’s hand:

Then in varying handwriting follow the signatures of the actors and the parts they played in that three weeks’ comedy at Athens.

Minerva—Julia Ward Howe.
Juno—Julia G. McAllister.
Venus—Maud Howe.
Diana—Grace H. Higginson.
Neptune—F. J. Higginson, Commander U. S. Navy.
Mercury—Jacob J. Hunker, U. S. Navy.

A large photograph of the Erechtheum has survived with the above-named personages standing or sitting upon the steps of that sublime temple, second in glory only to the Parthenon, near which it stands upon the Acropolis of Athens.

There was much of fun, frolic, and laughter in those days of wandering. Minerva knew how to make what was really a time of intense mental activity seem nothing but play. Froebel was outclassed, and her traveling kindergarten afforded an opportunity for education I have never known equaled.

CHAPTER XIII

Boston in the Eighties

When I brought her a check for nine dollars from Godey’s Magazine for my first story, “May Blossom”, she exclaimed, “Well, Miss, it appears that you are the most wonderful of us all!” I spent this, the first money I ever earned, on a plaster cast of the Venus of Milo.

I now began to write regularly for the Boston Transcript: occasionally for the New York Tribune, the World, and the current magazines. Much of my Transcript work was art reviewing. Among other artists, this brought me in touch with John LaFarge, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Albert Ryder, and Charles Walter Stetson. I was one of the first writers to cry aloud the excellence of the work of these and many another American artist, and was, in consequence, persona grata at the studios.

I first saw Saint-Gaudens shortly after he began the Shaw Memorial. Returning a year later, I showed surprise that the work had not gone faster. The sculptor, in gray linen blouse and white cap, laid a long nervous hand caressingly upon the clay:

“This is a labor of love,” he said; “I only dare work on it in certain moods! I do this for you, and a few others.”

The first winter after our return to Boston from Europe my mother and I lived in a small apartment on Spruce Street. The experiment was never repeated: wherever my mother was, she immediately became the center of a large circle. Not only did children and grandchildren and relatives to the last degree of cousinship knock at her door and demand hospitality, but many travelers and strangers visiting Boston were brought to her. During the winter of 1880-1881 we took a furnished house, Number 129 Mt. Vernon Street. Here our Roman relations, Aunt Louisa Terry and her daughter Margaret, visited us. Marion Crawford had rooms in Charles Street close by, spending his waking hours at our house. This was a happy winter, though my mother was lame from a severe fall, and was perforce much at home.

I remember a dinner she allowed me to arrange for Crawford, who was anxious to meet the literary lights. The company included Mr. Longfellow, Doctor Holmes, and Mr. Tom Appleton. We lingered at table, listening to Marion’s vivid stories of Indian life. He was a born romancer; if he had lived in the East he would have become a professional story-teller and sat in the market place telling tales. Nothing he ever wrote compared with his brilliant talk; friends of Robert Louis Stevenson have told me the same thing of him.

Crawford had made quaint archaic dinner cards, with a verse for each guest. My mother’s card had an absurd drawing of an owl and some lines to Minerva. The evening went off well, but the next day my mother gave me this advice:

“Do not again invite Doctor Holmes and Mr. Appleton together. It is like asking two prima donnas to sing at the same entertainment!”

Though my aunt was overjoyed at having her boy with her again, she was very anxious about his future and disappointed that his work in India had not carried him a stage farther on the road to fortune.

“My brilliant boy will do nothing with all his gifts,” she said to me. “He is a rolling stone.”

“He will make a name for himself and a fortune for you!” I told her more than once. I never felt any doubt about his success; in those days he looked and moved like a conquering hero.

I have forgotten, if I ever knew, why Crawford gave up India for America.

My mother introduced Crawford to all the editors she knew, and very soon he was hard at work writing book notices for the Critic and articles for all the magazines that would give him a chance. Meanwhile he was studying with Georg Henschel for the operatic stage. He had a fine voice and a magnificent stage presence, but his ear was not quite true. He would sing perfectly in tune four nights running; on the fifth he would sing false and never know it. Henschel at first thought that this defective ear could be overcome by training. The old music my uncle and my brother had sung was brought out, and every evening my mother and Marion gave us delightful concerts. Crawford went that spring to visit Uncle Sam in New York and there he got the clew to his real calling. He talked a great deal to my uncle about his experience in India and about one man in especial, who had deeply interested him. Uncle Sam said:

“You must write a novel about that man.”

When we moved to Oak Glen that summer, Crawford went with us. Outside the door of the house was the “green parlor”, an open space shut in from the road by a high arbor-vitae hedge. In the green parlor stood a long wooden table, where morning and afternoon Crawford sat writing steadily for hours at a time on the novel Uncle Sam had suggested. In the evening he would read us what he had written. The manuscript showed few changes and hardly an erasure. His work as editor of the Indian Herald in Allahabad gave him a sureness of touch I have never known equaled in any literary man. So “Mr. Isaacs”, the book that made him famous overnight, was written. At the other end of the wooden table I sat writing my first story, destined for a brilliant if brief career, “The Newport Aquarelle.”

Work over, we gathered round the piano, or under the oaks with our guitars. Our repertory of Italian folksong included several that old Father Corné brought to Newport when the century was young; others Marion had picked up while roaming about Italy, helping the peasants with the vintage, a part of the “rolling stone” process his mother deplored. The moss he then gathered lined his nest comfortably when building time came, for it is his intimacy with the life of the people that gives the charm to his Italian novels.

In September, 1881, the telephone was installed at Oak Glen. The first message came at midnight, when the house was roused by the strange alarm bell, ringing in the dark.

“Are you there?” It was the voice of my cousin Sam Francis, speaking from the club.

“President Garfield is dead.”

In my mother’s poem to Garfield, written the next day, there is a reference to this new miracle of electricity.

The telephone was then what the automobile has been for so long, and the flying machine bids fair to become,—one of the popular themes of current literature. Plays were constructed and novels written with the telephone as the chief motif. Our own family “Telephone Song”, composed by Laura Richards, enjoyed a brief but brilliant fame.

In the autumn of 1882 we left Oak Glen for a winter home of our own, Uncle Sam having given my mother Number 241 Beacon Street, a house where she lived for thirty years. The old furniture from Green Peace was furbished up. Uncle Sam, who never did things by halves, wrote several times a week, giving advice and announcing the shipment of some additional household effect, such as a rug for the library, or a set of afterdinner

coffee cups. My mother never saw the house till the day she drove up to the door and took possession, leaving every detail of installation to “Puss in Boots”, as she now called me. The next two years are among the happiest I remember. Part of the time my brother Harry and his wife were with us. The reception room on the ground floor was fitted up for Marion; here he wrote in rapid succession “Dr. Claudius” and “A Roman Singer.”

Crawford was by now in the full limelight. The success of his book brought him into great prominence: he had to defend his time from the lion hunters and interviewers. He enjoyed his sudden reputation simply and sweetly, and the family at Number 241 enjoyed it with him. Meanwhile “Big Man” Howe, who had chosen Science for his Mistress, was working quietly and steadily at his high calling. Everybody talked of Crawford. You saw his name constantly in the papers, heard it called by the newsboys on every train. My brother was unknown to the multitude who were familiar with my cousin’s name. The elect among his fellow workers spoke of him, and his mother, though always reticent about her children, knew him for what he was, but to the rest of the world his position was obscure compared to his cousin’s: there were few, beside his devoted wife, who foresaw the world-wide reputation, as one of the leading scientists of his time, that awaited him.

Uncle Sam made us flying visits, arriving by the night train, and carrying either Crawford or me off to Craigie House, to see Mr. Longfellow. One day we were so early that we found the poet in his library, making his coffee in one of those porcelain and glass machines then in fashion. Every morning, while the water was boiling—it took some minutes—Mr. Longfellow wrote out a verse of his translation of the “Divina Commedia.” That day he was dressed in a handsome flowered dressing gown; when we entered he was writing, standing at a high desk. The greeting between the two old college mates was characteristic. Uncle Sam, who never came empty-handed, produced from each of his coat pockets a long bottle of Hochheimer, the vintage they had preferred all those years ago, when boys together at Heidelberg.

“Sam, the ancients held that ‘whom the Gods love die young’, because, like you, they never grow old!” Longfellow exclaimed.

Throughout their lives, these two friends maintained a more or less desultory correspondence.

On the desk beside me lies a neatly folded and wafered letter in Longfellow’s exquisite hand, addressed to Samuel Ward, Jr.

My first book, published anonymously, made a good enough success to warrant my writing a novel. Uncle Sam, as usual the deus ex machina, decided where the scene of the future novel should be laid, by sending me to California to pass the summer with my Aunt Annie Mailliard.

After my return from California I tried to preserve something of all that I had seen and learned of that wonder country in a novel, the “San Rosario Ranch.”

It was in these years that I met Margaret and Lorin Deland, to whom I was drawn from the first, by a strong sympathy. The Delands were then living at Number 112 Mt. Vernon Street, a small house they had fitted up picturesquely, whose chief feature was a diminutive living room and an immense fireplace. Here, whenever there was the slightest excuse, a fire of enormous birch

logs blazed on the hearth. Phillips Brooks, who was one of their intimates, spent many evenings sitting over the wood fire. As the Delands’ fortunes improved, owing to Lorin’s original and brilliant work in what was then the new field of advertising and business counsel, they bought a more expensive house, Number 76 Mt. Vernon Street. When they moved, the ashes from the big fireplace at Number 112 were carefully collected and transported to the new house. The strong resemblance between Margaret and myself was often noticed. People said she looked like another of the Howe sisters. The resemblance was far deeper than this, for from the beginning of our acquaintance, I felt that she was like one of ourselves. Margaret, who did not remember her own mother, had a deep sympathy for mine. She often signed her letters, “Your abandoned Spring-off,” and declared that she was in reality my mother’s daughter, and had been abandoned in infancy on the doorsteps of her excellent Aunt and Uncle Campbell, the only parents she ever knew.

I have had for many years the happiness of being one of Margaret’s literary advisers. This was a new and interesting experience, for it is the man or woman behind every book that gives its deepest interest; that is the reason intimate friends are bored by each other’s books. When you know the answer to the riddle, the riddle no longer exists! In my family we all wrote books inevitably, and while we tried to be patient with each other, we were rather tried by each other’s work. I rarely knew what my sisters, my mother, or Crawford were writing, and more rarely read their books when they were published. With Margaret the case was different. Here were deep, unsuspected springs of prejudice and tradition. Southern and Middle States instincts—her people had been slave owners—unlike any I had known. So I could not trace the origin of every character and incident in her writings, as I thought I could in the family books!

How many times I heard “Helena Ritchie”, “The Iron Woman”, and “The Rising Tide” I should not like to say, but I know the characters in these books far better than any of my own drawing. Mrs. Deland wrote all her books in longhand, scorning the help of typewriter or stenographer. Dr. Lavender remains for me her most successful character. I have a theory about him that always amused her.

“When Dr. Lavender speaks, it is your subconscious self,” I maintained. Though she had not great physical vigor, Mrs. Deland has always been a hard worker. She had few friends and few relations; the whole force of her affection was concentrated on her husband, to whom she dedicated every book. I have never known any human affection quite like that between Margaret and her husband. He was a genial social man, with many friends, who liked his club and his business associates. He said to her one day:

“Really, Margaret, if you had your way, we should pass every day of our lives alone together. This would not be good for either of us.”

Lorin Deland was one of the few men who did not resent his wife’s greater reputation. He did not mind being spoken of as “the husband of Margaret Deland”, and was far prouder of her than she was of herself. He was a very lovable man, with a certain breadth of sympathy his wife lacked. He liked men, women, and children, while she preferred flowers and the “people with the green heads”! If Margaret had not been so successful as a writer, Lorin Deland would have written far more than he did. He has left two small volumes, both well worth reading, “Imagination in Business”, and a book of short stories, “At the Sign of the Dollar.”

Of these tales, “Concerning X 107” is a true story of a young woman criminal, with a Jekyll and Hyde personality. Her life has been debased and vicious, but she is capable of the highest aspiration, as is shown by her poems. The story is of absorbing interest, beautifully conceived and written, but its greatest value is as a revelation of Lorin’s own nature. He had that true knightliness that hears and responds to every cry for help from the helpless. His work among forsaken women and girls was incessant and beneficent. This large-hearted man had no child, and the intense feeling of tenderness in him seemed to find its relief in helping the weakest of his kind. After his death a group of young girls to whom he had shown the tenderest care sent his wife a funeral wreath with this dedication:

“He was the father of thousands of girls.”

“You cannot let that inscription go as it is!” a friend said to Margaret.

“Why not?” was the answer; then as an afterthought, “How Lorin would have laughed!”

CHAPTER XIV

The New Orleans Cotton Centennial

During the Exposition New Orleans became a cosmopolitan nerve center, as did Philadelphia in the Centennial of 1876 and Chicago during the World’s Fair of 1893. The vivid passionate city with its old Place d’Armes, wrought-iron balconies, hedges of Cherokee roses, broad-spreading live oaks, was crowded with travelers from all over the world. It was said that one of the by-products of the Exposition was the great number of intelligent and agreeable persons it brought to the city.

The Mardi Gras festivities were splendid that season. The Queen of the Carnival was Miss Celeste Stauffer, a famous New Orleans belle. Among her many admirers was Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York, who some years afterward remembered her handsomely in his will. The King was Mr. Maury, a good-looking young Creole. The balls and pageants that marked the reign of the royal pair were admirable. They must have cost a deal of hard work as well as money, for the pains shown in every detail of costume, decoration, music, made one ache! At an earlier Carnival, the poor King was so active in his efforts to make memorable his rule of merriment that on the morning of Ash Wednesday he was found lifeless in his bed, having literally worked himself to death.

Among the season’s belles was Cora Urquhart, later Mrs. James Brown Potter. She was already “stage struck”, and her father, Colonel Urquhart, sympathized with her ambition to become an actress. She was a lovely creature, with such an appealing manner that while you talked with her she made you feel that she was dependent upon you for all that made that hour of life worth while. The New Orleans women are not like any others; they have a quality as unique as the salt of the Andalusian, a sort of veiled fire like an opal’s. We made several friends among them. I remember best of all Mrs. William W. King and her four interesting daughters, in their large comfortable house on South Rampart Street. Here I first felt the flavor and charm of Southern family life, which has a character all its own. Mrs. King was large of heart and friendly of manner, with such a glow of hospitality about her that I still have a warm feeling when I think of her and her kindness. She was the daughter of Branch Miller, one of the men who made New Orleans famous in his day for good eating and drinking and fine living. He was noted for his wit and brilliant conversation, so that his daughter and grand-daughters came by their gifts through inheritance. “Uncle” Tom Miller, Mrs. King’s brother, carried on the family traditions, and his dinners were as famous in New Orleans as Uncle Sam Ward’s in Washington.

North Rampart Street lay on the other side of Canal Street; it ran down to Esplanade Street, where lived Mrs. Slocumb with her daughter Cora, later the Countess of Brazza, and her sister, Mrs. Johnson. This house was very gay during the Exposition, and we enjoyed its frank hospitality to the full. Not far away was the home of Mr. George William Nott, the most genial of men. Madame Nott, his mother, and his lovely wife were among the interesting women of New Orleans. It was at this house that I first saw General de Trobriand, one of the romantic figures of the Civil War. He came in to make his daily visit to Madame Nott, carrying a bunch of blush roses. He and my mother were old acquaintances, and while they talked together in French, I studied the General. He was one of the most distinguished looking men I have ever known, every inch the French aristocrat, in spite of his smart uniform of an American Major General. Five or six years before this time, he paid New Orleans the compliment of choosing it for his home, on his retirement from active service. To find the Union General, who in 1875 had arrested the whole of the Louisiana Legislature during the dreadful Reconstruction period, now an honored and beloved resident of New Orleans, was piquant enough. I never saw his house in Rue Clouett, the French quarter of the city, though I met him again at Madame Nott’s and more than once enjoyed a bouquet of his famous roses.

Our life in New Orleans was like a changeable fabric, woven with black and gold threads. The dark strands were the grave cares, the hard work for the Woman’s Department, the gold weave the magic of the old city and its fascinating people. We soon found that the Management of the Exposition was in financial difficulties, and that the funds promised for the expenses of the Woman’s Department were not forthcoming. My mother, who had personally solicited the exhibits, felt morally responsible for their being properly displayed and safely returned to their owners; she therefore assumed the financial obligations of her department. The story has been told elsewhere of her valiant fight and final triumph. My part was to keep her from killing herself with work, by adding a little play from time to time, and to do my own task as Superintendent of the Literary Division. I soon established the library of the Woman’s Department in a quiet corner of our gallery, and here the lady commissioners and their guests rested and read the books, periodicals, and papers.

The navy came gallantly to our rescue through Admiral Jouett of the flagship Tennessee and Captain Kane of the Galena. A detail of ship’s carpenters and a mighty armorer helped unpack and install our exhibits and the navy band played at our “opening.” I remember a luncheon party on the Tennessee, the ship that in 1870 had been reported lost with all on board, when my father was on his way to Santo Domingo. The Admiral introduced Mr. Henry Watterson, who was to sit next me at lunch.

I was aware of an alert ironical face, of keen eyes that seemed to challenge mine, of a manner less flattering than I was accustomed to after these weeks amid the chivalrous men of New Orleans. As we sat down to table, Mr. Watterson seemed to stiffen and left me to open the conversation with the innocent question:

“Do you live in New Orleans, Mr. Watterson, or are you a stranger like ourselves?”

He glanced at me sideways—if looks could kill I should not be alive to-day—as he answered icily, “I am from Louisville, Kentucky, Miss.”

“Editor of the Courier-Journal”, whispered my other neighbor. I should have known, but so obviously didn’t, that Mr. Watterson would not speak to me again, devoting himself to the lady on the other side who knew all about him. In spite of my chagrin, I listened to his brilliant talk and have retained a strong impression of “Marse Henry.” He seemed to me a fiery, impetuous man, a little vain, a little cocksure, but likable and with a fine sense of humor. He had deep-set eyes under beetling brows with shaggy eyebrows. Nothing escaped those eyes and little those sharp ears. I was not long in finding out who Mr. Watterson was, and what he stood for, and finally made his acquaintance, after all these years, by reading the two long volumes of his autobiography. He wielded a pen like a sword and from first to last was one of the ablest who fought for the cause of the Confederacy, and later for the Democratic Party.

Ichizo Hattori, the Japanese Commissioner, was one of the interesting figures at the Exposition. He was keen to learn about our schools and colleges and in return for what my mother told him, he taught me to admire the art of his people. I remember two things Hattori told us about the public schools in Japan.

“We allow private education only on condition that the pupils are examined with the children of the public schools. If they fail to pass after three trials, they must enter the public schools.”

A propos of the Japanese teachers, Hattori said:

“Every five years our teachers are examined to see if they are keeping up with the progress of the age. While we are exacting, we try to make the teacher’s position attractive by giving them titles and rank, so that the profession may not be treated as an unimportant one.”

On the twenty-fifth of April, 1862, twenty-three years before the day we dined with General Beauregard at the Spanish Fort, our friend Lieutenant George Hamilton Perkins, with Captain Bailey of the United States Navy, landed on the levee at New Orleans and walked alone through an angry mob to the City Hall to demand the surrender of the city in the name of Commodore Farragut. More than once I have asked my friend Commodore Perkins to tell me of that adventure, but he always put me off, saying it was too old a story. George Cable, who as a boy saw the whole affair, thus describes it:

Thus, through all the hurly-burly of our active life I sometimes caught glimpses of the stirring events of long ago that make the history of Louisiana so enthralling. “The late onpleasantness” was generally avoided in conversation except when we were in the company of Northerners. I greatly preferred consorting with the Creoles, who still dominated the social life of the city, and did not speak of themselves as Americans if they could avoid it. Why should they? Their civilization is Latin to the core! While they celebrate the national holiday on the Fourth of July, ten days later they observe with far more pomp and circumstance the Fourteenth of July, the French national holiday, that commemorates the fall of the Bastille.

We made a pilgrimage to the lovely old Girard Street cemetery where in the street of tombs we found the inscription:

“Francis Marion Ward, died 1847.”

This was my mother’s youngest brother, the adored “Mannie”, who perished in the terrible yellow fever epidemic which carried off one eighth of the population.

Our six months in New Orleans were breathless ones, crowded with strong emotions and vivid impressions. The best people of the place were hospitable beyond belief, but there were some who resented the appointment of a Northern woman to the office my mother held; and she used to say,

“Satan has a fresh flower for me every morning when I come to my desk.”

Among our friends was Judge Charles Gayarré, the historian of Louisiana, a fine vigorous old man who did the honors of the city to all visiting literary folk. Among these was Charles Dudley Warner, who fell under the spell of the place and wrote delightfully about it. Then there was Joaquin Miller, the Poet of the Sierras. I still keep a valentine in his writing signed “Joch Keen.” He was a striking figure, with his long blond hair, high boots, velvet coat, and scarlet neckerchief. He often called in the evening when our work at the Exposition was done, and sometimes recited his verses, in a musical singsong. Miller’s “given” name was Cincinnatus Heine; he took the more fanciful Joaquin in memory of a Mexican bandit he had defended in the days when he practiced law. I was glad to learn from Miss Hewitt that the last lines of his noble poem to her grandfather Peter Cooper are engraved on the base of New York’s statue of that great citizen.

My mother founded in New Orleans that winter a literary club called the Pans. Two of the members, Grace King and Elizabeth Bisland, became well-known writers, and a third Pan, Henry Austin, made some reputation as a journalist. The Pans gave a reception for Mr. Warner, Joaquin Miller and other visiting literary men, but they took no notice of the most interesting of them all, George W. Cable. The feeling against Cable was then very strong. He was brought to call on us after dark, and we were warned not to speak of the visit, as he had come to New Orleans on some private business and his friends did not wish it known he was in the city.

“Some hot-blood would pick a quarrel with him and try to force him into a duel,” we were told. Though Cable had put New Orleans on the map with his stories, he was accused of having held his own people up to ridicule! He was a small, well-made man with keen dark eyes, a sweet voice, and a personality that took an audience by storm when he read his Creole dialect stories, or chanted the queer Gumbo songs of the Louisiana negroes.

“Quand patate la cuite, a pas mangé, a pas mangé li!” I can hear his very voice as I write the words from memory.

There was good opera that winter at the old Theater, where Adelina Patti made her débût as a child and won instant recognition. Colonel Mapleson’s Company gave many excellent productions. I recall a gala performance of the “Barber of Seville” when Joaquin Miller brought his friend Buffalo Bill into our box and presented him to my mother. Colonel Cody was dressed in cowboy fashion; his long hair reached his shoulders in loose curls. Big, bluff, manly, he was as dramatic a figure as any on the stage.

In mid-June the affairs of the Woman’s Department were finally wound up, and we left New Orleans. In the last days I had the forlorn sense that I was saying good-by forever to a city more foreign than the cities of Europe, and yet mine in a sense in which they could never be. I paid a last visit to the old French market. Hortense, the ancient quadroon who had sold me many trifles, gave me as a parting present a package of powdered saffron for “lagnappe”—or, as we should say more prosaically, thrown in for luck!

Later I strove to put some of my impressions of Louisiana in a story called “Atalanta in the South.”

I remember this period as a time of strain and stress. The year before our New Orleans experience we lost the beloved Uncle Sam Ward; the year after, my dear sister, Julia Anagnos, was taken from us. These breaks in the family circle saddened us both immeasurably. My mother buckled more grimly than ever to her ceaseless round of work, “grinding with all her mills”, while to me life that had stretched so immeasurably long began to shrink incomprehensibly. Then all was suddenly changed by the most important event of my existence.

On the seventh of February, 1887, John Elliott and I were married at my mother’s house, by our minister, James Freeman Clarke, who christened me. I can claim no credit for having been born the daughter of my famous parents, but a good deal for my choice of a husband.