“ Meetings in the interests of charitable organizations, civic matters, and all stirring questions of the day, make their demands on the time of a hostess whose tact and responsiveness are unfailing. When some interest of an exclusively feminine nature remains to be dealt with, or that bugbear of the male mind, a ladies’ luncheon-party is in order, the genial host escapes to some such favorite haunt as the St. Botolph or the Tavern Club, leaving an almost startling substitute in the shape of a life-size portrait by the well-known Boston artist, Miss S. G. Putnam, to smile a welcome in his stead. ”

“ Howe’s life at Oak Glen is as peaceful and happy an existence as one is apt to find in these nihilistic days of striking hotel waiters and crowded summer resorts.
Beautiful as Newport is in these soft days of early summer, it is even lovelier in the autumn, and every year it is harder to leave Oak Glen, to give up the wide arc of the heavens, and to look up into God’s sky, between the two lines of brick houses of a city street. Each winter the place at Newport is kept open a little longer, and it is only the closing days of November that find Mrs. Howe established in her house in Boston. ”

“ This is a mansion, with its porches and porticoes and surrounding lawns and groves, which seems meet for a poet’s home; it stands in spacious and secluded grounds, shadowed by mighty oaks, and with that woodland character which birds and squirrels and rabbits, darting in the checkered sunshine, must always give. It is the home of culture and refinement, too, and as full of beauty within as without. ”

“ His conversation is delightful—now racy with anecdote, now bristling with repartee, again charming with instruction. More than any other man, I think, he is a harbinger of better things at the South. He is a real son of the new South. In him the old and the new are harmoniously blended. To the polish, the suavity, the refinement of the old South are added the earnestness, the enthusiasm, the wider and more useful culture of the new. Up to this time his life has been spent in study, in travel, in teaching, and in writing. ”

“ Now, as we go down the steps, a sudden consciousness strikes us of what very pleasant places Boston literary lines seem to fall into! Is it that literary people are more fortunate in Boston, or that in Boston only the fortunate people are literary? For as we think of brilliant names associated with Beacon Street, Boylston Street, Commonwealth Avenue, Newbury and Marlborough Streets, it certainly seems as if the Bohemia of plain living and high thinking—so prominent a feature of New York literary and artistic life—had hardly a foothold in aristocratic, literary Boston. ”

“ Ford is as extraordinary as in his achievement. He is alive to every issue of the day and of the hour. He is brilliant at conversation, and perhaps even more brilliant at controversy, for I can imagine no opposing argument so bristling with facts as to prevent his making a cavalry charge on a whole table of unsympathetic hearers. Life is at its keenest pitch when one is privileged to hear his urgent voice, with no little command withal in its notes, and to see the invincible clearness and dominance in his black-brown eyes. ”

“ Stedman’s equipment as a man and a conversationalist. He would not be a poet did he not see his fellow-man aureoled with a halo. His natural attitude toward life and men is an almost boyish belief and delight in their being admirable. It is only on discovering they are otherwise that the critic appears to soften the disappointment by the rigors of analysis. Stedman is by nature an enthusiast. He owes it to his training that he is a critic. As an enthusiast he has the fervor, the intensity, the exaltation, which belong to the believer and the lover of all things true and good and beautiful. ”

“ We all seem to know the cheerful little town, perched high above the glorious bay, and crowded with tourists during more than half the year. On any bright morning, especially in early spring, the tiny shops in the principal street fairly swarm with strangers, to whom polite and polyglot dealers sell ornaments of tortoise-shell and lava, silk sashes which will look like impressionist rainbows under sober English skies, and endless boxes and book-shelves of inlaid woods, destined to fall to pieces under the fiery breath of the American furnace. ”

“ It is a red brick building of two stories and a half, with a vine-covered piazza; and the smooth-cut lawn slopes gently down to the street, separated only from the sidewalk by a stone coping. Above all things, one is conscious, on entering here, of a sense of comfort and home happiness. The furniture is simple but exceedingly tasteful, of light woods with little upholstery; and the visitor finds an abundance of easy-chairs and settees of willow. The study is a delightful nook, opening by sliding doors from the parlor on one side and the hall on another. ”

“ In the Loring, the Hallowell, and the Auchmuty houses, and in Shirley Hall, there yet remain traces of the slave-holding Puritan aristocracy of two centuries ago. The Hale residence, by its old-time hugeness and architectural style, seems as if it ought to be storied in a double sense; but it really has no history other than that which its present occupant is giving it. It is none too large for one who has seen grow up in it a family of five sons and a daughter,—none too large (if one may judge from the plethoric library) for its owner’s ever-growing collection of books and manuscripts. ”

“ Boker always had a taste for working at what he called his “trade” of producing various articles in metal, on his turning-lathe. In younger days it used to be his boast that he could go into the shop of any machinist, take off his coat, and earn his living as a skilled workman. He still practiced at the bench in his own workshop, at the age of sixty-five. It seems to me that he was unique among American authors, in uniting with the grace and fire of a genuine poet the diversions of a rich society man, the functions of a public official, and a capacity for practical work as a mechanic. ”

“ After supper, when the children are at last quiet and tucked up in their little beds, there is more music—either with the piano, in the drawing-room, or, if it is a warm night, on the piazza, with the guitar. As the evenings grow longer, in the late summer and autumn, there is much reading aloud, but only from novels of the most amusing, sensational or romantic description. ”

“ Warner’s house is genial and homelike. A cheerful drawing-room opens into a wide, bright music-room, making, with it, one shapely apartment of generous, hospitable proportions. The furnishing is simple, but in every item pleasing. The hand of modern decorative art is there, though under rational restraint. A chimney-piece of Oriental design rises above the fireplace of the music-room set with antique tiles brought by Mr. Warner from Damascus. Other spoils of travel are displayed here and there, with pictures and engravings of the best. ”

“ Whittier with which the present public is familiar, represent an aged man, albeit with a fire flashing in the eye and illuminating the countenance, like that fire which underlies the snows of Hecla. But if, after having passed eighty, his face was still so strong and radiant, in his youth it must have had a singular beauty, and he kept until the last that eye of the Black Bachelder, a glint of which was to be seen in the eye of Daniel Webster, and possibly, tradition says, in that of Hawthorne and of Cushing. ”

“ In prose, too—the medium he found it so difficult to teach himself to use,—he has put forth (often anonymously) innumerable essays and sketches betraying a ripe knowledge of literature and literary history together with the keenest critical acumen, and flashing and glowing with alternate wit and humor. Long practice has given him the mastery of a style as individual as it is pleasing: once familiar with it, one needs no signature to tell whether he is the author of a given article. ”

“ Cable’s home are delightful, the evenings are not less charming. After the merry tea and the constitutional walk have been taken, the family gather in the sitting-room. Usually, two or three friends drop in; but if none come, the children are happy to draw closely around their father, while he plays old-time songs or Creole dances on his guitar. As he sings, one after another joins in, and finally the day is ended with a hymn and the evening worship. The hour is early, for the hard-working brain must have its full portion of rest. ”

“ The strong love of flowers finds its expression in a number of ways, and it seems extraordinary that a success which is seldom achieved by those who live in town should crown the efforts of one who apparently has but to touch a plant to make it live. A little fig-tree—the most notable of her triumphs, for it, too, was planted and raised within doors—lifts its branches and bears fruit as the central attraction of a group of tropical plants that flourish near the casement of the dining-room window. ”

“ But in a large square room at the top of the house is the library proper—workshop and study together. This building his poet’s nest under the eaves of his own cornice is the one evidence of the recluse in Stedman’s character. When he is about to pluck his own plumage that his fledglings may be covered, he turns his back on the world. All the paraphernalia of his toil are about him. The evidences of the range and the extent of his reading and scholarship are to be found in taking down some of the volumes on the shelves. ”

“ Stedman, in spite of his grayish beard and mustache, is a singularly young-looking man for his years. He is slight, with slender figure and delicate features. His motions and gestures are full of impulse and energy. He has the bearing of a man who has measured his strength with the world. The delicate refinement and finish of his work, as well as its power and vigor, are foreshadowed in his personnel. ”

“ AT WASHINGTON
Mr. Bancroft, the historian, was “at home” beneath every roof-tree, beside every fireside, where books are household gods. Mr. Bancroft, the octogenarian, who came into the world hand in hand with the Nineteenth Century, was especially at home at the capital of the country whose history was to him a labor of love and the absorbing occupation of a lifetime. For although his career was one of active participation in public affairs, his pursuits ran parallel with his literary work. ”

“ It is just such a house as you would expect to find a man like Stoddard in: a poet’s home and literary workshop. There is no space, and no need, for a parlor. The front room (to the left as you enter the house) is called the library. Its general air is decidedly luxurious. There is a profusion of easy chairs and lounges, and of graceful tables laden with odd and precious bits of bric-à-brac. There is more bric-à-brac on the mantel-piece. ”

“ MT. VERNON STREET, BOSTON, AND KENNEBUNKPORT, MAINE
Very few houses suggest in a more marked degree the tastes of those who occupy them, than the one in which Margaret Deland may be found during the winter months, and until the chilly New England spring deigns to set forth a tempting array of blossoms. ”

“ Stedman occupied their charming house, New York had as distinctly a literary center as either Paris or London. On Sunday evenings, the evenings at home, there was such a varied assemblage of guests as only a metropolis can bring together. Not only authors and artists, critics and professional men, but fashion and society, found their way there. At the weekly dinners were to be met the distinguished foreigner, the latest successful novelist or young poet, and the wittiest and the most beautiful women. ”

“ The broker [Pg 276] is a separate and distinct person from the writer and poet. The two, it is true, meet as one, on friendly terms, on the street or at the club. But the man of Wall Street is entertained with scant courtesy within the four walls of the poet’s house.
Once within these, Mr. Stedman’s true life begins. It is an ardent, productive, intellectual life, only to be intruded upon with impunity by the insistent demands of his social instincts. Mr. Stedman has the genius of good-fellowship. His delight in men is only second to his delight in books. ”

“ Do we not all love Thackeray and Holmes the better for caring so much about our caring for them?
But it is growing late and dark. Across the river—one almost says across the bay—the lights are twinkling, and we must go. As the cool breeze touches our faces, how strange it seems to see the paved and lighted street, the crowding houses, the throng of carriages, and to realize that the great, throbbing, fashionable world has been so near to us all the afternoon while we have been so far from it! ”

“ For a more unpretending person every way than she was, or one seeming to be more unconscious of gifts and works of genius, or of a great part acted in life, it is not possible to imagine. In her quiet home, attended by her daughters, surrounded by respect and affection, filled with the divine calm of the Christian faith, [Pg 321] in perfect charity with all mankind, the most celebrated of American women passed the tranquil evening of her days. ”

“ Holmes felt as few men do the charm of association, and the sacredness of what is endeared by age; but the very roundness of his nature which made him appreciate not only what is human, but everything that is human, made him keenly alive to the charm of what is new if it is beautiful. A rounded nature finds it hard to be consistent. ”

“ Mitchell has led the enviable life of a country gentleman—a life of agriculture tempered by literature and diversified by occasional excursions into the field of journalism. He has seen his numerous children grow up about him; he has entertained at his charming home many of our most distinguished literati; and he has kept open his communication with the reading public by a series of books and contributions to the periodical press, on farming, landscape-gardening, and the practical and æsthetic aspects of rural life. ”