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memory of Charles Sumner. Carl Schurz, | Alexander in 1842; of Pope, the work of Longfellow, the late John Weiss, Free- Richardson, Sir Joshua's master. Up man Clarke, and other famous personages stairs there is a little bedroom, provided were present. Many eloquent and inci- with old furniture, antique engravings, sive things were said; but when Dr. Bartol and bric-à-brac, and adjoined by a cabinet asked the abolitionist poet to add some- de travail crammed with more books. thing to the reminiscences of the dead In this chamber have reposed at differleader, Mr. Whittier replied with a quaint-ent times, as guests, Dickens, Thackeness that made one think of Lincoln. He said that he had no skill in speaking, and that the idea of his saying anything reminded him of the dying petition made by the captain of the Dumfries rifles, "Don't let the awkward squad fire a salute over my grave."

Mr. Fields's house, overlooking the widening of the Charles River known as the Back Bay, is crowded from entrance to attic with artistic objects or literary and historic mementos. On the second floor the library, amazingly rich in autograph copies and full of curious old books, clambers over the walls like a vine, with its ten thousand volumes; and here and there pictures of peculiar interest look down from above the shelves. Among these are portraits of Lady Sunderland, by Sir Peter Lely; of Dickens, painted by

ray, Hawthorne, Trollope, Kingsley, Miss Cushman, Bayard Taylor, and other celebrities; for the graceful hospitality of the owner has been always warmly pressed upon the wandering bards and wise men and women who have passed near the door. The interior of this house is redolent of the positive and work-a-day associations of literature and literary genius as perhaps few other Boston interiors may claim to be; and in its congenial atmosphere a circle of ladies meets from time to time, who read the latest thing they have written; Mrs. Fields, perhaps, contributing a poem, Miss Phelps some chapters from a new story, Mrs. Celia Thaxter one of her sea-pieces, or Miss Preston a critical essay.

There have been, of course, other centres; and when Mrs. Howe was a settled

resident of Boston she drew around her, by
the force of that magical thing, an instinct
for social leadership, the most brilliant
people. Her entertainments were inform-
al, but always triumphant in the fine
tone of wit, grace, and intellect that per-
vaded them. Count Gurowski, it is re-
ported, said that Mrs. Howe was the one
woman complete both on the side of liter-
ature and on that of easy and charming
social ability whom he had met in Amer-
ica. For fifteen years, too, the Ladies'
Social Club, better known abroad by
its satirical title of "Brain Club,"
flourished as the most remarkable in-
stance, in Boston, at least, of a suc-
cessful club for mental stimulation
and refreshment. It was begun by
Mrs. Josiah Quincy, and numbered
thirty or forty persons, though the
companies assembled were often twice
that; and among its active members
or readers were Emerson, Professor
Rogers, Agassiz, and Whipple. The
meetings were at private houses, but
membership was gained by many
wealthy people, who so increased the
variety of entertainment by paid per-
formers and what not, and so over-
stepped the modest programme of the
club as to suppers, that it died natu-
rally two or three years since.

the spirit of the captain may be excused if, in looking down and beholding the transcendent realization of his kindly forethought by other means, it indulges a thrill of vanity. There are the two chief clubs, the Union and the Somerset; the former frequented by lawyers, judges, merchants, and sometimes by the historian Francis Parkman, by Dr. Holmes, Thomas Gold Appleton (celebrated as a wit and a man of fine æsthetic insight), Fields, and his successor Osgood. The

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JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.

It should be said here that Cambridge, on the other hand, presents a mingling and a balance of elements which form one of the most enjoyable societies in the world. The conventional requirements are simple; the members whose employment is in art, with the university professors, and their families, themselves constitute | Somerset, being the fashionable club of the upper and fashionable circle, so far as it is fashionable at all; and the receptions, dinners, suppers for gentlemen, and little music parties, with which they entertain each other, are close upon perfection in their tone and in the opportunities given for pleasant intercourse. The only fault is the unevenness of the seasons: some are very dull and others too brilliant.

What Boston, pure and simple, lacks socially, it makes up in clubs. Long ago a public-spirited gentleman, one Captain Keayne, who died in 1656, left money to the town to support "a room for divines, scholars, merchants, shipmen, strangers, and townsmen" to meet in. What has become of the legacy I do not know; but

Boston, embraces some of the Union membership, but is especially a favorite with the old young men and young old men. There are the Temple, the Suffolk, the Central, the Athenian, all carrying houses on their backs; and the Art Club and St. Botolph, in a similar predicament. The Art Club, in fact, is about to put up a new building which will cost fifty thousand dollars. Then there are swarms of small dining clubs, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, for which male Bostonians have a passion. They are limited to some half a dozen or twenty persons each. So powerful is their attraction that members will come miles from the suburbs, through inclement weather, or when no other form of relaxation would draw them, to eat togeth

er in a hotel or restaurant. The Papyrus Club is in structure merely one of these dining companies, gradually enlarged so as to take in about a hundred gentlemen. Journalists, authors, and painters originated it, and are conceded a controlling force in its government. A small admission fee is paid, and each member may purchase a ticket on the first Saturday of each month, which entitles him to partake of a dinner, and bring friends with him, for whom he likewise pays. At these dinners speeches are made and poems read after dessert; and some of the most distinguished authors in New England, as well as

tastes in the journalistic direction-an evening paper founded on the community's desire for literary, artistic, and social gossip, and edited for eight years by a lady, the wife of a Boston banker. The Athenian Club is the chief resort of journalists and theatrical people. But the younger intellectual elements are even less united than were the older ones in their prime. Recently the St. Botolph Club has been formed, with the hope of bringing together in closer relations artists of all kinds and those who should be the friends and supporters of the arts. But the atmosphere of tradition in Boston is so gelid that a

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sympathy as soon as it is poured, and it is to be feared that a benumbing frost will creep into even the St. Botolph's house.

Men fly

from without, have been the club's guests. | thin crust of ice forms upon the wine of The Papyrus, too, holds annually a Ladies' Night, and it distinguished this occasion not long since by inviting to it some of the notable literary women from different parts of the country. Among its own members Edwin P. Whipple and the two Irish-American poets Dr. Joyce and John Boyle O'Reilly are numbered. The one last mentioned, by his gifts of imagination and the captivating grace of his social presence, has won a place in local regard, and is certainly the most romantic figure in literary Boston. Mr. William A. Hovey, another member of the Papyrus, has become widely known under the name of "Causeur," and is the editor of the Transcript, that unique result of Boston

The multiplying of clubs, however, is the sign of an uneasiness which may result in good. They are fissiparous. No sooner is one formed than it begins to make another, by subdivision. from the clubs they have to others that they know not of, hoping always to find one which will yield that generous, productive fellowship essential to a healthier and more joyous life. Perhaps by the time that Boston's suburbs have extended so far as to include a White Mountain school of authors, society itself may have learned to supply the need.

CHAPTER V.

"It was Peboan, the winter!

ANNE.

From his eyes the tears were flowing
As from melting lakes the streamlets,
And his body shrunk and dwindled
As the shouting sun ascended;
And the young man saw before him,
On the hearth-stone of the wigwam,
Where the fire had smoked and smouldered,
Saw the earliest flower of spring-time,
Saw the miskodeed in blossom.
Thus it was that in that Northland
Came the spring with all its splendor,
All its birds and all its blossoms,
All its flowers and leaves and grasses."

ON

-LONGFELLOW. The Song of Hiawatha.

up to the height with some difficulty, for
the ice-crust was broken, and she was
obliged to wade knee-deep through some
of the drifts, and go around others that
were over her head, leaving a trail behind
her as crooked as a child's through a clo-
ver field. Reaching the plateau on the
summit at last, and avoiding the hidden
pits of the old earth-work, she climbed
the icy ladder, and stood on the white
floor again with delight, brushing from
her woollen skirt and leggings the dry
snow which still clung to them.
The sun
was so bright and the air so exhilarating
that she pushed back her little fur cap,
and drew a long breath of enjoyment.
Everything below was still white-covered
-the island and village, the Straits and
the mainland; but coming around the
eastern point four propellers could be
seen floundering in the loosened ice, heav-
ing the porous cakes aside, butting with
their sharp high bows, and then backing

N this Northern border Spring came late-came late, but in splendor. She sent forward no couriers, no hints in the forest, no premonitions on the winds. All at once she was there herself. Not a shy maid, timid, pallid, hesitating, and turning back, but a full-blooming goddess and woman. One might almost say that she was not Spring at all, but Summer. The weeks called spring farther south-briskly to get headway to start forward ward showed here but the shrinking and fading of winter. First the snow crumbled to fine dry grayish powder; then the ice grew porous and became honey-suds as the floating ice closed over it. Now combed, and it was no longer safe to cross the Straits; then the first birds came; then the far-off smoke of a steamer could be seen above the point, and the village wakened. In the same day the winter went and the summer came.

again, thus breaking slowly a passageway for themselves, and churning the black water behind until it boiled white as soap

The

two boats left behind now started together with much splashing and sputtering, and veering toward the shore, with the hope of finding a new weak place in the floe, ran against hard ice with a thud, and stopped short; then there was much backing out and floundering around, the engines panting and the little bells ringing wildly, until the old channel was reached, where they rested awhile, and then made another beginning. These manœuvres

one boat, finding by chance a weakened spot, floundered through it without pause, and came out triumphantly some distance in advance of the rest; then another, wakened to new exertions by this sight, put on all steam, and went pounding On the highest point of the island were along with a crashing sound until her the remains of an old earth-work, crown-bows were on a line with the first. ed by a little surveyor's station, like an arbor on stilts, which was reached by the aid of a ladder. Anne liked to go up there on the first spring day, climb the ice-coated rounds, and, standing on the dry old snow that covered the floor, gaze off toward the south and east, where people and cities were, and the spring; then toward the north, where there was still only fast-bound ice and snow stretching away over thousands of miles of almost unknown country, the great wild north-were repeated over and over again, the land called British America, traversed by passengers and crew of each boat laughthe hunters and trappers of the Hudson ing and chaffing each other as they passBay Company-vast empire ruled by pri- ed and repassed in the slow pounding vate hands, a government within a gov-race. It had happened more than once ernment, its line of forts and posts extending from James Bay to the Little Slave, from the Saskatchewan northward to the Polar Sea. In the early afternoon she stood there now, having made her way

that these first steamers had been frozen in after reaching the Straits, and had been obliged to spend several days in company fast bound in the ice. Then the passengers and crews visited each other, climb

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lay philosophically. It is only the real | knife-bladed bows into the ice, and cut pleasure-traveller who has not one hour to spare.

These steamers Anne now watched were the first from below. The lower lakes were clear; it was only this northern Strait that still held the ice together,

a pathway through. Then word went down that the Straits were open, all the fresh-water fleet set sail, the lights were lit again in the light-houses, and the fishing stations and lonely little wood docks came to life.

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