ttle boy he had met outside; but nothing more which I can recall. My
own share in the conversation has entirely faded from my memory: it is
probable indeed that I had no share in it at all, being less at my ease
in the conventional sphere of a drawing-room than in the more
unconstrained atmosphere of a back alley. Yet in hours of depression,
when, in spite of the most sincere desire to think favorably of mankind,
I cannot fail to notice that I am not appreciated as I should be by the
undiscerning world, and my soul seeks consolation and forgetfulness from
higher sources, I half believe that when he went back to his own
country, and spoke there, as I have heard he did very often, of the
pleasant people he had met here, of the American friends he valued so
much, it was perhaps not without an _arriere-pensee_ of his noisy
acquaintance of the doorstep in Locust street.

The intercourse so tempestuously begun was threatened with an early
extinction, for my newly acquired friend returned soon after this to his
home, where were the two little girls whom he was fond of describing
while saying that he would not dare to bring them to this country, lest
they should come to despise the simple muslin gowns with which they were
then quite content; home to the toil of the hard-worked brain, the
steady labor of the untiring pen, which was to give us before it rested
for ever nothing indeed like his earlier works, but much which we shall
not willingly let die; home to England, in truth, but only that, having
written the story of certain of its kings, as he had before written the
worthier history of some of its unsceptred monarchs, whose sovereign
sway is over our spirits still, he might come again across the ocean to
greet all who should wish to hear him tell of the Britain of a century
past, when our own history had as yet scarcely seen the conclusion of
its opening chapter; giving as he did, so minute, life-like details
relating to the great men of that time, whose familiar names were to
most of his hearers not much more than names, but which, thanks in great
part to him, are now as household words. And so we met, and being two
years older, I was accorded the honor of becoming one of his auditors,
going with my mother to hear each of his lectures. We sat in a box on
one side of the stage in Concert Hall, and at this moment I recall the
tall, dignified figure standing before the desk on which were placed his
notes, and the crowded room