y Louise McLaughlin, invited me
to lunch with her alone. Her brother, a bachelor lawyer, had at that
time the finest private library in the city. She was certainly the
most versatile in her accomplishments of anyone I have ever known. She
had painted the best full-length portrait of Judge Longworth, father
of the husband of Alice Roosevelt. She was a china painter to beat the
Chinese, and author of four books on the subject. She was an artist
in photography; had a portfolio of off-hand sketches of street gamins,
newsboys, etc., full of life and expression. She brought the art of
under glaze in china-firing to this country and had discovered a
method of etching metal into fine woods for bedroom furniture. She was
an expert at wood-carving, taking lessons from Ben Pitman. Was fond of
housekeeping and made a success of it in every way. Anything else?
Yes, she showed me pieces of her exquisite embroidery and had made an
artistic and wholly sane "crazy-quilt" so much in vogue at that time.
Her own beautiful china was all painted and finished by herself. As I
left her, I felt about two feet high, with a pin head. And yet she was
free from the slightest touch of conceit.

Miss Laura MacDonald (daughter of Alexander MacDonald, the business
man who took great risks with Mr. John D. Rockefeller in borrowing
money to invest largely in oil fields) was my pupil in the school, and
through her I became acquainted with her lovely mother, who invited me
to her home at Clifton, just out of Cincinnati, to lecture to a select
audience of her special friends.

My lectures at Mr. Bartholomew's school were very well attended. Lists
of my subjects were sent about widely, and when the day came for my
enthusiastic praise of Christopher North (John Wilson), a sweet-faced
old lady came up to the desk and placed before me a large bunch of
veritable Scotch heather for which she had sent to Scotland.

In Cleveland, where I gave a series of talks, President Cutler, of
Adelbert University, rose at the close of the last lecture and,
looking genially towards me, made this acknowledgment: "I am free to
confess that I have often been charmed by a woman, and occasionally
instructed, but never before have I been charmed and instructed by the
same woman."

Cleveland showed even then the spirit of the Cleveland of today, which
is putting that city in the very first rank of the cities not only of
the United States but of the world in civic improvement and m