st that came to his mill, and he ground them "exceeding small."

I met Mr. Hale one early spring at Pinehurst, North Carolina, with his
wife and daughter. He always had a sad face, as one who knew and
grieved over the faults and frailties of humanity, but at this time
he was recovering from a severe fall, and walked with a slow and
feeble step. When he noticed me sitting on the broad piazza, he came,
and taking a chair beside me, began to joke in his old way, telling
comical happenings, and inquired if I knew where Noah kept his bees.
His answer: "In the Ark-hives, of course." Once when I asked his
opinion of a pompous, loud-voiced minister, he only said, "Self, self,
self!"

I wonder how many in his audiences or his congregation could
understand more than half of what he was saying. I once went to an
Authors' Reading in Boston where he recited a poem, doubtless very
impressive, but although in a box just over the stage, I could not get
one word. He placed his voice at the roof of his mouth, a fine
sounding board, but the words went no farther than the inside of his
lips. I believe his grand books influence more persons for better
lives than even his personal presence and Christ-like magnetism.

Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson never failed me. Once only I ventured
alone into the Authors' Club Saturday meeting, and none of my own
friends happened to be there. Evidently I was not known. Mr. Higginson
saw the situation at once, and coming quickly to me escorted me to a
comfortable seat. He ordered two cups of tea with wafers, and
beckoned to some delightful men and women to whom he introduced me as
his friend Miss Sanborn, thus putting me at my ease. He was also ever
patient about my monomania of trying to prove that women possess both
wit and humour. He spoke of his first wife as the wittiest woman he
had ever known, giving convincing proof. A few men were on my side,
but they could be counted on one hand omitting the thumb. But I worked
on this theme until I had more than sufficient material for a
good-sized volume. If a masculine book reviewer ever alluded to the
book, it was with a sneer. He generally left it without a word, as men
still ignore the fact when a woman wins in an essay-writing
competition against men in her class or gets the verdict for her
powers in a mixed debate. At last Mr. Higginson wrote me most kindly
to stop battering on that theme. "If any man is such a fool as to
insist that women are destitut