known as Dora D'Istria
than as the Princess Koltzoff Massalsky.

There is a romantic fascination about this woman's life as
brilliant as fiction, but more strange and remarkable in that
it is all sober truth--nay, to her much of it was even sad
reality. Her career was a glorious one, but lonely as the
position of her pictured palm-tree, and oftentimes only upheld
by her own consciousness of the right; she has felt the trials
of minds isolated by greatness. Singularly gifted by nature
with both mental and physical, as well as social superiority,
the Princess united in an unusual degree masculine strength of
character, grasp of thought, philosophical calmness, love of
study and research, joined to an ardent and impassioned love of
the grand, the true, and the beautiful. She had the grace and
tenderness of the most sensitive of women, added to mental
endowments rare in a man. Her beauty, which had been
remarkable, was the result of perfect health, careful training,
and an active nature. Her physical training made her a fearless
swimmer, a bold rider, and an excellent walker--all of which
greatly added to her active habits and powers of observation in
travelling, for she travelled much. Only a person of uncommon
bodily vigour can so enjoy nature in her wildest moods and
grandest aspects.

This quotation is from a long article which Mrs. Grace L. Oliver, of
Boston, published in an early number of _Scribner's Magazine_. I never
had known of the existence of this learned, accomplished woman, but
after reading this article I ventured to ask her to send me the
material for a lecture and she responded most generously, sending
books, many sketches of her career, full lists of the subjects which
had most interested her, poems addressed to her as if she were a
goddess, and the pictures she added proved her to have been certainly
very beautiful. "She looked like Venus and spoke like Minerva."

My audience was greatly interested. She was as new to them as to me
and all she had donated was handed round to an eager crowd. In about
six months I saw in the papers that Dora D'Istria was taking a long
trip to America to meet Mrs. Oliver, Edison, Longfellow, and myself!

I called on her later at a seashore hotel near Boston. She had just
finished her lunch, and said she had been enjoying for the first time
boiled corn on the c