sterday from the little colored sculptress, Edmonia Lewis.
Miss Lewis was accompanied by a box of formidable size, containing, she
told us, a marble bust of Mr. Greeley, which she had brought out here
for the opinion of the family; but as Ida was in the city where she had
gone for a day's shopping, we reserved our judgment until she should
return and see it with us.

I was very glad to learn that Miss Lewis was prospering in both a
pecuniary and an artistic point of view. She had, she told me,
received two orders for busts of uncle--one from the Lincoln Club, and
one from a Chicago gentleman. She intends returning to Rome before
long.

Miss Lewis had already opened a studio while we were in Rome four or
five years ago, and I heard much talk about her from her brother and
sister artists. I intended at one time to visit her studio and see her
work, but several sculptors advised me not to do so; she was, they
declared, "queer," "unsociable," often positively rude to her visitors,
and had been heard to fervently wish that the Americans would not come
to her studio, as they evidently looked upon her only as a curiosity.
When, therefore, I did see her for the first time (last summer), I was
much surprised to find her by no means the morose being that had been
described to me, but possessed of very soft and quite winning manners.
She was amused when I told her what I had heard of her, and remarked,
quite pertinently:

"How could I expect to sell my work if I did not receive visitors
civilly?"

Miss Lewis expressed much gratitude to Miss Hosmer and Miss Stebbins
for their kindness to her in Rome, and of Miss Cushman she said
enthusiastically, "She is an angel!"

She is, I have been told, very well received in society abroad, and
when baptized a Catholic in Rome, two ladies of high position, Countess
Cholmondeley and Princess Wittgenstein, offered to stand godmother for
her. Edmonia chose Lady Cholmondeley, whom I remember well in Rome as
a great belle and a highly accomplished woman. She wrote poetry, I was
told, and modelled in clay with much taste, and her finely trained
voice and dainty playing of the harp I well remember as one of the
attractions of Miss Cushman's receptions.

Edmonia has, beside her somewhat hard English appellation, two pretty
baptismal names--Maria Ignatia.

CHAPTER X.

Cataloguing the Library--A Thousand Volumes--Contrasting Books--Some
Rare Volumes--Mr. Greeley's Collection of Pai