t quite know!

When we were first in Canada I tobogganed at Rosedale. I should say it
was like flying! The start! Amazing! "Farewell to this world," I
thought, as I felt my breath go. Then I shut my mouth, opened my eyes,
and found myself at the bottom of the hill in a jiffy--"over hill, over
dale, through bush, through briar!" I rolled right out of the toboggan
when we stopped. A very nice Canadian man was my escort, and he helped
me up the hill afterwards. I didn't like _that_ part of the affair quite
so much.

Henry Irving would not come, much to my disappointment. He said that
quick motion through the air always gave him the ear-ache. He had to
give up swimming (his old Cornish Aunt Penberthy told me he delighted in
swimming as a boy) just because it gave him most violent pains in the
ear.

Philadelphia, as I first knew it, was the most old-world place I saw in
America, except perhaps Salem. Its redbrick side-walks, the trees in the
streets, the low houses with their white marble cuffs and collars, the
pretty design of the place, all give it a character of its own. The
people, too, have a character of their own. They dress, or at least
_did_ dress, very quietly. This was the only sign of their Quaker
origin, except a very fastidious taste--in plays as in other things.

Mrs. Gillespie, the great-grandchild of Benjamin Franklin, was one of my
earliest Philadelphia friends--a splendid type of the independent woman,
a bit of the martinet, but immensely full of kindness and humor. She had
a word to say in all Philadelphian matters. It would be difficult to
imagine a greater contrast to Mrs. Gillespie of Philadelphia than Mrs.
Fields of Boston, that other great American lady whom to know is a
liberal education.

Mrs. Fields reminded me of Lady Tennyson, Mrs. Tom Taylor, and Miss
Hogarth (Dickens's sister-in-law) all rolled into one. Her house is full
of relics of the past. There is a portrait of Dickens as a young man
with long hair. He had a feminine face in those days, for all its
strength. Hard by is a sketch of Keats by Severn, with a lock of the
poet's hair. Opposite is a head of Thackeray, with a note in his
handwriting fastened below. "Good-bye, Mrs. Fields; good-bye, my dear
Fields; good-bye to all. I go home."

Thackeray left Boston abruptly because a sudden desire to see his
children had assailed him at Christmas time!

As you sit in Mrs. Field's spacious room overlooking the Bay, you
realize suddenly t