some ten years later, one Mary
F. Rourke, a servant employed in the house of Dr. Agassiz, with whom
Whittier was bunking at the time, admitted that she herself had taken a
letter, bearing my name in the corner of the envelope, to the poet at
his breakfast on the following morning.

But whatever became of it after it fell into his hands, I received no
reply. I waited five days, during which time I stayed in the house
rather than go out wearing the Whittier gray derby. On the sixth day I
wrote him again, as follows:

Cambridge, Mass.
Nov. 14, 1890.

Dear Mr. Whittier:

How about that hat of mine?

Yours respectfully,

ROBERT C. BENCHLEY.

I received no answer to this letter either. Concluding that the good
gray poet was either too busy or too gosh-darned mean to bother with the
thing, I myself adopted an attitude of supercilious unconcern and closed
the correspondence with the following terse message:

Cambridge, Mass.
December 4, 1890.

Dear Mr. Whittier:

It is my earnest wish that the hat of mine which you are keeping will
slip down over your eyes some day, interfering with your vision to such
an extent that you will walk off the sidewalk into the gutter and
receive painful, albeit superficial, injuries.

Your young friend,

ROBERT C. BENCHLEY.

Here the matter ended so far as I was concerned, and I trust that
biographers in the future will not let any confusion of motives or
misunderstanding of dates enter into a clear and unbiased statement of
the whole affair. We must not have another Shelley-Byron scandal.

II

FAMILY LIFE IN AMERICA

PART I

The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state
that no family of characters is considered true to life which does not
include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who
spills food down the front of his vest. If this school progresses, the
following is what we may expect in our national literature in a year or
so.

The living-room in the Twillys' house was so damp that thick, soppy moss
grew all over the walls. It dripped on the picture of Grandfather Twilly
that hung over the melodeon, making streaks down the dirty glass like
sweat on the old man's face. It was a mean face. Grandfather Twilly had
been a mean man and bad little spots of soup on the lapel of his coat.
All his children were mean and had soup spots on their clothes.

Grandma Twilly sat in the rocker over by the window, and as she rocked