Memories grave and gay. Florence Howe Hall

      My father, who was active in the councils of the Republican party and who was a friend of Charles Francis Adams, once called to see him about some matter connected with his approaching election to Congress, if I remember aright. We were received in the wonderful mahogany room. The existence of this was not known until recent times, when some workmen accidentally discovered beneath the plaster a wall of solid mahogany reaching from floor to ceiling. The plaster was removed and the mahogany paneled and varnished, thus making a beautiful and unusual interior.

      Mrs. Charles Francis Adams was a fine-looking woman whose bright black eyes bespoke keenness of mind as well as geniality and vivacity of temperament. At the time of which I speak, her hair was jet black and worn in the smooth bandeaux then fashionable. Both in appearance and in disposition she formed a contrast with her distinguished husband, who was already bald and gray, with blue eyes.

      Brother Harry and sister Laura went at this time to a school kept by Miss Susan Hale, a sister of Edward Everett Hale. Harry had been from his tenderest years an extremely mischievous child. If Miss Hale punished him by putting him in the closet, some damage to the clothing hanging there was sure to result. Laura was a very good and amiable little girl, and conscientious as well.

      Nevertheless, when she was about five years old a curious indisposition was wont to attack her as the time approached for starting for school. With the brutal penetration of the older sister, I saw that this was only “shamming.” But the elders were more lenient. The child perhaps might not feel well, so she was allowed to remain at home. As soon as the rest of us had departed she recovered her health with surprising promptness!

      In extenuation of this little piece of innocent deception it should be said that she was rather a delicate child.

      She, as well as Julia, developed a literary turn of mind very early. When only five years old she delighted the rest of us by reciting “Annie of Lochroyan” and other ballads from Thalatta, a book of which we were all fond. A little later, when she went to the school kept by Mr. Henry Williams, he called her in to read before the older girls, for the instruction of the latter. Dear, good man, he did not realize the naughtiness of girls. They made the child’s life miserable by teasing her after this event.

      I have already mentioned some of our foreign teachers. Among these was a German, Dr. D——, who had ten children and, as I think, no servant. Yet he told us that he never wanted to dine out, as his wife was such a good cook. This seemed to me a little hard on that good woman. He had the habit of learning, before breakfast, one hundred words of some foreign language! Evidently he was a man of attainments but not of scientific accuracy.

      One could pardon, as a poetic flight of fancy, his statement that the mastodon—or some other extinct beast—was as large as the Institution for the Blind. But when it came to the price of cows, that was another matter. He made a misstatement on this subject to the blind boys, some of whom were country lads, and thus lost their confidence. Possibly they were unjust, for the learned professor might have confused German and American prices!