“My orthodoxy is settled beyond dispute, I trust, by the following circumstance:  The editor of a New York magazine has written to me to furnish an article for the Christmas number on ‘The Star in the East.’  I have ventured, in my note of declination, to mention that if I investigated that subject I might decide that there was no star in the case, and then what would become of me, and where should I go?  Since that he has not written, so I may have hung myself!

“1879.  April 25.  I have ‘done’ New York very much as we did it thirty years ago.  On Saturday I went to Miss Booth’s reception, and it was like Miss Lynch’s, only larger than Miss Lynch’s was when I was there....  Miss Booth and a friend live on Fifty-ninth street, and have lived together for years.  Miss Booth is a nice-looking woman.  She says she has often been told that she looked like me; she has gray hair and black eyes, but is fair and well-cut in feature.  I had a very nice time.

“On Sunday I went to hear Frothingham, and he was at his very best.  The subject was ‘Aspirations of Man,’ and the sermon was rich in thought and in word.

...  Frothingham’s discourse was more cheery than usual; he talked about the wonderful idea of personal immortality, and he said if it be a dream of the imagination let us worship the imagination.  He spoke of Mrs. Child’s book on ‘Aspirations,’ and I shall order it at once.  The only satire was such a sentence as this:  on speaking of a piece of Egyptian sculpture he said, ’The gates of heaven opened to the good, not to the orthodox.’

“To-day, Monday, I have been to a public school (a primary) and to Stewart’s mansion.  I asked the majordomo to take us through the rooms on the lower floor, which he did.  I know of no palace which comes up to it.  The palaces always have a look as if at some point they needed refurbishing up.  I suppose that Mrs. Stewart uses that dining-room, but it did not look as if it was made to eat in.  I still like Gerome’s ‘Chariot Race’ better than anything else of his.  The ‘Horse Fair’ was too high up for me to enjoy it, and a little too mixed up.

“1873.  St. Petersburg is another planet, and, strange to say, is an agreeable planet.  Some of these Europeans are far ahead of us in many things.  I think we are in advance only in one universal democracy of freedom.  But then, that is everything.

“Nov. 17, 1875.  I think you are right to decide to make your home pleasant at any sacrifice which involves only silence.  And you are so all over a radical, that it won’t hurt you to be toned down a little, and in a few years, as the world moves, your family will have moved one way and you the other a little, and you will suddenly find yourself on the same plane.  It is much the way that has been between Miss ——­ and myself.  To-day she is more of a women’s rights woman than I was when I first knew her, while I begin to think that the girls would better dress at tea-time, though I think on that subject we thought alike at first, so I’ll take another example.