Some experiences were not so humorous.  A very hard-handed, poorly dressed but patently upright man took it very seriously.  I told him he had had a pretty hard life, but that no man could look him in the face and say that he had been wronged by him.  He said that was so, but he wanted to ask my advice as to what to do when persecuted because he could not do more than was possible to pay an old debt for which he was not to blame.  I comforted him all I could, and told him he should not allow himself to be imposed upon.  When he left he asked for my address down town.  He wanted to see me again.  The depth of suffering and the credulity revealed were often embarrassing and made me feel a fraud when I was aiming merely to amuse.  I was glad again to become my undisguised self.

It was in the late eighties that Julia Ward Howe visited her sister near the city, and I very gladly was of service in helping her fill some of her engagements.  She gave much pleasure by lectures and talks and enjoyed visiting some of our attractions.  She was charmed with the Broadway Grammar School, where Jean Parker had achieved such wonderful results with the foreign girls of the North Beach locality.  I remember meeting a distinguished educator at a dinner, and I asked him if he had seen the school.  He said he had.  “What do you think of it?” I asked him.  “I think it is the finest school in the world,” he said.  I took Mrs. Howe to a class.  She was asked to say a few words, and in her beautiful voice she gained instant and warm attention.  She asked all the little girls who spoke French in their homes to stand.  Many rose.  Then she called for Spanish.  Many more stood.  She followed with Scandinavian and Italian.  But when she came to those who used English she found few.  She spoke to several in their own tongue and was most enthusiastically greeted.  I also escorted her across the bay to Mills College, with which she was greatly pleased.  She proved herself a good sport.  With true Bohemianism, she joined in luncheon on the ferryboat, eating ripe strawberries from the original package, using her fingers and enjoying the informality.  She fitted every occasion with dignity or humor.  In the pulpit at our church she preached a remarkably fine sermon.

Mozoomdar, the saintly representative of the Brahmo Somaj, was a highly attractive man.  His voice was most musical, and his bearing and manner were beautiful.  He seemed pure spirit and a type of the deeply religious nature.  Nor was he without humor.  In speaking of his visit to England he said that his hosts generally seemed to think that for food he required only “an unlimited quantity of milk.”