What has a woman to do with dates—­cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates—­new style, old style, precession of the equinoxes, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their station and never come?  Her poetical idiosyncrasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of reference in woman’s autobiography.  Plutarch sets the example of dropping dates in favour of incidents; and an authority more appropriate, Madame de Genlis, who began her own memoires at eighty, swept through nearly an age of incident and revolution without any reference to vulgar eras signifying nothing (the times themselves out of joint), testifying to the pleasant incidents she recounts and the changes she witnessed.  I mean to have none of them!

I hesitate to allude to my next experience after leaving Smith College, for it was so delightful that I am afraid I shall scarcely be believed, and am also afraid that my readers will consider me a “swell head” and my story only fit for a “Vanity Box.”  Yet I would not leave out one bit of the Western lecture trip.  If it were possible to tell of the great kindness shown me at every step of the way without any mention of myself, I would gladly prefer to do that.

After leaving Smith College, I was enjoying commencement festivities in my own home—­when another surprising event!  Mr. George W. Bartholomew, a graduate of Dartmouth, who was born and brought up in a neighbouring Vermont town, told me when he called that he had established a large and successful school for young ladies in Cincinnati, Ohio, taking a few young ladies to live in his pleasant home.  He urged me to go to his school for three months to teach literature, also giving lectures to ladies of the city in his large recitation hall.  And he felt sure he could secure me many invitations to lecture in other cities.

Remembering my former Western experience with measles and whooping-cough, I realized that mumps and chicken-pox were still likely to attack me, but the invitation was too tempting, and it was gladly accepted, and I went to Cincinnati in the fall of 1884.

Mrs. Bartholomew I found a charming woman and a most cordial friend.  Every day of three months spent in Cincinnati was full of happiness.  Mrs. Broadwell, a decided leader in the best social matters, as well as in all public spirited enterprises, I had known years before in Hanover, N.H.  Her brother, General William Haines Lytle, had been slain at Chickamauga during the Civil War, just in the full strength and glory of manhood.  He wrote that striking poem, beginning:  “I am dying, Egypt, dying.”  Here are two verses of his one poem: 

As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian! 
Glorious sorceress of the Nile,
Light the path to Stygian horrors
With the splendors of thy smile. 
Give the Caesar crowns and arches,
Let his brow the laurel twine;
I can scorn the Senate’s triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.