Edward Everett Hale was kind to me, as he was to all who came within his radius.  He once called to warn me to avoid, like poison, a rascally imposter who was calling on many of the authors in and near Boston to get one thousand dollars from each to create a publishing company, so that authors could have their books published at a much cheaper rate than in the regular way.  This person never called on me, as I then had no bank account.  He did utterly impoverish many other credulous persons, both writers, and in private families.  All was grist that came to his mill, and he ground them “exceeding small.”

I met Mr. Hale one early spring at Pinehurst, North Carolina, with his wife and daughter.  He always had a sad face, as one who knew and grieved over the faults and frailties of humanity, but at this time he was recovering from a severe fall, and walked with a slow and feeble step.  When he noticed me sitting on the broad piazza, he came, and taking a chair beside me, began to joke in his old way, telling comical happenings, and inquired if I knew where Noah kept his bees.  His answer:  “In the Ark-hives, of course.”  Once when I asked his opinion of a pompous, loud-voiced minister, he only said, “Self, self, self!”

I wonder how many in his audiences or his congregation could understand more than half of what he was saying.  I once went to an Authors’ Reading in Boston where he recited a poem, doubtless very impressive, but although in a box just over the stage, I could not get one word.  He placed his voice at the roof of his mouth, a fine sounding board, but the words went no farther than the inside of his lips.  I believe his grand books influence more persons for better lives than even his personal presence and Christ-like magnetism.

Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson never failed me.  Once only I ventured alone into the Authors’ Club Saturday meeting, and none of my own friends happened to be there.  Evidently I was not known.  Mr. Higginson saw the situation at once, and coming quickly to me escorted me to a comfortable seat.  He ordered two cups of tea with wafers, and beckoned to some delightful men and women to whom he introduced me as his friend Miss Sanborn, thus putting me at my ease.  He was also ever patient about my monomania of trying to prove that women possess both wit and humour.  He spoke of his first wife as the wittiest woman he had ever known, giving convincing proof.  A few men were on my side, but they could be counted on one hand omitting the thumb.  But I worked on this theme until I had more than sufficient material for a good-sized volume.  If a masculine book reviewer ever alluded to the book, it was with a sneer.  He generally left it without a word, as men still ignore the fact when a woman wins in an essay-writing competition against men in her class or gets the verdict for her powers in a mixed debate.  At last Mr. Higginson wrote me most kindly to stop battering on that theme.  “If any man is such a fool as to insist that women are destitute of wit or humour, then he is so big a fool that it is not worth while to waste your good brains on him.  T.W.  Higginson.”  That reproof chilled my ardour.  Now you can hardly find any one who denies that women possess both qualities, and it is generally acknowledged that not a few have the added gift of comedy.