Another visitor was James T. Fields of Boston, the popular publisher, poet, author, lecturer, friend, and inimitable raconteur, who was always one of my best friends.

When Mr. and Mrs. Fields were invited to Hanover, he and his beautiful wife were always guests at our home.  Their first visit to us was an epoch for me.  I worked hard the morning before they were to arrive, sweeping, dusting, polishing silver, and especially brightening the large, brass andirons in father’s library.  I usually scoured with rotten stone and oil, but on this great occasion, adopting a receipt which I had happened to see in a newspaper, I tried vinegar and powdered pumice-stone.  The result at first was fine.

I had barely time after all this to place flowers about the house and dress, and then to drive in our old carryall, with our older horse, to the station at Norwich, just across the Connecticut River, to meet the distinguished pair and escort them to our house.  As I heard the train approaching, and the shrill whistle, I got nervous, and my hands trembled.  How would they know me?  And what had I better say?  My aged and spavined horse was called by father “Rosinante” for Don Quixote’s bony steed, also “Blind Guide” and “Heathen Philosopher.”  He looked it—­and my shabby carryall!  But the train was snorting for a stop, and the two guests soon came easily to my vehicle, and Mr. Fields seemed to know me.  Both shook hands most cordially and were soon in the back seat, full of pleasant chat and the first exciting ordeal was over.  At tea table Mr. and Mrs. Fields sat on either side of father, and the stories told were different from any I had ever heard.  I found when the meal was over I had not taken a mouthful.  Next we all went to the College Church for the lecture, and on coming home we had an evening lunch.  All ate heartily but me.  I ventured to tell one story, when Mr. Fields clapped his hands and said, “Delightful.”  That was food to me!  I went to bed half starved, and only took enough breakfast to sustain life.  Before they left I had written down and committed to memory every anecdote he had given.  They have never been printed until now, and you may be sure they are just as my hero told them.  My only grief was the appearance of my andirons.  I invited our guests to the open fire with pride, and the brass was covered with black and green—­not a gleam of shine.

Often Mr. Fields’s jokes were on himself—­as the opinion of a man in the car seat just beyond him, as they happened to be passing Mr. Fields’s residence on the Massachusetts coast.  The house was pointed out on “Thunderbolt Hill” and his companion said, “How is he as a lecturer?”

“Well,” was the response, “he ain’t Gough by a d——­d sight.”

How comically he told of a country druggist’s clerk to whom he put the query, “What is the most popular pill just now?” And the quick answer, “Schenk’s—­they do say the Craowned Heads is all atakin’ of ’em!”