had not engaged them, and the landlady had no idea of his address.  I was almost as timid about cabs as I had been about the steamboat; for I had heard stories of young girls being robbed and murdered by New York cab-drivers, and here I was, late at night, in all the whirl and excitement of the metropolis, driving I knew not where, and entirely at the mercy of an assassin.  However, my modest trunk did not look very inviting, I suppose, for I reached The New Yorker office—­the only other address I knew in the city—­without further adventure, where I ascertained that brother was now living at 124 Greenwich Street—­a most beautiful situation close by the Battery—­then the fashionable promenade of New York.  He had written to tell me of his change of residence, but the letter failed to reach me.

“It was half-past eleven when I finally reached my home.  The large parlor was ablaze with lights, and crowded with people; for it was Friday, the night that The New Yorker went to press, and brother’s reception evening.  I was trembling with fatigue and excitement, and very faint, for I had not eaten since early in the morning; but all these emotions vanished when I was introduced to my new sister.  I had seen no pictures of her, and knew her only through brother’s description, and a few letters she had written me since her marriage, and I was quite unprepared for the exquisite, fairy-like creature I now beheld.  A slight, girlish figure, rather petite in stature, dressed in clouds of white muslin, cut low, and her neck and shoulders covered by massive dark curls, from which gleamed out an Oriental-looking coiffure, composed of strands of large gold and pearl beads.  Her eyes were large, dark, and pensive, and her rich brunette complexion was heightened by a flush, not brilliant like Gabrielle’s, but delicate as a rose-leaf.  She appeared to me like a being from another world.”

To continue mamma’s reminiscences of uncle’s first year of married life: 

“I found my sister-in-law’s tastes,” she said, “quite different from those of the majority of young ladies.  In literature her preference was for the solid and philosophic, rather than the romantic class of reading; indeed, I may say that she never read, she studied; going over a paragraph several times, until she had fully comprehended its subtleties of thought, and stored them away in her retentive memory for future use.  During that year, I never knew her to read a work of fiction; but philosophy or science formed her daily nourishment; whilst brother, whenever he had a free evening, read aloud to Mary and I from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, sweetened now and then with a selection from Lord Byron or Mrs. Hemans—­the two poets that at that time he preferred.

“But although your Aunt Mary had such severe literary tastes, she was by no means gloomy in her disposition, as you might perhaps infer.  Your uncle being at that time editor of a weekly journal, he was comparatively a man of leisure, and he and Mary went frequently to the theatre, and to hear lectures—­a source of great enjoyment to both of them.  They also mingled considerably in general society, for Mary was then very fond of dancing, although there was rarely or never any at her Friday evenings, for literary people then, as now, eschewed the goddess Terpsichore.