Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/150

Rh Kane was and is worthily remembered. He was a fascinating conversationalist, a rather handsome, dashing, well-dressed young Irish gentleman, very much courted in society for a brief hour. He went to the war, fought bravely, and surrendered his young life gracefully and well after the second battle of Bull Run.

It is a thousand pities that Mrs. Botta had not had the French autobiographical spirit, for she could have given us immortal sketches of the historical characters who for forty years went in and out of her hospitable door. She had sentimentalists and genuine thinkers among her guests. She could have given an unparalleled chronicle of that early dawn which led up to Harper's Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and the thousand and one successors of those famous monthlies. She herself had been glad to write for the Democratic Magazine at ten dollars a page in her youth; and although she never cared much for society, she could have given a tolerably faithful chronicle of society from 1850 to 1880, before that respectable and conservative epoch had harnessed four horses to its carriage.

She wrote well herself, both prose and poetry, and with great industry compiled a book of the History of Literature.

But how much greater would her fame be now if she had had a Boswell or a Samuel Pepys in her disposition: we love the minor details. One would meet all the most distinguished men and women at Mrs. Botta's, perhaps four times during the winter, at some reception given to one great man or woman, the author of the last novel or poem. I remember T. Buchanan Read reciting his Sheridan's Ride at one of these, and I remember a charming breakfast with Booth, with Rostori, and with Salvini there. I also remember delightful interviews