Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/120

Rh insisted upon it that I must come, would not let me escape till I had promised, and was all the time so full of animation, and so irresistibly merry that we, she and I and the whole company, burst into one peal of laughter after another. There was besides so much that was excellent and really sensible in what she said, and I felt that there was so much heart in the zealous little creature, that I could not help liking her, and made her the promise as she wished. With her was another lady, as quiet as she was active, a female professor of phrenology, who wished to get hold of my head. But my poor head has now enough to do to hold itself up in the whirl of company life.

I have passed the forenoon in making visits with Mrs. Kirkland, and at six o clock I went to dine with Consul Habicht, our Swedish Consul in New York, who is very agreeable and polite, but who dines so horribly late. In the morning I shall be taken by a lively lady, Mrs. L., to her country seat on the Hudson, and on Saturday I return to see a great number of people at Miss Lynch's. And thus is every day occupied for the whole time. Sunday the 18th.—And now for a short time before going to church let me converse a little with my Agatha. Do you know that it is really remarkable what I have gone through, both as regards people and things. I am beginning to have an esteem for myself. But it is really necessary to be strong as a stranger and a guest in this country.

The day before yesterday Mrs. L. (an excellent type of the exuberantly youthful life of the people of the New World), fetched me and Miss Lynch to her villa on the Hudson. But firstly, we had to pay a morning visit to a rich lady, who had a morning reception, then to a little Quaker lady, eighty-four years old, the handsomest little old woman I ever saw, and who in her delicate white