Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/128

 beautiful voice, and in his lucid and excellent manner, his ideas regarding the remains in Central America, and his hypothesis of the union of the two continents of America and Asia in a very remote age. It was interesting to hear him, and interesting would it be to me to see and hear more of this man, whose character and manner attract me. He also is among those who have invited me to his house and home, but whose invitation I am obliged to decline, and in this case I feel that it is a renunciation and loss.

As he led me from the dinner-table, I proposed to him to preach against such dinners. But he shook his head, and said, with a smile, “Not against dinners, Miss Bremer!”

Gentlemen, even the best of them, are decidedly too fond of eating.

When at night I went home with Anne Lynch, the air was delicious, and the walk through this night air, and in the quiet streets—the causeways here are broad and as smooth as a house-floor—very agreeable. The starry heavens—God's town—stood with streets and groups of glittering dwellings in quiet grandeur and silence above us. And here, in that quiet, starlight night, Anne Lynch unfolded all her soul to me, and I saw an earnest and profound depth, bright with stars, such as I scarcely expected in this gay being, who, butterfly-like, flutters through the life of society as in its proper element. I had always thought her uncommonly agreeable, had admired the ability with which she, without affluence, and who, alone by her talents and personal endowments, had made for herself and for her estimable mother an independence, and by which she had become the gathering point for the literary and the most cultivated society of New York, who assembled once a week in her drawing-room. I had admired also her inoffensive wit; her child-like gaiety and good-humour, and especially liked