Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/163

 the latter I thought especially good; it is made from the Cataba grape at Cincinnati. We dined also at the house of the pleasing and lively Mrs. F., whose husband is a martyr to neuralgia, which makes many martyrs in this country. I could scarcely avoid shedding tears when I saw him, he looked so suffering, yet so perfectly patient, as he sat there quite lame in his wheeled chair.

Farther, we dined at Professor P.'s, a Swedenborgian, who showed me much kindness ; and farther still, I have been at a —— Bee! And if you would know what the creature is in the life of society here—then, behold!—Is a family reduced to poverty by sickness or fire, and the children are in want of clothes or whatever else it may be, immediately a number of ladies of the neighbourhood who are in good circumstances meet together at one place to sew for them. Such a sewing-assembly as this is called a Bee!

And now there was a Bee at the house of Mrs. S., the lady of the President of the University, to sew for a family who had lost all their clothing by fire, and I was invited to be present at it. The bee-hive was excellent, and busy, and cheerful, and had—if not honey—remarkably good milk and cake to offer the working bees, among whom I took my place, but not to do very much myself.

A merry little man, Professor K., a Dane by birth, and a true Dane in naïveté and loquacity, has visited and amused us many times. He has associated himself with a Polish professor, one as large and stately as the Dane is little and lively, and the two are always together disputing and making speeches,—singing each his own songs in so amazingly contrasting a manner, that Maria Lowell and myself kept this evening continually bursting into fits of laughter.

Professor Desor, a Swiss and naturalist, has interested