The circle that finally gathered around the fireside in the little library at 157 Willow Street was long remembered by some of the men who made it brilliant. John G. Saxe, whom we had known in Washington, was one of these men. Thither also came the Southern author, William Gilmore Simms. I remember one evening spent in our tiny library with Mr. Simms, John R. Thompson, and General Charles Jones, when the trio of literary men told stories,—not war stories,—ghost stories. Mr. Thompson recalled a ghost I had known of myself and feared when a child,—the ghost of the University of Virginia that announced its coming by a sudden wind bursting open the doors, passed through the room, and walked off across the lawn to the mountains. His deep foot-tracks could be discerned in the soft sod, and with snow on the ground these deep tracks could be seen to grow under his invisible feet as he strode onward. Well do I remember nights when this ghost "walked." But General Jones had a better story. His was a visible ghost, an old lady, whose contested will he was reading one night, who appeared at the challenged point, looked at him solemnly, and then vanished! Mr. Simms positively declined to mention his own private ghost after these two thrilling visitations.
We had an interesting visit from Percy Greg, son 392of the English author. Mr. Greg brought as a present to my general the proof-sheets of his father's "Warnings of Cassandra," in which my husband discovered an error; and according to his lifelong belief that all errors in the English language are crimes which must be corrected, he proceeded to enlighten Mr. Greg. "Your father has made a mistake—a slight one—which he can correct in the next edition. He uses the word 'internecine' where he clearly means 'intestine.'" Our guest dropped his under jaw, stared, and reddened. An American correcting an Englishman's English! He had, I know, respect for my husband's courage, but he had not expected rebel guns to be turned on him in this manner.
"This was a length, I trow,
A rebel's daring could not go,"
if I may paraphrase Gilbert in the Bab Ballads!
But we had more eminent guests than these,—the divines of the City of Churches, and her learned judges. Foremost and most cordial of all were the old generals of the Grand Army of the Republic: General Hancock, General James Fry, General Slocum, General Grant, General Tracy—a sometime foe in field and forum; and later General Sherman, General Fitz-John Porter, General Butterfield, and General McClellan were added to our list of friends.
Among my husband's earliest clients was General Benjamin F. Butler, who employed him to defend his son-in-law, Hon. Adelbert Ames, when the latter was impeached by the state of Mississippi. 393 In the families of these distinguished men we soon found friends, and to these were added many others. Brooklyn was noted for its refined and cultivated society, and on Brooklyn Heights many of its most prominent citizens lived, men whose names are not yet forgotten: Professor and Mrs. Eaton, our first and dearest friends; Mr. Abbot Low,—whose splendid monument is the library of Columbia University,—his charming wife and daughters and his accomplished sons, one of whom was late President of Columbia University and mayor of New York; Dr. Henry van Dyke, whose name is famous in two continents as scholar, writer, and orator of high distinction; John Roebling, the brilliant engineer, architect, and builder of the great Brooklyn Bridge, whose beautiful wife was sister of our friend, General Warren; the Hon. S. B. Chittenden and his wife, a grand dame of the old school; the family of our minister to the Court of St. James, Mr. Pierrepont; Mr. and Mrs. Alanson Trask, foremost in all good works; Mr. Henry K. Sheldon, who gave artistic musicals; Mrs. John Bullard, the patroness of art and leader in society; Mr. and Mrs. Allen, who gave a lovely daughter to be the wife of Dr. Holbrook Curtis; Mr. and Mrs. George L. Nichols, with a most dear and charming family of sons and daughters; one known to the world to-day—at home and abroad—as Katrina Trask, the brilliant author, poet, and accomplished chatelaine; Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, now one of America's charming writers; Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton; and Grace Denio Litchfield, then a beautiful 394young lady, and now a gifted author. These are but a representative few of the interesting men and women who were kind enough to visit us. A multitude of lovely young girls gathered around my school-girl daughters; and when all the army of men turned out on New Year's Day to observe—as they did religiously—the old-time custom of making calls, the little house on Willow Street showed symptoms of bursting!
All of these were Northern people, and many of them from New England,—the New England we had been taught to regard as the stronghold of our enemies. There was not a Southern-born man or woman among them. We had always considered the New Englander upright, narrow, and thorny! Transplanted to Brooklyn, we found him upright indeed, but as harmless as a thornless rose.
Many of these delightful people in time crossed the East River and pitched their tents in New York—and many have crossed the river that flows close to the feet of all of us; and so I imagine society in what is now known as the Borough of Brooklyn has formed new systems revolving around new suns. I sometimes read the old names in the society columns of the Brooklyn journals, and the old pictures rise before me, delightful and never to be forgotten.
The time had now come, however, when it was imperative for General Pryor to live in New York, the city where he had commenced his work and had always kept his office. The first of May found us in a small house on 33d Street. 395 A letter written by me in the following August gives my opinion of New York as a summer resort.
"My dear Agnes:—
"The colonel declares he means to bring you to New York, and wishes me to give you my own impressions of this place. Well, all I have to say is 'pray that your flight be not in summer!' Anything like the heat and desolation of this town in summer cannot be imagined. Everybody leaves it. I am living in a tiny house in the heart of the city—and a very hard heart it is! On one side of me is the rear of a great hotel, its kitchens and servants' offices overlooking me. Really, I had as soon hear shrieking shells as the clatter they make with their pots and pans. Behind me is a sash and blind factory yielding dust and noise unspeakable. On the other side a dreadful man has planted a garden, wherein he has spread an awning, and there he holds his revels—his card and wine parties. Of course I can but listen to him more than half the stifling hot nights, but should I remonstrate, it is not improbable he might inform me that this is a free country, which I doubt. Lucy and Fanny fortunately are far away in Virginia, and so I am spared the added discomfort of suffering through their nerves.
"This town is as completely metamorphosed in summer as if it had changed places with some struggling, dusty manufacturing city,—building and digging going on everywhere; ugly dirt-carts, instead of flower-crowned ladies in landaus, passing through the dusty streets. You might, perhaps with reason, suggest that I seem to have leisure,—that t............