"Found the miserablest railroad hotel, where I waited all day for trunk, in distress!... Had to lecture without either dress or manuscript. Mrs. Blank hastily arrayed me in her black silk, and I had fortunately a few notes."
She never forgot this lesson, and in all the thirty-odd years of speaking and lecturing that remained, made it an invariable rule to travel with her lecture and her cap and laces in her handbag. As she grew older, the satchel grew lighter. She disliked all personal service, and always wanted to carry her hand-luggage herself. The light palm-leaf knapsack she brought from Santo Domingo was at the end replaced by a net, the lightest thing she could find.
The Unitarian Church in Newport was second in her heart only to the Church of the Disciples. The Reverend Charles T. Brooks, the pastor, was her dear friend. In the spring of 1880 a Channing memorial celebration was held in Newport, for which she wrote a poem. She sat on the platform near Mr. Emerson, heard Dr. Bellows's discourse on Channing, "which was exhaustive, and as it lasted two hours, exhausting." The exercises, W. H. Channing's eulogium, etc., etc., lasted through the day and evening, and in the intervals between addresses she was "still retouching" her poem, which came last of all. "A great day!" says the Journal.
"July 23. Very busy all day. Rainy weather. In the evening I had a mock meeting, with burlesque papers, etc. I lectured on Ism-Is-not-m, on Asm-spasm-plasm."
"July 24. Working hard, as usual. Marionettes at home in the evening. Laura had written the text. Maud was Julius Cæsar; Flossy, Cassius; Daisy, Brutus."
"July 28. Read my lecture on 'Modern Society' in the Hillside Chapel at Concord.... The comments of Messrs. Alcott and W. H. Channing were quite enough to turn a sober head."
"To the poorhouse and to Jacob Chase's with Joseph Coggeshall. Old Elsteth, whom I remember these many years, died a few weeks ago. One of the pauper women who has been there a long time told me that Elsteth cried out that she was going to Heaven, and that she gave her, as a last gift, a red handkerchief. Mrs. Anna Brown, whom I saw last year, died recently. Her relatives are people in good position and ought to have provided for her in her declining years. They came, in force, to her funeral and had a very nice coffin for her. Took her body away for burial. Such meanness needs no comment.
"Jacob was glad to see me. Asked after Maud and doubted whether she was as handsome as I was when he first saw me (thirty or more years ago). His wife said to me in those days: 'Jacob thinks thee's the only good-looking woman in these parts.' She was herself a handsome woman and a very sweet one. I wish I had known I was so good-looking."
Of the writing of letters there was no end. Correspondence was rather a burden than a delight to her; yet, when all the "duty letters" were written, she loved to take a fresh sheet and frolic with some one of her absent children. Laura, being the furthest removed, received perhaps more than her share of these letters; yet, as will appear from them, she never had enough.
To Laura