I had known nothing of Mrs. Botta's prestige nor of her friendship with Emerson, Carlyle, Froude, Fanny Kemble, Frederika Brémer, Daniel Webster, Charles O'Connor, Fitz-Greene Halleck, even Louis Kossuth, when she first visited me, introducing herself; nor did she ever allude to any one or anything (as so many do!) to impress me with her claims to my consideration. A most fascinating talker herself, she proceeded simply to draw me on gently to talk of myself,—and no magnet can draw like human sympathy. I once found myself telling her something of my experience in time of war, encouraged by her splendid eyes fixed upon me in rapt attention.
Presently their light was veiled in tears, and rising from her seat she took me in outstretched arms and kissed me. No wonder that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David from that hour.
She could even sympathize with so small a matter as my dolors anent the hot summer I had passed—"Yes, yes," she said, "I know all about it." She had written a dismal catalogue of the miseries of the dog-days, of which I remember the concluding lines:—
"When Phœbus and Fahrenheit start a rampage
Then there's heat, no thoughts of a blizzard assuage;
And when 'General Humidity' joins in the tilt
Like plucked flowers of the field the poor mortal must wilt,
Till he cries like the wit, in disconsolate tones,
To take off his flesh and sit in his bones!
But for all that, my dear, to make myself clear,