He took very great delight in his young daughter's first contributions
to the Cornhill, and I shall always remember how he made me get into a
cab, one day in London, that I might hear, as we rode along, the joyful
news he had to impart, that he had just been reading his daughter's
first paper, which was entitled "Little Scholars." "When I read it,"
said he, "I blubbered like a child, it is so good, so simple, and so
honest; and my little girl wrote it, every word of it."

During his second visit to Boston I was asked to invite him to attend an
evening meeting of a scientific club, which was to be held at the house
of a distinguished member. I was very reluctant to ask him to be
present, for I knew he could be easily bored, and I was fearful that a
prosy essay or geological speech might ensue, and I knew he would be
exasperated with me, even although I were the _innocent_ cause of his
affliction. My worst fears were realized. We had hardly got seated,
before a dull, bilious-looking old gentleman rose, and applied his auger
with such pertinacity that we were all bored nearly to distraction. I
dared not look at Thackeray, but I felt that his eye was upon me. My
distress may be imagined, when he got up quite deliberately from the
prominent place where a chair had been set for him, and made his exit
very noiselessly into a small anteroom leading into the larger room, and
in which no one was sitting. The small apartment was dimly lighted, but
he knew that I knew _he_ was there. Then commenced a series of
pantomimic feats impossible to describe adequately. He threw an
imaginary person (myself, of course) upon the floor, and proceeded to
stab him several times with a paper-folder, which he caught up for the
purpose. After disposing of his victim in this way, he was not
satisfied, for the dull lecture still went on in the other room, and he
fired an imaginary revolver several times at an imaginary head. Still,
the droning speaker proceeded with his frozen subject (it was something