with its interesting pictures and fragrant with fresh flowers;
the dining-room, the drawing-rooms, with their magnetized
atmosphere of the past (you can almost feel the presence of
those who have loved to linger there); her own sanctum, where a
chosen few were admitted; but the limits of space forbid. The
queens of Parisian salons have been praised and idealized till
we are led to believe them unapproachable in their social
altitude. But I am not afraid to place beside them an American
woman, uncrowned by extravagant adulation, but fully their
equal--the artist, poet, conversationist, Anne C. L. Botta.

She was absolutely free from egotism or conceit, always avoiding
allusion to what she had accomplished, or her unfulfilled longings.
But she once told me:

Sandy (short for old, red sand stone), I would rather have had
a child than to have made the most perfect statue or the finest
painting ever produced. [She also said]: If I could only stop
longing and aspiring for that which is not in my power to
attain, but is only just near enough to keep me always running
after it, like the donkey that followed an ear of corn which
was tied fast to a stick.

Mrs. Botta came of a Celtic father, gay, humorous, full of impulsive
chivalry and intense Irish patriotism, and of a practical New England
mother, herself of Revolutionary stock, clear of judgment, careful of
the household economy, upright, exemplary, and "facultied." In the
daughter these inherited qualities blended in a most harmonious
whole. Grant Allen, the scientific writer, novelist, and student of
spiritualistic phenomena, thinks that racial differences often combine