whose walls were covered with the faces and the autographs of all the
contemporary poets and novelists. The Fieldses had spent some days with
Tennyson in their recent English sojourn, and Mrs. Fields had much to
tell of him, how he looked, how he smoked, how he read aloud, and how he
said, when he asked her to go with him to the tower of his house, "Come
up and see the sad English sunset!" which had an instant value to me such
as some rich verse of his might have had. I was very new to it all, how
new I could not very well say, but I flattered myself that I breathed in
that atmosphere as if in the return from life-long exile. Still I
patriotically bragged of the West a little, and I told them proudly that
in Columbus no book since Uncle Tom's Cabin had sold so well as 'The
Marble Faun'. This made the effect that I wished, but whether it was
true or not, Heaven knows; I only know that I heard it from our leading
bookseller, and I made no question of it myself.

After breakfast, Fields went away to the office, and I lingered, while
Mrs. Fields showed me from shelf to shelf in the library, and dazzled me
with the sight of authors' copies, and volumes invaluable with the
autographs and the pencilled notes of the men whose names were dear to me
from my love of their work. Everywhere was some souvenir of the living
celebrities my hosts had met; and whom had they not met in that English
sojourn in days before England embittered herself to us during our civil
war? Not Tennyson only, but Thackeray, but Dickens, but Charles Reade,
but Carlyle, but many a minor fame was in my ears from converse so recent
with them that it was as if I heard their voices in their echoed words.

I do not remember how long I stayed; I remember I was afraid of staying
too long, and so I am sure I did not stay as long as I should have liked.
But I have not the least notion how I got away, and I am not certain
where I spent the rest of a day that began in the clouds, but had to be