. This poem, the Christmas classic of
_The Visit of St. Nicholas_, begins with "'T was the night before
Christmas," and its simple yet merry jingle and delightful
word-pictures have endeared it to all children since his time and will
endure to please many more to come.

All that there was of literary New York half a century ago centred
about Anne C. Lynch. She established a circle, a gathering which
increased or fell off in numbers as men and women of brains came and
went. This was the first near approach to a _salon_ in this country.
In the early days of her coming to the city, Miss Lynch lived in a
neat-appearing brick house in Waverly Place, just off Washington
Square. She moved elsewhere from time to time, the literary coterie
moving about as she moved. At the height of her success, in 1855, she
married the Italian educator, Vincenzo Botta, then in his second year
in New York and occupying a professorship of Italian literature in the
University of New York. The receptions of Mrs. Botta flourished and
were as popular as had been those of Miss Lynch. Her writings, too,
went on, and her most widely known work, the material for which she
gathered during her intimate personal association with many authors,
the _Handbook of Universal Literature_, was written when she lived in
Thirty-seventh Street, a few doors west of Fifth Avenue.

In the early years of Anne C. Lynch's receptions, one of her intimates
was Caroline M. Kirkland, the friend of Bayard Taylor. Mrs. Kirkland,
who had just returned after a residence in Michigan, sought her advice
before she published _Forest Life_, which was the second of her
descriptions of the sparsely settled region where she had spent three
years of her life. The intimacy between these two continued for years,
indeed until Mrs. Kirkland died, in 1864, stricken with paralysis
while under the strain of managing a great sanitary fair during the
Civil War.

Through Mrs. Kirkland, Lydia M. Child was introduced at the Lynch
receptions, when she was associated with her husband in conducting the
_National Anti-Slavery Standard_. She had been a writer since her
youth, having published her first book, _Hobomok_, in 1821. Her works
had been much read, but lost much of their popularity after she
published the first anti-slavery book in America, in 1833, under the
title _An Appeal for that Class of Americans Called Africans_. She
ever remained prominent as an abolitionist, but because of her
opinion